Author: cdtalaw

Success in the Legal Field: Do You Have to Be Aggressive?

legal field

As a law student, you probably spend a lot of time imagining what it is going to be like to actually get into your career in the legal field and practice as a trial lawyer; after all, this is the whole point of law school: gaining the skills you need to maneuver in the legal system, and hopefully either work for a firm later that challenges and rewards you handsomely, or strike out on your own, perhaps hanging your shingle in your hometown or a neighboring area. Although quite confident in your identity already, you may wonder if you should alter...

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Don’t Lose Sight of Important Personal Interests During Law School

personal interests

The summer before law school begins, you may find out that personal interests don't seem quite as important, as suddenly you are consumed by two main things: thinking about going to law school and passing the bar so you can get on your way to creating a successful practice as a trial lawyer. You may be consumed with scouring any available coursework, reading all possible materials ahead of time, and feeling some anxiety about the weight of the impending journey ahead. The best gift you can give yourself before beginning law school is to square away every detail possible and start...

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Battling Burnout During the First Year of Law School

burnout

While there are probably many reasons you want to become an attorney, from helping people to seeing justice served, to using your analytical skills in court and enjoying the excitement of being a trial attorney, you may have more than a little trepidation about attending law school, and may worry about issues that come up later such as burnout. Law school is the next level, and one step up from the undergraduate degree (which may have seemed stressful already). Now, mingling with the cream of the crop in law school, you may worry about how you will measure up—along with many...

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Streamline Studying By Understanding Your True Learning Styles

learning styles

Most of us have different learning styles, with the brain functioning in a very complex manner to memorize and retain important information. It can become easier to understand how to study, though when you begin paying closer attention to how you seem to learn best. Throughout the years, this may be on a trial and error basis, and your learning styles may vary depending on the content or degree, but as you enter your first year of law school at CDTA (looking forward to sizeable amounts of reading assignments and coursework overall), consider some factors: You may be an auditory...

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Preparing to take the California State Bar

State bar

For most students attending law school today, and for those enrolled at California Desert Trial Academy College of Law, taking the California State Bar Exam is the end of a long educational journey, testing would-be lawyers before they head out into the legal world to take on clients and hopefully flourish as well-rounded trial attorneys. The California Bar Exam is the test of all tests, although it certainly is not unheard of for a bright student to fail and have to take it again under what is usually significant stress; in many cases, students who find exciting job opportunities in...

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Setting the Scene: How Comfortable Should Everyone Be During Negotiations?

negotiations

While some negotiations are cut and dry, and everyone is happy in a surprisingly efficient amount of time, those will probably be the bonus rounds in your career—the cherries on top. Other times, negotiations may be long, drawn-out, excruciating—and even heated; and after all, if the parties involved were able to agree easily, they would not need your services, and the other side would not have needed to retain legal counsel either. You may be a natural born debater and usually the one to come out on the winning end of any argument, but successful negotiators usually evolve through experience and...

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First-Year Law Students Must Budget Time Wisely

While the first year of high school is a serious time of adaption, leading to that exciting first year of college, upon entering the first year of law school, law students are taking their education—and the challenge level—to an exponentially higher degree. You will be reading voluminous amounts of material related to legal cases and coursework, and you will be expected to retain more information than ever before. Along with that, you must also devote even more time to your studies than ever before; in fact, if you’ve ever had a rigorous job where you worked overtime too, expect that...

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Setting Up the Most Effective Work Area for Distance Learning

distance learning

No matter where you attend law school, get ready to spend a great deal of time after class situated comfortably at your desk--and even if you are engaged in online, distance learning at a progressive law school like California Desert Trial Academy College of Law—with the freedom to study wherever you like—you will still need an organized area with everything at your fingertips for streamlined studying. There is no way around the fact that you will be poring over substantial amounts of reading material most days and nights, probably studying as many hours per week as you would devote to a...

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Time Management & How to Be More Effective Daily

Time Management

If you are new to law school, one thing is for sure: time is valuable, and there is never enough of it! Your greatest wish may be to churn out more hours in the day (along with more study time), but without the help of the magic genie, most likely that isn’t going to happen. Like most students before you, however, you will adapt, learning how to manage the 24 hours you are given better each day, with those time management skills being some of the most important strengths you will gain to help you in your law career later. ...

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Better Studying: Why Visual Aids Are So Beneficial

visual aids

Visual aids can be vital in almost every aspect of studying. As a law student, you will be subjected to many basic lectures which are based on a professor speaking and you listening, along with participation from the class. Much of this is supported by text, both before and after—serving as a visual aid, but it is always helpful to have other illustrations too. Because so much of the key to studying and retention is based on manipulating the mind and the memory, strengthening your abilities, you may find yourself looking for different methods to rely on when learning. Experienced teachers...

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