American law school classes are primarily taught by having us read the landmark cases. In constitutional law, you’ll be reading the cases that ended up in interpreting/redefining different clauses and amendments of the US Constitution, like Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, Wade v. Roe, etc. You can look up these cases online for free to give them a read before your class starts! 

The American system (using “case law”) works on following “precedent.” Meaning (very simply put) in making a decision in a case, a court is bound to follow whatever a higher court did. Obviously each case has different facts, so you can always appeal to a higher court if you disagree with a ruling’s interpretation of the law. Eventually this might take you to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The “state” system works like:

Your local state “trial” courts -> state courts of appeal -> state supreme court -> US Supreme Court 

Each state has their own courts of appeals and supreme courts. 

The “federal” system works like:

Federal district court -> federal circuit courts (ex: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) -> US Supreme Court

There are 94 federal judicial districts, organized into 12 regional circuits. There are 13 circuit courts of appeals, however. The Thirteenth Circuit is the Federal Judicial Circuit, which has nationwide jurisdiction over certain appeals based on subject matter.

The state and federal systems deal with different issues. Most cases are heard in state court. If a case involves a federal law, for example, it would be heard in a federal court. Also, if the parties are from different states, they might qualify to have their case heard in federal court. I’m giving you the uber-simplified version here, of course. Bankruptcy courts are in the federal system, and immigration (to an extent, that’s also a murky area because the executive branch gets involved). 

Once you are up in the state supreme court or a circuit court of appeals, you can further appeal your case to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court however will not hear all the cases before it. It will grant “certiorari” to hear the cases it deems important and worthwhile. Normally these cases are to challenge a state law as being unconstitutional, etc. 

Any court higher than it in these two chains would be “mandatory” authority. So, if the California Supreme Court ruled so and so regarding a certain law, lower courts in California are bound to follow that ruling by applying it to their own facts of the case. The US Supreme Court would therefore be mandatory authority for all the courts in the land. And, sometimes, when there is no mandatory authority, you can look to “secondary” authority from other courts. For example, if I’m the federal district court of Rhode Island, which is in the First Circuit, but there have not been any rulings on my issue in the First Circuit or the US Supreme Court, the court may look to how other Circuits have ruled on the same issue (if they have) in making that decision. 

I would recommend looking up “landmark decisions” online, that should help! 

*flashback to trying to remember my xanga password so I could delete it*

If there are embarrassing or offensive things out there, absolutely find and delete those, but generally speaking you don’t need to worry too much about it. Everyone has an online presence nowadays, and those who don’t are the odd ones.

There will be parties, and there will be pictures. There will be people who post them. Law schools don’t care too much about that stuff, and most employers wouldn’t put in the effort either (nor care). What you do need to be careful about is things you post, or are said about you. Even when you think you’re anonymous. The Internet can find you.

Case in point, someone I knew the first name, school, and work of was pretty gross to me on a dating app recently. I was THIS close to hanging him out to dry. 

I was involved but nothing had to do with the law. I did things that I found fun to do. These extracurriculars do not help you that much with admissions. It’s going to come down to GPA + LSAT (I guess GRE for some schools now). 

Do these things if they interest you and still leave you with enough time to make sure your GPA & test scores are high. Don’t do it if you’re only doing it in the hopes it helps with law school admissions, because it absolutely will not.