What Incoming Law Students Want and Need To Know:
I've been thinking it might be helpful to write up a guide for incoming law students that answers some of the common questions shared by new law students about law school and legal education. There's a cottage industry specializing in such advice, I realize. Incoming law students are famously obsessed with getting any edge they can, and authors and book publishers are happy to exploit those fears with all sorts of advice books (some of which are moderately helpful; others of which are pretty lame).

  My sense is that I could do better than the current offerings in three ways. First, I think I can capture the best sense of things from the collective knowledge of actual law professors and practicing lawyers, instead of from the sometimes idiosyncratic perspective of individual authors. A number of the books reflect a I-made-law-review-when-I-did-this-in-1972 mentality, and it's hard for incoming students to know whether the approach will work for them, too. Second, I think I would have a distinct advantage on price: my plan is to keep the guide short and put it on the web for free, probably pursuant to a creative commons license. Finally, while far brighter minds than mine have tried their hand at this genre, the best product is rather outdated and a bit hard for today's law students to use effectively.

  So here's where I need your help: What do incoming law students want to know? What are your questions? I assume one big question is how to do well academically, and that you also want to know how to prepare for class, how to study for exams, how (if at all) to prepare the summer before law school, and the like. But what else is there? Please leave comments, and I'll leave the comment thread open for a while. Thanks for participating.

  UPDATE: Just to be clear, I am seeking input on the questions students want answered, rather than advice on what readers think the answers are. Sorry for the confusion.