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12 Resources Every Law Student Desperately Needs In Their Life

Not everything in law school is as complicated as the Rule Against Perpetuities. And potentially getting a discount on your GEICO car insurance through your bar association is even more simple!

1. Use actual physical note cards for stationery studying.

Yay! Just finished my Russian final!! #хорошо

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Start simple. Your technophile friends may brand you a troglodyte, but there's something to be said for writing actual words on actual card stock. The material sticks in your mind better. Digital flash cards are great, but nothing compares to working your way from ab initio to vis major in a stack of real index cards.

2. Get Quizlet digital flash cards for mobile studying.

"Think like a lawyer" is for 3Ls. First, you need to memorize an unimaginable volume of vocab words, Latin phrases, and (sigh) torts definitions. With Quizlet flash cards, you can keep jam-packing your brain from your phone or tablet even in those few hours you spend outside the law library. And it's free!

3. A tablet will help you with lightweight heavy reading.

4. The Bluebook is your new best friend, both online and in print!

5. WestlawNext will help you perfect your online research skills.

6. Get professional binding or a three-ring binder for those precious, precious outlines.

7. This SelfControl app will save your life.

SelfControl is an app for crunch time. When you've put off studying or finishing that appellate brief until the very last minute (or the last 12 hours), SelfControl will lock you out of any time-wasting functions on your laptop for a preset amount of time. It could just as easily be called BuckleDown.

8. Practice MBE questions with Barbri.

These are questions from actual previous bar exams. There's nothing like the real thing. Perhaps the best preparation for the bar exam is to expose yourself to literally thousands of these Barbri MBE questions until you are numb to their vague phrasing, their insistence on obscure legal nonissues, and their cruelly indistinguishable answer choices.

9. Evernote's Scannable will help you with the endless barrage of forms.

10. Black's Law Dictionary is your go-to for all legal terminology.

11. Find out if your state bar has an app!

12. Download the apps for a few of your fave blawgs.

When you're in law school, it's easy to get lost in a sea of abstract concepts and theories, so it's helpful to follow a few blawgs to remind yourself that real people are out there practicing law every day. It's also helpful to remind yourself that sometimes even good lawyers screw it up in really hilarious ways, and that's OK. Sure, the law is important, but at the end of the day, it's just about doing your best.

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Some things are just "res ipsa loquitur," like potentially saving money with GEICO through your bar association!