Law school isn’t college all over again
There’s an entirely different way of teaching, learning, and testing, on topics that’ll be foreign to you.
Your professors won’t teach essential concepts like in college. Instead, the law is taught via the Socratic method — sometimes they’ll cold-call on a student to answer a series of questions in class.
Your entire grade typically rests on one final that’s unlike any test you’ve taken before, even the LSAT.
You’ll be on your own to figure out the casebook — specifically, which parts of which cases in a 500-page casebook apply to an entirely new scenario you’ll be analyzing on the exam. It’s not about memorizing and regurgitating facts.
There’s no indication of how well you’re doing — no quizzes, no midterms, etc. — until the semester is over. And there are no do-overs in law school.
You’ll be graded on a curve, pitted directly against people with similar test scores and qualifications.
Your classmates are your competition for the best opportunities in a competitive job market. Only 14 percent of recent graduates had starting salaries of $190,000, with about half receiving $45,000 to $75,000.
Prep for 1L
Heading to law school? Our online prep courses can help you ace your first year.
We’ll give you the knowledge and skills you’ll need to rise toward the top of your class, and ultimately land your dream job.
We can show you the way to 1L success
You won’t get ANY of these your first year in law school (at least, I didn’t).
What’s included in the prep courses
Get the prep courses
Prepare for 1L Contracts and 1L Criminal Law, and master what you’ll be graded on.
Save nearly 25% when you buy 1L Contracts and 1L Criminal Law together.
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- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
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Membership
- Cancel anytime
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.
Get the 1L Contracts prep course.
One payment
- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
Payment plan
- The convenient payment option
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.
Get the 1L Criminal Law prep course.
One payment
- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
Payment plan
- The convenient payment option
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.
What you’ll get from each course
What you’ll learn:
- What issues to be on the lookout for when you’re reading your casebook.
- How to approach taking a contracts law exam.
- How to fully analyze and answer the question, “is there a contract?” — a cornerstone of contracts law analysis.
- How to interpret and analyze what’s in a contract, including who it benefits and binds, who it doesn’t, and how to tell.
- What duties there are in a contract and how they can be transferred from one party to another.
- How to perform on a contract and — if someone can’t perform — how the contractual relationship can be otherwise discharged and terminated.
- What remedies are available to the prevailing party in a breach of contract suit.
What’s included:
- 20 video lessons: Through nearly 5.5 total hours of videos, we’ll help you become fluent in the key concepts of your 1L class, illustrate concepts through excerpts of real contracts, and break down what should be included in the scenarios you’ll be asked to respond to.
- 9 scenarios (aka hypos or fact patterns): Analyze the facts of actual contracts, know what should be included in your analysis, practice selecting the best information to support your exam response, and put your analysis up against that of real courts.
- 8 drills: Like quizzes, these give you real-time feedback about how well you’re applying the concepts we’ll be covering.
- 2 cases: Lessons sometimes talk about specific cases; these are included for your reference.
What you’ll learn:
- What issues to be on the lookout for when you’re reading your casebook.
- How to approach taking a criminal law exam.
- How to fully analyze and answer the question, “is there a crime?” — a cornerstone of criminal law analysis.
- What defenses can be used to reduce or eliminate criminal liability for action that would otherwise be criminal.
- What types of crimes there are, how to read criminal statutes, and how to classify crimes, with plenty of examples.
- In-depth coverage of property crimes and crimes against the person, including sample exam questions, discussed and analyzed in detail.
- The beginnings of criminal procedure, and the nexus between criminal and constitutional law.
What’s included:
- 19 video lessons: Through more than five hours of videos, we’ll help you become fluent in the key concepts of your 1L class, illustrate concepts through cases, and break down what should be included in the scenarios you’ll be asked to respond to.
- 7 scenarios (aka hypos or fact patterns): Analyze the facts of actual cases, know what should be included in your analysis, practice selecting the best information to support your exam response, and put your analysis up against that of real courts.
- 9 drills: Like quizzes, these give you real-time feedback about how well you’re applying the concepts we’ll be covering.
- 8 cases: Lessons sometimes talk about specific cases or model penal codes; these are included for your reference.
Hi, I’m John. I’ll be your teacher.
I help law students get the essential skills and knowledge they need to do well in law school.
Law school requires a ton of work and is extremely difficult regardless of your undergrad GPA or LSAT score.
I got a 175 on my LSAT and felt like I was thrown into the deep end, left to my own devices to learn the law and develop the skills and approach to do well on the law school exams.
My classmates were in the same boat. I saw lifelong top students and brilliant legal minds struggle with finals because they didn’t know how to properly learn the material and write the exam.
A few years later, I started preparing a friend for law school to help him avoid these pitfalls. I taught him everything I’d learned, so he wouldn’t have to learn the hard way and could focus on the strategies that would help him succeed.
The straightforward, no-BS guidance I gave him became the foundation for what would later become Socrates Law Lab.
Frequently asked questions
Maybe you don’t. But there’s no way of knowing until after you get your grade. And there are no do-overs in law school.
Compared to what you’re already spending on law school, the course is a very, very small investment in your future.
Because the unfortunate reality is that attending law school doesn’t pay off for everybody.
Less than 14 percent can expect starting salaries of $190,000, according to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
Think of this course less in terms of the initial price, and more in terms of the potential return you’ll get. What can you do to get toward the top of your class?
Not necessarily. We cover the same all-important cases and concepts, but we teach the law in a clearer, more direct way.
Typically law schools expect students to read lengthy cases and contracts (anywhere from 10 to 40 pages each), and extract the key points from that, along with the reasoning.
At best, identifying and unpacking key points is extremely time-consuming. At worst, students won’t be able to extract this critical information at all (likely because they were never taught how to do this).
Professors don’t walk you through the essentials like college, and rarely give lectures. Instead, they teach the law via the Socratic method — they’ll ask a student to answer a series of questions in class, sometimes by cold-calling on them.
We remove the guesswork completely. We’ll start with the fundamentals, analyze the essential cases to zero in on key points and their reasoning, show you how the pieces come together in the bigger picture, and progress to more complicated drills and scenarios.
Students who finish our course will:
- Know what to look for when they read the cases.
- Know what to expect when they go to class and take the final.
To be clear, this course is *not* a substitute for going to class or doing the reading. But it is a smarter approach to learning, studying, and ultimately mastering the law.
I tried that for myself, and had nothing to show for it except for wasted time.
Generally, Google search results yield unrelated or obsolete results, pertain to the wrong country, or tell you something you already knew. Don’t waste your valuable, limited time on it.
Instead, take a smarter approach to grasp the exam essentials, such as our easy-to-follow course.
We’ve laid everything out for you, so you can master the exact topic you’ll be tested on by watching the videos in order and taking the provided drills, scenarios, and exam simulations.
If you’ll be a U.S. law student (or aspire to be one), then yes. All first-year students at U.S. law schools take the same set of classes:
- Contracts
- Criminal Law
- Civil Procedure
- Constitutional Law
- Property Law
- Torts
Our online courses are specifically designed for these 1L classes.
We currently offer courses that help law students succeed in Contracts and Criminal Law, and are working to create courses that supplement the rest of the 1L classes (Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Property Law, and Torts).
Join our email list to get notified as soon as new courses become available.
Yes! Our courses provide an excellent preview of what law school is actually like, making it a great option for those who are still deciding whether to go to law school. It’s like taking law school out for a test drive, before shelling out tuition money.
And if you do decide to go, this course will be one of the best things you can do before law school to hit the ground running.
You’ll get a leg up on your competition (your classmates) because you’ll know exactly:
- What you’re supposed to get out of the reading.
- How to write a competent final — specifically, how to analyze and resolve legal issues.
- What your professor is looking for on your exam, and when you participate in class.
We recommend allowing at least 56 hours to complete the Contracts-Criminal Law course bundle. This includes:
- Nearly 6 hours of video footage (328 minutes for Contracts and 315 minutes for Criminal Law).
- 50 additional hours to review the materials and take the provided practice exams (an average of 25 hours per course).
This is all flexible, but the more you put into the course, the more you’ll get out of it.
It’s a self-paced online course, so you decide when you start and finish.
We deliver course content primarily via video, which combines a lecture style with text and graphics to convey key points.
Interspersed in the videos are opportunities to apply the concepts you’ve learned to scenarios. Scenarios are like mini exam questions, requiring the same kind of analysis. These often mirror the issues in your casebook.
The Contracts-Criminal course bundle includes 16 scenarios (9 for Contracts and 7 for Criminal Law) that simulate the content of law school exams as well as real cases and statutory law to analyze.
Upon registration, you’ll get instant access to the course. You’ll be able to go through the course content on your own time and repeat it as often as you’d like. Plus, you’ll get lifetime access (this perk is not available to those with a monthly membership).
We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we’ll give you a full refund.
What people are saying
“These are the courses I wish I’d been able to take when I was going into law school. You can learn the 1L concepts in a way that makes sense (unlike in law school), with clear explanations and really great analogies. Much easier to understand the casebook this way.”
Don’t risk bad grades your first year
Of the three years in law school, your 1L grades are the most important. Summer internship interviews are held before second-year grades come in, and these internships often become post-graduation job offers.
The typical student spends around $100,000 on law school. Yet half of law students get starting salaries between $45,000 and $75,000, while less than 14 percent get $190,000.
Stellar grades are your gateway to a stellar future.
Get the courses risk-free
If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we’ll give you a full refund.
Just want to dip your toe in? Try a free preview.
Save nearly 25% when you buy 1L Contracts and 1L Criminal Law together.
One payment
- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
Payment plan
- The convenient payment option
Membership
- Cancel anytime
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.
Get the 1L Contracts prep course.
One payment
- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
Payment plan
- The convenient payment option
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.
Get the 1L Criminal Law prep course.
One payment
- Save nearly 20% by paying in full
Payment plan
- The convenient payment option
Less than 14 percent of law school graduates get starting salaries of $190,000, while half get between $45,000 and $75,000. Which group do you want to be in?
By doing everything you can to get great grades, you can open the door to the best opportunities and maximize the return on your law school investment. Our courses are a very small investment in your future.