Courtesy of the incoming Harvard 1L over at Undeniable Dilemma, I'll point to the Harvard 1L information page, in case any Harvard 1Ls-to-be are reading my site and haven't discovered it yet. It's not particularly chock-full of information -- professors and book lists for each section, and a generic welcome letter. The kind of stuff I recall was sent to me via the always-reliable postal service around this time last year. But it's GREAT to see they're putting more and more stuff on the web. Our grades aren't on the web yet. Kind of hard to believe. But, anyway, it's great that there's this information page for incoming 1Ls, sparse as it may be. And it doesn't tell them what section they're in, so it doesn't actually allow them to figure out who their professors are yet. But still, it's something. The professors, by the way, are mostly the same ones who taught 1L courses this past year, with a few names I haven't heard (visiting professors?) and a few who taught last year who don't seem to be doing so again. But most look like a nice mix of younger and older professors for each section, with some well-known names scattered in there. Three of the professors I had for my 1L classes seem to be teaching again, but two aren't.

TJ over at Undeniable Dilemma says: "I only hope that I'm not the only pre-1L with no plans whatsoever to start buying text books to get a 'head start'." Oh, gosh, I hope so too. I don't know anyone who did that. Most professors don't go in order, don't start at the beginning, skip around... have different ways of explaining things than what's in the book... expect you to read focused on certain aspects... it seems awfully silly / useless / wasteful to read your casebooks before you start. Although you may want to buy them right away when you get on campus -- if you want to save 25% and get 'em used, the used ones sell out fast, at least at Harvard. Honestly, though, the two books I bought used I probably shouldn't have bothered. One was so marked up with highlighters -- when I bought it I said to myself, "it won't be a big deal; only chapters 4 and 5 are highlighted," but it turned out we only used chapters 4 and 5... oops! -- that it was distracting, and the other was kind of falling apart. Law school costs so much anyway; don't skimp on the casebooks. If you find good used ones, great! But if someone's burnt the edges of the pages and you can't read the last word one every line... might not be worth it.

Apologies that this post is of somewhat less utility if you're not about to be a 1L at Harvard -- I recognize that, and will try and conjure up something with broader appeal before the sun sets.