On arriving at law school students are given prodigious reading lists. Descending into the minutiae of legal study is much easier if you already have a good knowledge of all the rudiments. These are some tips for getting started.

1. Become familiar with legal language. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift wrote about lawyers who had “a peculiar Cant and Jargon of their own, that no other Mortal can understand”. Today, a lot of legal language is still just as esoteric. For example, misfeasance is an old term meaning the unlawful performance of a lawful act. To recuse means to refuse, as in “the judge recused himself from presiding in a case in which his brother was a litigant”. A chose in action (pronounced “shows in action”), is a legal right to procure a sum of money owed. You should get a legal dictionary. But before study in earnest you can use a good basic introductory glossary and a glossary of Latin terms.

2. Get used to thinking of law as neither entirely a “pure science” in the way that the so-called natural sciences are categorised, nor a “pure art”. The “science of law” was a tag once used by legal scholars, although much of legal study involves the use of interpretative and artful reasoning. The use of rigorous formal logic is often found in judgments but you should counterbalance that with the thought of Benjamin Jowett that logic “is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge”. This tax case featured an intriguing judicial discussion on the nature of legal study. Lord Justice Sachs said: “. . . it is plainly correct to speak of law as a science and of its study as a study of science in the same way as one speaks of the study of medicine or chemistry.”

3. Become a news buff. Law is about much more than law. It develops in relation to the world outside the library windows. Therefore, to be good at law it is very helpful to have a wide general knowledge across as many fields of life as possible. You don’t need to plough through the pages of all the specialist news but you should have a good basic knowledge of as many public debates and important developments as possible.

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4. Get to know the difference between the Court of Justice of the European Communities and the European Court of Human Rights. These are often confused in public discussions and sometimes by politicians. The first one, often known as the “European Court of Justice” (ECJ) is the court of the European Union, and sits in Luxembourg. It ensures that EU law is observed. The Court hears disputes between nations and between nations and European institutions such the European Commission. A lot of the law it applies concerns commerce and trade between the EU nations and issues of employment and competition law. An individual can only bring an action if he is challenging a decision that affects him. Visit the very useful court site. The European Court of Human Rights doesn’t arise from the EU. Based in Strasbourg, it was established as a result of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and opened for business in 1959. The convention sets out a catalogue of civil and political rights and freedoms. It allows people to lodge complaints against states that have signed up to the ECHR for alleged violations of the convention. Its case law can be found in a wonderful collection.

5. Know your way around some Acts of Parliament. A large part of legal study involves familiarity with legislation, so the sooner you get immersed in the strange and wonderful world of statutes, the better. A good way to do this is to go to the official site of modern legislation, choose from the list an Act that looks interesting to you and that is also listed as having an Explanatory Note (most of the recent ones do) and then cross between reading the Note and reading the actual Act, going to and fro, in order to see how the law has been composed in order to achieve its aim. No need to sweat about remembering the contents of the Act, just get used to the sort of language used and the way Acts are structured. You might want to use a good guide to how Parliament makes law.

6. Learn the basic role of legislators, judges, solicitors and barristers. Consult the excellent official introduction to how Parliament, the source of over half of all modern law, works. Study the official guide to the judiciary, which includes everything from the different jurisdictions of different types of judge to what they wear. A good starting place to learn about the work of solicitors is from the Law Society’s site. The site also offers a useful brief history of the Law Society. The work of the barrister is very helpfully charted by the Bar Council's site.

7. Observe some law in action in the courts. Spend a day or so at your local courts and watch law being dissected, argued, judged and appealed. You should always contact the court in advance to check it will be open when you plan to go. Court addresses and details can be checked online. The Crown Court sits at about 90 venues in England and Wales. The court usually sits with a jury and hears serious criminal cases. Magistrates' courts are also interesting venues. These courts deal with about 95 per cent of criminal cases. Your local county court will also be a good place to observe civil litigation.

8. If you haven’t read them already, enjoy some classic texts often quoted by lawyers. For example, two often-cited masterpieces are: The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and The Trial by Franz Kafka. The questions of justice, legal technique and jurisprudence that sparkle in The Merchant of Venice are manifold. For example, should rules ever be bent to produce justice? In a tenancy agreement case in 1976, Lord Justice Lawton declined to bend the rules in the 1968 Rent Act, concluding: “I could only do so by stretching the law. Adapting Shakespeare’s words, I might be doing a great right but I would be doing a little wrong and as Portia said: ‘Twill be recorded for a precedent, And many an error by the same example will rush into the state. It cannot be.’ I would dismiss the appeal.” The Trial is terrifying nightmare of what can happen in excessively bureaucratic regimes and totalitarian states. Kafka, who had studied law, wrote it in 1914 while he was an official in the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in Prague. In the book Joseph K., a bank officer, is shocked to find himself suddenly arrested for an unspecified crime and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. The development of his plight is agonising, and the story is a very stimulating introduction to many aspects of legal theory and philosophy.

9. Entertain and inspire yourself by watching some classic films with a legal theme. These three are equally riveting for different reasons:

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
A cantankerous London barrister, Sir Wilfrid Robarts, returns to his practice after suffering a heart attack and is supposed to be undertaking only civil cases of a simple kind. But he undertakes the defence of Leonard Stephen Vole in a curious murder case. His wife, the remarkable Christine Vole, is to appear as a witness: not for the defence, but for the prosecution. The film, directed by Billy Wilder, was an adaptation of the Agatha Christie play. It is a masterpiece of plot intrigue, suspense and dry wit.

Twelve Angry Men (1958)
In Manhattan's Court of General Sessions, a juror with doubts in a murder trial gradually manages to convince his fellow jurors that the case is not as clear as it appeared during the trial. An 18-year is accused of stabbing to death his father. If found guilty, he will be executed. All but three minutes of this classic 96-minute film was shot inside the spartanly furnished jury room. It is magnificently suspenseful. As one of the original film posters noted “It explodes like 12 sticks of dynamite”.

Brothers in Law (1957)
The film opens with a young man called Roger Thursby being called to the Bar. We follow him as he then takes his first steps up the legal ladder. This comedy is so fondly observed, and law has changed so little in some respects, that it is still very sharp. You meet an engaging assortment of lawyers and judges as the novitiate Thursby is hurled into cases under the eccentric Kendall Grimes, QC.

10. Become familiar with the way case decisions from the higher courts are written. This will make things much easier when begin your studies in earnest. Browse through the cases and read carefully those you find interesting. Don’t read anxiously to try to memorise the facts and legal reasoning; just find a case whose first paragraphs tell of an interesting drama or legal conundrum and then read the rest to discover what the court decided. The cases are helpfully categorised at this website so that you can select according to your preferences for criminal, civil, family, patents cases and so on.

Gary Slapper is Professor of Law, and Director of the Centre for Law at the Open University. His latest book How the Law Works is published by HarperCollins at £8.99

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