The first week of law school can be pretty overwhelming with classmates that are more like your competitors than your comrades, scary law professors that may call on you at any minute, new schedules to remember, and more reading than you’ve ever had in your life. You’ll have a lot of new information to learn and new tasks to juggle.
One thing that you shouldn’t be stressed about, is the countless acronyms and abbreviations you’ll start hearing as early as orientation. They may sound intense, but they are really just shortcuts. Once you check out this list that we made for you, you’ll be all about the abbreviations too!
- K – A symbol used to denote a contract.
- Δ and π – Symbols used to denote the defendant and plaintiff.
- Rising 2L/3L – Terms to describe law students in the summer. After your 1L year, in the summer, you will be considered a rising 2L.
- IP – An abbreviation for intellectual property.
- BB – An abbreviation for Bluebook. Make sure you bring yours to your Legal Writing class!
- ABA – The American Bar Association is a voluntary association of lawyers who oversee law school accreditation, among other important activities.
- SBA – An abbreviation for Student Bar Association. Every law school usually has one to help organize and plan events.
- OCI – An abbreviation for on-campus interviews. Some firms and employers may come to your law school for OCIs. Make sure you pay close attention to the signup dates if you want to participate.
- CSO /OCS – The Career Services Office (or Office of Career Services) is a great place to find resources and guidance on job hunting.
- SCOTUS – The Supreme Court of the United States.
- Re: – A shorthand meaning about, used to refer to a situation or document.
- FRCP – The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
- e.g. and i.e. – Latin abbreviations meaning “example given” and “in other words.”
- JMOL – A Judgement as a Matter of Law.
- SOL – The Statute of Limitations.
- SOF – The Statute of Frauds.
- TRO – A Temporary Restraining Order.
- CALI – The CALI Award is given to the student who scores the highest in each law school class at many law schools around the country.
- IRAC – An acronym for Issue, Rule, Application, and Conclusion. This is a methodology used to teach legal writing.
- LR – An abbreviation for Law Review.
- E&E – Examples & Explanations, which are supplemental materials with sample questions and answers used to study for black letter law classes.
- UBE – The Uniform Bar Exam, which is a standardized bar exam that many states across the country have adopted in lieu of writing their own exam.
- MBE – The Multistate Bar Exam, which is the 200-question multiple-choice test that is part of the bar exam. Every jurisdiction takes this exam on the second day of the bar, except Louisiana.
- MPRE – The Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, which is a 60-question multiple-choice exam on professional conduct, that must be passed before bar admission.
Law school can be intimidating at first for a lot of reasons. Don’t let acronyms and abbreviations be one of them! This list will help get you started on your legal career, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The legal world loves abbreviations, so you can expect to see them throughout the rest of your legal career.
Once you get them down, you’ll enjoy them for the huge time-savers that they can be!
Happy Studying from the AdaptiBar team!
