JD-Next is a fully online 8-week law school prep course and admissions test to train potential JD students in case reading and analysis skills before their first year of law school. It is asynchronous, so you can access JD-Next anytime and anywhere. You’ll learn to brief cases, analyze legal reasoning, and articulate legal analysis in high-pressure settings like law school exams. Test scores from JD-Next showcase relevant skill sets and help predict law school success. Participation in JD-Next has been scientifically demonstrated to boost 1L GPAs by .20, on average.

You’ll have the opportunity to apply these skills to a short portion of legal doctrine from 1L Contracts Law, preparing you to navigate the case law method used in 1L classes. Think of it as a preview of law school. It will help you acclimate to the rigorous process of studying law and equip you with essential skills to start your 1L year with confidence.

JD-Next Program Structure and Timeline

The JD-Next course prepares students for that all-important first year of law school. The 8-week program requires 6–10 hours of work per week, or about 1-hour daily. It begins with Case Brief Workshops, where you’ll develop essential law school skills, such as analyzing cases to extract key rules and facts.

In the first half of the course, you’ll complete workshops focused on legal reasoning and case analysis. In the second half, you’ll apply these skills to doctrinal law by engaging with foundational 1L Contract Law cases, such as Hawkins v. McGee.

Each week includes interactive lessons, quizzes, and personalized feedback to help you build and refine your skills. Course videos provide concept introductions, lectures, takeaways. Additionally, professional identity videos showcase interviews with legal professionals from a variety of backgrounds. The course also includes frequent formative assessments to provide feedback to promote learning and test preparation skills to improve future test performance. Additionally, you’ll get the opportunity to routinely reinforce concepts through practical application with “problems of the day.” 

Students have the option to prepare for the JD-Next test with practice materials included in the course. Students can check their knowledge with question quizzes and essays, with model answers and grading rubrics provided for self-assessment. 

The course culminates with the JD-Next test, a comprehensive assessment designed to evaluate law school skills learned in the course. Unlike traditional standardized assessments, this test aligns strictly with the course curriculum, ensuring a fair, accurate, and equitable evaluation process.

Course Topic Areas

• Promissory Estoppel: Apply the test of promissory estoppel to a fact pattern, focusing on reasonable reliance and detriment to the promisee.

• Expectation Damages: Calculate expectation damages, considering duty to mitigate

• Legal Test for Consideration: Apply the legal test for consideration, including both elements of legal value and bargained-for-exchange.

• Gratuitous Promise: Distinguish between a gratuitous promise and a contract supported by consideration. Apply the rule for inadequacy of consideration and policy goals centered around free market principles. Identify sham or nominal consideration and the legal implication of each.

• Past Consideration: Identify the issue of past consideration and apply the rule that past consideration cannot serve as consideration to support a contract. Identify the elements of promissory estoppel.

• Insufficient Illusory Promise: Identify an illusory promise as insufficient to support a contract. Determine whether a court would infer an implied reasonable efforts standard to a given scenario. Apply the rule for illusory promises to determine when or how reasonable efforts might be inferred.

• Objective Theory: Apply the objective theory of contracts to a given scenario, particularly where subjective intent and objective conduct diverge. Spot the issue of mutual mistake, identifying where a mutual mistake may have occurred and the legal consequences.

• Bargaining and Unilateral Offer: Distinguish between an invitation to bargain and a unilateral offer. Apply the rule that a modification cannot be made to a unilateral offer once the offeree has accepted via performance.

• Offeree Acceptance: Identify the issue of whether an offeree has accepted an offer via the manner specified by the offeror.

• FIRAC: Identify and distinguish the elements (narrative facts, determinative facts, issue, rule, analysis, application, and holding) of a FIRAC case brief.

• Dispositive Facts: Identify legally determinative facts and distinguish them from narrative or irrelevant facts.

• Conclusion (Holding): Describe the holding in a FIRAC case brief, selecting the best version of a holding, identifying the rule applied in the case and legally relevant facts.

• Issue: Recall the elements of a strong issue statement and use those criteria to select the best issue statement for a case or fact pattern.

• Procedural Posture: Identify facts related to procedural history, including the court issuing the opinion, relief sought, motion at issue, and disposition of the lower court.

• Rules: Identify and articulate the applied rule, focusing on essential elements, court reasoning, and relevance.

Course Syllabus

What GPA Do You Need?

• Top Schools (Harvard, Yale, Stanford): 3.8–4.0
• Highly Competitive Schools (NYU, Chicago, Columbia): 3.6–3.8 Should we try to use a school that has an ABA variance such as Vanderbilt or Georgetown? 
• Other Strong Programs (Boston University, Fordham): 3.3–3.6 

A GPA below 3.0 will put most law schools out of reach, while higher GPAs can offset weaker areas in your application. 

JD-Next is a fully online 8-week law school prep course and admissions test to train potential JD students in case reading and analysis skills before their first year of law school. It is asynchronous, so you can access JD-Next anytime and anywhere. You’ll learn to brief cases, analyze legal reasoning, and articulate legal analysis in high-pressure settings like law school exams. Test scores from JD-Next showcase relevant skill sets and help predict law school success. Participation in JD-Next has been scientifically demonstrated to boost 1L GPAs by .20, on average.

You’ll have the opportunity to apply these skills to a short portion of legal doctrine from 1L Contracts Law, preparing you to navigate the case law method used in 1L classes. Think of it as a preview of law school. It will help you acclimate to the rigorous process of studying law and equip you with essential skills to start your 1L year with confidence.

The JD-Next course prepares students for that all-important first year of law school. The 8-week program requires 6–10 hours of work per week, or about 1-hour daily. It begins with Case Brief Workshops, where you’ll develop essential law school skills, such as analyzing cases to extract key rules and facts.

In the first half of the course, you’ll complete workshops focused on legal reasoning and case analysis. In the second half, you’ll apply these skills to doctrinal law by engaging with foundational 1L Contract Law cases, such as Hawkins v. McGee.

Each week includes interactive lessons, quizzes, and personalized feedback to help you build and refine your skills. Additionally, you’ll get the opportunity to routinely reinforce concepts through practical application with “problems of the day.”

The course culminates with the JD-Next test, a comprehensive assessment designed to evaluate law school skills learned in the course. Unlike traditional standardized assessments, this test aligns strictly with the course curriculum, ensuring a fair, accurate, and equitable evaluation process.