So, you thought college was rough? Well, wait til you check out law school. I must say, I was surprised….
I attended law school at the University of Baltimore. I had applied for twelve schools, and when I got into this one, I decided this would be my destination of dreams. Why? This was the one University that offered all three of my graduate school pursuits- an MBA, Master’s in Psychology, and of course the Law School. I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself.
Then, I had to face the reality of what law school would really be about…. It wasn’t pretty- in fact, it was down right cold and ugly. Here are some top tips to help you get through this first year of law school at the University of Baltimore and actually live to tell about it.
1. Tip Number One. Be ready to go back to Elementary school. What I remember about elementary school is that you had all of your classes with the same people all day long- everyone knew everyone. And, this meant everyone picked on every one. And you couldn’t hide any secrets.
This is what the first year of law school is like. At University of Baltimore, if you take day classes, you will be divided into one of four sections. There are about eighty students in each section. Whichever section you’re in, you will have all of your classes with these people. By the end of the first semester, you will know all of their names, first and last. You will know who’s dating who, what they do in their spare time, who comes in late, who is smart, etc. If you have anything going on in your life you don’t want these eighty people to know about, bury it, and bury it deep.
Your first year class schedule is picked out for you. You have no electives. You get what they give you. You will have contracts, torts, criminal law, civil procedure, and legal analysis research and writing. The first four are with these same eighty people, day in and day out. The last is with the whole first year day class. If you take night classes, you will be in one of two sections, taking all classes with these people in your section just like with the day classes.
What I suggest is to prepare yourself for everyone knowing everything about you. If you don’t want to be embarrassed about something, don’t do it. Once one person knows about it, the whole class will. We had a first year law student in our section come in one day with a dog. She had the dog wrapped in a towel, so noone could see it. The dog started yelping during the class, and the student tried to leave unnoticed. The instructor actually stopped her before she got out the door, and let her have it. By the end of the morning, I think the whole school knew about the incident. I personally will never forget it (I think it’s really funny.)
2. Don’t have feelings that get hurt easily. If you’re going to play with the big dogs in law school, you’ve gotta play. Be ready for people to challenge your viewpoints and really question all your remarks. If you don’t want to be questioned about something, don’t mention it. If you are unsure how you stand on a subject, perhaps you shouldn’t state your viewpoint. People will get to the core of your being with their comments and you have to be ready for it. Otherwise, you’ll become an emotional wreck. Just learn not to take it personally.
3. Law school, especially at the University of Baltimore, is competitive. Be ready for the challenge. You may have felt like you were the smartest kid on your college campus. Well, here, that’s how everyone felt. So, now they’re ready to take you on head on. They will fight to get what they feel they deserve and to maintain their status. I don’t personally get it, as I never felt this way. Perhaps its about insecurity. However, just know that others will be challenging you. They will want to make better grades than you, and sound smarter.
I personally didn’ t fare too well in this area. I got a really good grade on my first graded paper in law school, which was a research assignment for the LARW class mentioned above. I spent lots of time on it, and was really precise. My grade was like a 78%, whereas most other people got scores in the 60’s or failed the assignment. Alot of people treated me differently after that. They didn’t want to get too close to me in terms of friendship, but they wanted to be close to me when it came to questions on future research assignments. Just be careful. People you think are your friends may not be, and someone you never thought would like you turns out to be a loyal cohort. My advice is to not share your grades with others in the class, and to just really lay low and get to know people. Realize they could have ulterior motives and take time to learn who your true friends are.
4. One exam at the end of the semester. Here’s something that takes some time getting used to! I always used to memorize things right before exams, and did really well. Not anymore! You have to start from the beginning of the semester, organizing your notes and making them totally understandable. Learn as you go along and build on your knowledge. At the end of the semester, you will have to write essays on what you know, based on your comprehensive knowledge of the subject pertaining to specific questions.
If you take Torts, you want to learn as many as you can. For my torts final, there were say, three different scenarios. For each one, you had to list the potential torts involved. The more you answered, the better your grade.
5. Studying cases. I thought that you should read each case, and then write a synopsis of it to make sure you understood it. Wrong! You’ll never have the time. Instead, what you should do is get the important stuff out of the case only. You need to know the stuff you’ll be tested on and nothing more. Get out the important information, put it in your semester-long organized outline that you are making for each class, and get to the next case. You can’t get bogged down in details. If you find an interesting case you want to read, save it for the summer!
Stay on top of your assignments from the beginning and don’t get behind. Although you may have been able to procrastinate in college, you won’t make it with this approach in law school.
6. Socratic method. You don’t get to volunteer in law school, generally. The professors will single out anyone who strikes their fancy and they feel they want to answer the question. You are expected to know the answer. If you don’t, the professor will consider you unprepared. There are times when it seems noone knows the answer to a question. If you can jump in with that right answer, you’ll feel pretty special. However, be prepared for others to be upset that you know the answer and they didn’t. (Don’t let this intimidate you, however. If someone isn’t to like you, they’ll find another excuse anyway.)
7. Escaping. So, if this all becomes overwhelming, what do you do? My advice is to get away and study in one of the other buildings on the campus. Go to the business school and study in an empty room. Or go to the undergraduate Langsdale Library instead of studying in the law library. Get away from the law school and students. You’ll really feel better.
8. Time to yourself. Get away on the weekends. Find somewhere to go that doesn’t involve your law school peeps. Get some time for yourself, family, and non-law school friends. Get a massage, or take a meditation class, or take yoga. Exercise, eat right, do anything to help keep you at your personal best. You’ll need to to keep up the pace of law school and stay emotionally and physically healthy at the same time.
9. Making it all better. It’s not really that bad if you follow some simple rules. Don’t tell too much about yourself. Keep your private life private. Don’t let on your grades to everyone. Take the time to see which people are genuine and keep them as close friends. Don’t worry about the other people. Study, and study hard, but organize your thoughts from the beginning. Study wisely.
10. Last but not least, watch the movie “Legally Blonde.” You will actually learn a bit what law school’s about from this movie.
