I’m back with Part Two of how to nail your first year of law school! These tips continue from my previous post, so if you haven’t read that yet, please click here to take a look! Without further ado, please get ready to nail your first year:
Figure Out How You Best Study: the way in which you study is super important for you establish early on in law school. Do you study best alone, with a single friend, with an entire study group? Are you introverted or extroverted? Are you an auditory or visual learner? Do you look at information once and remember it, or do you need to review it over and over again (like me)? These are all super important considerations for you to reflect on when you first enter law school, because your final exams will be hugely reflective of how well you study—and how well you study will be based on whether you are in a study environment that best suits your personality and learning type.
When I was in law school, I studied with NO ONE. I am an extremely introverted—introverted, not shy—person by nature, so naturally, I wanted to be left alone to my own devices. I quickly found out that I studied best on my own by reading and writing, rather than by discussing and listening to others around me talk. For me, being around too many people in one room and hearing too many opinions was confusing, overwhelming, and utterly unhelpful. Instead, I studied alone, and I went to my professors alone when I had questions about what I studied, read, or reviewed. That was the best way to not only learn the information, but to also hash out the information with my professors, who ultimately would be writing grading my exams at the end of the day.
Now, not everyone will study the same. Truth be told, most people in my law school class studied in groups, bless their hearts. I still have no idea how they did that. But on any given day, you could find so many people cooped up in a tiny room drawing on the white boards and loudly discussing amongst themselves. CRINGE. But if that’s what works for them, that’s okay! And, same goes for you. The moral of the story is that you need to figure out how you study, how you best retain information, and how you will be most successful on your final exams.
If you’re an extrovert but you study best alone, allow yourself to study alone and let your extroversion out in other ways. If you’re an introvert, but you study best by engaging in discussion with others (highly unlikely), then muster up your energy to participate in a study group, and designate your down time at the end of the day where you shut the world out for a period of time. Just find what works for YOU and listen to your gut!
Attend Final Exam Reviews: if you do anything in law school, or you listen to any of my advice here, listen to this! For the love of all that is good in the world, attend your professors’ final exam reviews. Final exam reviews are non-mandatory review sessions that the professor will hold approximately a week before final exams where he or she discusses the material covered and takes questions from students. If you don’t attend these reviews, you are hugely missing out on valuable information in a number of ways.
Firstly, and primarily—as I’ve iterated a number of times—your professor is the one who writes and grades your exam. Read that again, your professor writes and grades your exam. So, naturally, your professor is the perfect person to learn the final exam material from. 9 times out of 10, attending the final exam reviews will be a vortex into the material from the semester that the professor intends to focus on and test on the final exam. For example, if you go to your civil procedure final exam review and your professor focuses on subject matter jurisdiction and says absolutely nothing about personal jurisdiction, it may be a good indicator that your professor has chosen not to test personal jurisdiction on the exam. Or, if they do test it, it may be a smaller subset of the exam, and therefore a topic you should focus less on (but really, you should know personal jurisdiction inside and out regardless!)
Secondly, and admittedly, sometimes your professor will not teach the material exactly the way that your casebook lays the material out. Yes, read that again. Sometimes, your professor will put his or her own spin on the material, or have a slightly different opinion on the way in which the law works. And sometimes, your professor will entirely disregard the casebook and just ramble on about information that you have to decipher. Or, you just may have no idea what the casebook says, and need to rely solely on the material your professor teaches. And for purposes of the exam, that’s fine. LEARN WHAT THE PROFESSOR WANTS and learn how the professor teaches, rather than the casebook. That’s where the final exam review comes in! By attending the final exam review, you will have one final opportunity to understand the material from your professor’s point of view, which in turn will allow you take the exam with that point of view in mind—and at the end of the day, the professor is writing the exam, not the casebook.
Just, attend the final exam reviews! You will thank me later 🙂
Exercise & Eat Well: this one is pretty self-explanatory—but you should really stay in shape and eat healthy! And when I say stay in shape, I just mean that you should get regular exercise, whether that means a daily 20-minute walk around your apartment complex, or training for and running a half-marathon during your 1L year of law school like I did. And when I say eat healthy, I just mean that you should eat a grilled chicken salad regularly, get to the grocery store for real food, and not have too many nights of solely Domino’s Pizza (like I did during bar prep).
But seriously, regardless of the type of exercise, I promise that this is another one of the best things you can do for yourself, not only during your first year of law school, but all throughout your law school career. We all know that exercise provides mental clarity, energy, endorphins, and a multitude of other benefits—both exercise and healthy eating will foster that. Exercise and a healthy diet will allow you to better maintain a sleep routine (see below!), focus during your hours-long reading sessions, and be an overall happier person. All of those benefits can only aid you in nailing your 1L year. So, get outside, get some air, get in the sun (make sure you wear sunscreen!), and allow yourself to breathe.
Maintain a Sleep Routine: again, here is another no brainer—but guys, you need to sleep or you will be utterly miserable and will not live up to your full potential in law school, guaranteed. Much like exercising will be key to not only your 1L year, but all throughout law school, so too will maintaining a regular sleep regimen.
All throughout law school, 4:00 AM mornings were my thing. Yes, I got up at 4:00 AM every morning throughout the week to read, brief my cases, and of course, drink my coffee in the midst of it. It was a routine, and it was mine. Truth be told, I miss those days dearly. But given the excruciatingly early mornings, I had to maintain a strict sleep schedule. Now, that does not mean that you are required to sleep right on the dot of any given time of the evening? Of course not. But that does mean that you should lessen your screen time in the evenings (which I’ve gotten SO appallingly bad at) and give yourself a window in which you’re going to fall asleep. That way, you can rest assure (pun intended) that you will fall asleep by the time you need to sleep by, in order to get up and do it all again in the morning!
I promise, this will pay huge dividends. I think we all know what one or two late nights of bad sleep can do to our entire week. Well, when you’re in law school, and especially when you’re a 1L trying to figure it all out, it just makes the road that much rockier. You’ll quickly become a zombie—I watched it happen to a lot of people. Maintain a sleep routine and you’ll watch yourself catch the 1L curveballs that much more gracefully!
Let Yourself Do Other Things! last, but not least, please don’t let yourself get caught up in doing only law school things. You will be doing enough reading, briefing, listening, learning, note-taking, repeat to last a lifetime. Focusing solely on law school without any respite is a sure-fire way to burn out quickly, which you do not want. Now, I’m not saying that you should allow yourself to go out every night of the week, or even multiple nights out of the week. I’m not saying that
you should ditch every afternoon briefing session to be point guard in the next pickup basketball game at the YMCA. And I’m certainly not saying that you should just vedge out on Nextflix for 5 hours straight, tempting as that may be. There is a time and a place for everything! That’s one of my favorite sayings, primarily because it is so true. Your sleep schedule should still be a priority. Your studying should still be a priority. And you should minimize unhealthy distractions as much as possible.
BUT. Go hike that trail with your girlfriends on the weekend! Go walk to the nearest café to grab a midday pick-me-up coffee. Go for a 4-mile run after your criminal law class at 5:00 PM. Have your best girlfriend come over for a pizza and ice cream night on Friday. Talk about things other than law school. Go visit your parents when you can get away for a weekend. Go grocery shopping (and get some healthy snacks while you’re there)!
Literally, the possibilities are endless. The entire point is to allow yourself to have fun, but do it in a healthy way that will still be productive and conducive to your law school lifestyle.
And that’s it! Those are my final five tips on how to nail your 1L year of law school. I plan to record a video about this so that I can explain in more detail, so please stay tuned for that!
