The Girl's Guide to Law School
Get In, Get Through, Stay You
Just in time for final exams, we’re thrilled to welcome Flynn Coleman, lawyer, yogi, and founder of SAMYA Practice, who has a wealth of experience and knowledge to share about staying balanced as a law student and lawyer.
Why don’t you brew a nice cup of tea, breathe deeply, and settle in? Here’s Flynn!
Love, love this guest post from 3L Michelle Williams. An important read.
Lawyers are meant to be driven, resilient, competitive, organized, professional, articulate and perhaps even aloof, calculating, detached. Emotional issues and mental imbalance are NOT a part of that calculus.
But, that’s not always true, is it?
Lawyers (and the law students who eventually turn into lawyers) are a cross-section of humanity: Introverted, extroverted, quiet, talkative, emotive, stoic. Law school can be a grueling process full of embarrassment, exhaustion, isolation, conflict, comparison, and doubt — and the practice of law (what little I know of it) contains elements of those same motifs.
Facing the pressure of 1L year left me both surprised and disappointed by how I reacted.
Quite frankly, I had my own set of personal torments and weaknesses before I started law school; late nights and overwhelming work did not improve me. By the middle of Spring semester 2011, I was sleeping too much, working too little, unable to focus, and buckling under the pressure of everyday tasks.
That’s when I showed true strength of character: I asked for help.
What’s the second scariest word in law school, after “exams”? Networking! Yep, not most people’s favorite activity.
Today, we’re excited to introduce a new guest poster, Michelle Williams, a 3L and self-described introvert. She’s got some great advice on making networking more productive, and less painful. Take it away!
Introverts, amateur psychologists will tell you that you are shy. Self-involved. Socially awkward. Slow to adapt to change.
But, here you are in law school: forced to speak in front of large groups and adapting to change quickly.
Contrary to the expectations of armchair psychologists, you are making it. You are doing it. Moreover, you can thrive in law school.
As a 1L, I was obviously overwhelmed by the reading, the writing, and the classes. But, I was also overwhelmed by the sheer amount of social interactions required by….NETWORKING. Networking is a buzzword, and I used to groan every time I heard the word.
I now understand that networking is simply building a network of professional support.
Therefore, your goal is to form bonds with people who understand your professional capabilities.
The checklist below offers some thoughts about networking that put an introverted twist on the information you have gotten from your local career services office.
Something’s in the air, and it’s not just the crisp beginning of autumn. It’s time for the collective October 1L Freakout. Yes, this is a thing.
I was reminded of it recently, when a couple of different 1Ls furtively told me that they’d unexpectedly burst into tears while talking to professors. The look of “This doesn’t happen to anyone else, does it?” was clear.
Well, put your mind at ease — it’s quite normal, and there’s a very good reason for it, I think. I’ll get into my theory about why this happens soon, but first a story.
At some point in your law school experience, you’re likely to encounter a professor who — brilliant though he or she may be — just isn’t that interested in discussing “the law.” Sure, they’ll go on for hours about their pet theory of justice, or an esoteric research problem they’re working on, but good luck getting them to explain how Rule 4(k)(2) works.
This can be a frustrating scenario. (After all, you are paying for LAW school.)
Chances are good they’re not going to change their teaching style (hooray, tenure), but you can develop some coping mechanisms.
With the right mindset, all is not lost.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about a common 1L concern: How much time should you spend getting ready for class?
It’s going to vary a bit, of course, depending on how much reading your professor assigns in each class, but we can come up with some reasonable guidelines, I think.
One school of thought says you can never spend too much time preparing for class. More is always better, right?
I’ll be honest — I hated Law Review. Every second I spent in the bowels of the law school library searching dusty books for obscure references was time wasted, in my opinion. But, on the upside, I got quite good at getting my cite-checking assignments done quickly!
Here are a few tips for getting your journal work done, without losing your mind:
Feeling a little overwhelmed by the first weeks of law school?
Join the next #1Ltools Twitter chat, and get all of your questions answered!
Wednesday, September 12th, at 8:00 pm (Eastern)/5:00 pm (Pacific), a panel of law school experts will hold office hours — answering all of your burning questions.
It’s a great group, including @LawSchoolTools (the host), @GreenhornLegal, @LawSchoolNobody, @LawStudentTips, @WomnsRightsWrtr, @StudentAppeal and @MsJDtweets.
We’d love to have you join us!
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Lots of people have asked about the Law School Toolbox . . . what is it, and why did I start it (with my awesome co-founder, Lee Burgess)?
Let me explain a little bit about it, then I hope you’ll check out the newest iteration: our Law School Toolbox Members area.
The Law School Toolbox really started one day when Lee and I were having coffee. (We met on Twitter, oddly enough, but happened to live in the same place so we occasionally met up to chat.)
We were talking about how she prepared students to pass the bar exam after they’d failed once or twice. Clearly whatever they’d learned in law school wasn’t working on the bar — so, what did she have them do differently to pass?
Awesome, you’re starting law school. It’s gonna be so cool! Like, new BFFs all around, right? OMG, I can’t wait!
Yeah, probably not so much. If you’re one of the many 1Ls who shows up to find out things aren’t exactly what you expected, don’t panic. It might just be a temporary glitch in the system. (And, if not, that’s okay, too. You’ve got options.)
Here are some common 1L problems, which you might encounter:
