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legal-poppy · 3 months ago

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how to study in (and survive) law school, from a 2L who almost failed both 1L semesters

you may be asking, "why would i want study advice from someone who clearly doesn't know how to study?" but that's the point- i'm a first-gen law student. aside from my siblings, nobody in my extended family has even been in grad school since the late 90s. i didn't know how to study last year, and definitely didn't know how to study for law school classes and exams. i ended my 1L year with 3 Cs and was placed in a remedial course last semester for the bottom 25% of students. i worked, changed, and tried different study methods throughout the semester, to figure out what works best for me and the classes i was taking. and it showed--i got an A and 3 Bs and my GPA jumped from a 2.5 to almost 2.8.

#1- do not try to do anything else during class. no social media, no reading, no shopping, no games. seriously. pay attention to your prof, your classmates, and what you did and didn't understand correctly from the reading. make corrections, note additional questions, read and re-read the book and your notes to make sure you can follow along with any questions or hypos.

#2- nothing is optional. do all of the extra readings, practice problems, and hypos. go to your prof for feedback on what you did well, what you didn't understand or apply correctly, and what you can do to write a better answer next time.

#3- go to your prof's office hours or ask questions after class. in high school and college i was told to never bug a teacher outside of class and never, ever go to their office hours. but law profs love when students ask questions and seek help. it doesn't have to be some profound theoretical question- my business law prof learned my name just from asking her about stories and problems my family had with businesses/services recently. my evidence prof learned my name because i kept asking her evidentiary questions about crime shows i was watching. in addition to the typical questions about a subject i was confused on or misunderstood, those fun questions helped me better understand and apply both the law and practical effect of the law to questions on the exam.

#4- start your outlines early and ask your prof for feedback. this was my biggest problem last year because i was paralyzed just figuring out how to format and organize my outlines. instead of going for pretty or aesthetic or perfectly detailed, just start writing. make a mess, write everywhere, scribble and erase and tape things together if you have to. it will still help you relearn and cement your understanding of those subjects. ask your prof if they would prefer to email your outline to look over ahead of time or just pop in for their office hours, and ask them if you got anything wrong, if you're too focused on the wrong details, or if there's anything you won't need to know for the exam. they won't judge if your outline is a mess, it just shows that you're trying and really want to get better.

when i studied for my evidence exam (my A last semester), i had so much trouble with my word doc that a week before the exam i just took my reading notes, my class notes, and my casebook, and spent days filling out an entire whiteboard with every bit of info on a rule. i ended up with 14 photos of that whiteboard completely covered with rules, advisory opinions, cases, and hypos. rather than wasting more time to type all of that up and send it to my prof, i sent her those photos. she knew i was struggling to stay organized on my traditional outline and saw how much better i was able to conceptualize the whole class without touching microsoft. i apologized for my horrible handwriting but all she did was send back notes on every single photo- what i had wrong, what i didn't need to know, and what i needed more detail/clarity on. no judgment for the incorrect parts or my handwriting or that i used a whiteboard, because it worked!

#5- revise your notes after every class. i didn't literally have time right after class, but every day when i went home i tried to revise my notes before i forgot what happened in class. i wasn't successful every single day and often spent a few hours on the weekend rewatching lectures and trying to remember details, but it was more effective than waiting until november to even start revising and outlining.

#6- don't follow the crowd. a lot of "gunners" and people with superiority complexes will tell you to follow their perfect notetaking format, study method, class structure, or reading style. and it might work great for them (or they're probably lying about how amazingly smart they are to look better than everyone else and make you feel worse about yourself), but they're very clearly a different person than you are because i hope you aren't trying to subtly wage psychological warfare on your stressed classmates. if you need a place to start, try to utilize those resources, but you can and should make adjustments if it isn't working for you. take a different class, join a different study group, use a different study supplement, do whatever is most helpful for you, and ignore anyone who suggests you're going to fail if you don't follow their instructions.

#7- don't listen to the noise. there's always someone with their superiority complex and intro-level psychology class and jedi mind tricks or whatever. they want to brag about how smart they are, what amazing grades they got, how easy the exam was that everyone else cried during, and that they got the best internship opportunity because of all of that. odds are, they're (1) lying and (2) exaggerating. they're probably struggling and stressing and crying just as much as you. or they're just not self-aware. you're never going to escape them too, unfortunately. but don't fall for their trap. don't study with them, don't sit by them, don't ask them for help unless you have exhausted every other person and resource in the building, take everything they say with a grain of salt and throw it over your shoulder to keep the demons away.

the other noise to avoid is the worriers who want to vent to everyone about how stressed, stupid, worried they are about the class or exam. and this isn't to say that you can't vent to your friends about it--that's your safety blanket people who will feel your stress and try to help you manage it. but if you see that person that you barely know and don't really talk to and they want to randomly start venting like that, take a step back. leave if you can, and if not, try to keep your head. don't stress because they're stressing, don't start second-guessing yourself, and don't share your own feelings of stress with them because they just want to see how miserable other people are so they can feel like they're doing better than you. if you're one of those people that everyone wants to vent to, do not do that for every person or repeat offenders who only seem to talk to you about their stress. take them to the dean, academic support staff, or on-campus counseling staff if they really need someone to talk to and help them. it's not your job to mother-duck your classmates so don't let them distract you from what you're there to do.

i had a classmate who caused drama with anyone who so much as looked at him the wrong way. accused people of cheating, violating the honor code, sleeping around for study help and good grades, or just being generally stupid. he wanted to seem so much smarter and better than those people (out of the 2 people i know who suffered his bullying, one was because she took too long to respond to his text and the other asked him too many questions about materials from a class). he just wouldn't shut up about how he was going to do way better than them and they were going to fail and drop out because they have no other career opportunities (pretty accurate paraphrase too). but to nobody's surprise, he ended that semester with a D, C and 2 Bs. no judgment to him for his grades because clearly i'm not much better, but very much judging for his attitude. people like him caused me to lose 20 lbs and half of my hair between April-September 2024 because i was so stressed about what he would think if he knew my grades or saw me in our remedial course, which he took in an earlier semester but also referred to as "the stupid class" full of students who couldn't care less about their futures. don't be like me, don't listen to anybody's judgment--focus on yourself and doing the best you can.

#8-the moment you start to feel anxious or panicked or spiraling down the drain, shut it down. talk to your professor, advisor, academic support center, dean of students, school counseling center, or even a friend--anyone that you know has your best interest at heart and will do what they can to help you. tell them that you're overwhelmed and stuck on something. law school staff, especially professors, do not judge students who reach this point. i almost cried in a prof's office because i was so worried about our mock court debate with actual lawyers and judges serving as our judges. my prof didn't judge or scold me for being so emotional at law school, she asked me why i was so worried and told me something she hadn't told the whole class: none of our mock judges actually knew anything about our assignment or the case law. they had no idea if we were misstating something or even found the right cases, they were only judging our presentation and advocacy. another professor, took me off of the cold-call list for an entire unit when i told her i was having a hard time reading the cases and didn't think i would be able to answer questions in class about them because of the personal experience i had with that topic. if you don't think a prof will listen to you or it's something more serious like accommodations or certain behaviors, you can talk to higher-ups like the dean/student services office/accommodations office for better help. those resources exist to help, so use them and don't feel bad for doing so.

#9- seek opportunities even if you don't meet the requirements. i got an interview with a federal office as a 1L, with my mediocre grades, because i applied. i didn't think they would be interested in me because i have no lawyer family members and am not the smartest candidate at our school, but i was one of 10 (TEN!!) 1L interviewees and ultimately got that (paid) internship last summer. they never even asked about my grades, but i did use it during my interview to show how hard i was working to do better and actually put in the work to do that. ignore the firms that say they only want the top 50% or 30% and apply if that's what you're interested in. if they don't want you because you don't have the grades they want, it's a sign that they're also not going to be accommodating when the bar exam comes, and you maybe didn't pass the first time, and they decide to fire you rather than hire you as a first-year associate after 6 more months of studying for the next bar date.

#10- take breaks every day and every week. personally, i take 30 minutes after back-to-back classes before i start studying, i stop studying at 6pm on the weekends unless i have a serious deadline, and i try to go out at least once a month with a non-lawyer friend to touch grass with the regular world and bring myself back into perspective. having law-school goggles on all the time throws everything out of whack. mountains and molehills and all of that. talk to regular people, let them slap you back into shape to see the whole puzzle of what lies beyond law school. and don't forget that you are more than your brain. go outside, take a walk, do some yoga, meditate, pet your goldfish. cry if you feel it and stress if it's stressful, but it's not the end of the world--no matter what happens.

good luck on the new semester, whether you've already been back for a while or are starting soon. be proud of yourself no matter what your grades look like when you get them. pause, evaluate, and set a plan to do better this semester.

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