What is law school actually like?

[BlockedQuebecois]

@Barry, this isn't directly in response to your post but really some unsolicited advice in response to an underlying themes in your recent posts. I actually considered posting something like this in response to your earlier post that mentioned wishing for the sweet kiss of death, or something similar, but decided not to. 

So, as a starting point, it's okay to be stressed out in law school. I knew a lot of people who were stressed in law school, and they all turned into lawyers just fine.

But law school is, for most people, the least stressful part of their legal career. If you find your stress is starting to negatively affect your mental health—which your posts suggest—now is the time to get that under control. Make use of your school's mental health resources. If you're in Ontario, make use of the LSO's member assistance program (and if you're in a different province, check if you're eligible for your provincial law society's mental health resources). If you are on your parents' or spouse's health insurance plan, check if they have any mental health benefits you can use. 

Use this time to figure out what coping strategies you find effective. Once you have identified those, work to implement them on a regular basis. You are going to be infinitely better off, long term, if you enter the profession with an understanding of how to manage your stress in a productive, healthy manner.

[GGrievous]

8 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

wishing for the sweet kiss of death, or something similar, but decided not to. 

I actually really appreciate this. I should be more conscious of overdramatic comments like that because it is definitely a serious issue for many I know. That being said the stress of keeping up in what I'm now considering might be an ineffective  way has drained me of any energy to take care of myself, and I'm not having any fun. It's definitely something I need to control for the reasons you've stated, and I'm gonna work on it. Thanks for looking out. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Barry

[OntheVerge]

@BlockedQuebecois That's a great point. At my Call to the Bar, the speaker (forget her name) said something along the lines that most law students upon entering law school are at the top percentile for mental health, and balancing all the factors that lead to good mental health such as fitness, good habits, and work-life balance. She said it was staggering that upon leaving law school, those rates had plummeted and in most cases, students never regained the same level. That really stuck with me, probably because I felt like I personified that. I was much more well-balanced heading into law school than I was leaving. And, now, 3 years after graduating, I am doing better but still not where I originally was. 

The reason is I never found a way to deal with the stress of law school. Instead I just "dealt with it" by forming bad habits. The bad habits got me through short term periods of stress (like final exams) and then I could return to "normal" for the rest of the term until the next finals. Those habits were things like being too stressed to eat so not eating much, sacrificing hobbies for studying , sacrificing times with friends, skipping workouts, etc. That doesn't work well when the stress isn't contained to just 2-3 weeks out of 4-6 months, but is now 9-10 months out of the year. I'm just now trying to get back into the good habits I had in undergrad but it's been a struggle as those bad habits are now my reaction to when work is stressful.

So, yes, law school is the time to build those good habits and learn the right reactions to stress before they become ingrained. 

[GGrievous]

36 minutes ago, OntheVerge said:

@BlockedQuebecois That's a great point. At my Call to the Bar, the speaker (forget her name) said something along the lines that most law students upon entering law school are at the top percentile for mental health, and balancing all the factors that lead to good mental health such as fitness, good habits, and work-life balance. She said it was staggering that upon leaving law school, those rates had plummeted and in most cases, students never regained the same level. That really stuck with me, probably because I felt like I personified that. I was much more well-balanced heading into law school than I was leaving. And, now, 3 years after graduating, I am doing better but still not where I originally was. 

The reason is I never found a way to deal with the stress of law school. Instead I just "dealt with it" by forming bad habits. The bad habits got me through short term periods of stress (like final exams) and then I could return to "normal" for the rest of the term until the next finals. Those habits were things like being too stressed to eat so not eating much, sacrificing hobbies for studying , sacrificing times with friends, skipping workouts, etc. That doesn't work well when the stress isn't contained to just 2-3 weeks out of 4-6 months, but is now 9-10 months out of the year. I'm just now trying to get back into the good habits I had in undergrad but it's been a struggle as those bad habits are now my reaction to when work is stressful.

So, yes, law school is the time to build those good habits and learn the right reactions to stress before they become ingrained. 

Thanks for posting this. It's nice to know I'm not alone. 
 

And sorry to @Kobe for turning your thread into a therapy session for myself. Hopefully you’ll be in the camp of those that find it easy breezy. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Barry

[CleanHands]

21 minutes ago, Barry said:

And sorry to @Kobe for turning your thread into a therapy session for myself.

I think this stuff is relevant to the thread and important.

[ZukoJD]

50 minutes ago, Barry said:

Thanks for posting this. It's nice to know I'm not alone. 
 

And sorry to @Kobe for turning your thread into a therapy session for myself. Hopefully you’ll be in the camp of those that find it easy breezy. 

You're definitely not alone. 

Seems like most people I talk to in my program are stressed. 

[123]

Stress is normal.

The thing to watch out for is stress that becomes a more serious mental health issue, like an anxiety disorder. It's not always clear which is which. Obviously, the best way to tell is usually to consult a professional. BQ set-out some resources available to students.

Generally speaking, if your feelings are related to a specific concern (i.e., schoolwork), but abate when you rest or are focussed on something else, that's stress. If problems with mood or ability to function persist for months at time, irrespective of individual triggers, you might have depression, an anxiety disorder, or something else.

Like others have said, you want to be alive to this stuff. And again, if you're concerned that the way you're feeling goes beyond stress, try to find help. I have depression and anxiety, and I can assure you, the quality of your studies/work can suffer if you're unwell. So if you think there's a problem, don't ignore it because you're busy or whatever. 

I'm not an expert, but I'm happy to chat via PM with any law students who struggle with this stuff. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by realpseudonym

[Kobe]

1 hour ago, Barry said:

Thanks for posting this. It's nice to know I'm not alone. 
 

And sorry to @Kobe for turning your thread into a therapy session for myself. Hopefully you’ll be in the camp of those that find it easy breezy. 

Its drawn out some great insights and is totally within the spirit of the thread, nothing to apologize for.

 

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

I think this stuff is relevant to the thread and important.

I agree 100%

[Psychometronic]

12 hours ago, Barry said:

I'm feeling personally attacked

I can't tell if this is serious or not but I wasn't thinking of you or anyone else on this forum when I wrote my post. My examples are drawn from people I knew from UBC. 

And yes, hindsight does change the way you see your experience. It's hard to know how much work is enough in 1L and it takes time to adjust. Many people look back and regret the time and stress they spent on schoolwork in 1L, but they only get there by going through it. That said, I really do believe that a lot of it is other people psyching you out. If you can keep your head above that stuff, you'll be less stressed overall. 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Psychometronic

[GGrievous]

1 hour ago, Psychometronic said:

I can't tell if this is serious or not but I wasn't thinking of you or anyone else on this forum when I wrote my post. My examples are drawn from people I knew from UBC. 

And yes, hindsight does change the way you see your experience. It's hard to know how much work is enough in 1L and it takes time to adjust. Many people look back and regret the time and stress they spent on schoolwork in 1L, but they only get there by going through it. That said, I really do believe that a lot of it is other people psyching you out. If you can keep your head above that stuff, you'll be less stressed overall. 

Definitely meant it in a “I relate to this so hard that it feels personal” and not at all as in you were attacking anyone personally at all. 

[CheeseToast]

18 hours ago, OntheVerge said:

I came from a reading heavy course load in my undergrad where combined weekly reading assignments in the 500-1000 page range wasn't uncommon, nor was writing 10-12 research papers of word counts anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 with minimum 10-20 sources. I thought I'd be prepared for the work load in law school as I had managed all of the above and was able to keep up on readings, write the required papers, and do it well enough to keep a good GPA, plus have extracurriculars.

To put it bluntly, nope. Not only was there a crazy amount of readings assigned, but it was a new experience reading case law and legal articles. I had to look up every latin phrase for the first few weeks and re-read sentences over and over. It was also not uncommon for me to get to class and realize I had missed the whole point of the case I'd painstakingly read the night before.

Very curious what your undergrad discipline was and where you went to law school as this has not been my experience at all.
I’d say that, on average, I have 130 pages of readings per week (1L) and, while people seem to be getting stressed out and making a big deal out of law school, it hasn’t been that difficult to be average at all. 

[123]

If people haven’t written exams, they are in a poor position to evaluate the difficulty of law school. Exams are the best way to evaluate whether law school is difficult for you. If you’re above average on exams, it doesn’t matter if you struggled to keep up with readings throughout the semester. Likewise, if you can’t spot issues or finish the exam on time, it doesn’t matter if you’re the fastest reader in your section and a rockstar in class participation. 

Comparing reading speeds two months in seems like a good way to psych out the slower readers and artificially pump up fast readers. You’ll find out where you stand on the midterms pretty shortly at most schools. Just work hard on getting ready for those. 

[CleanHands]

10 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

-Snip-

I didn't want to be a dick about it but I thought it was kind of absurd that people who haven't even finished a term yet were chiming in to say they didn't find it that difficult.

To the applicants who were curious about the OP's question: you'll come to see that it's very noticeable how some people don't talk so loud after grades get back. Including a lot of people who were very much on top of readings and were finding things manageable.

[CheeseToast]

4 hours ago, realpseudonym said:

If people haven’t written exams, they are in a poor position to evaluate the difficulty of law school. Exams are the best way to evaluate whether law school is difficult for you. If you’re above average on exams, it doesn’t matter if you struggled to keep up with readings throughout the semester. Likewise, if you can’t spot issues or finish the exam on time, it doesn’t matter if you’re the fastest reader in your section and a rockstar in class participation. 

Comparing reading speeds two months in seems like a good way to psych out the slower readers and artificially pump up fast readers. You’ll find out where you stand on the midterms pretty shortly at most schools. Just work hard on getting ready for those. 

That's a very fair point. It's true I haven't written or received midterm grades back yet and everyone should read my comment in that context. I'm basing that part of my comment solely off the few assignments I've gotten back thus far.

My comment had nothing to do with reading speed, but the quantity of readings. I have a hard time believing that someone who read 500-1000 pages a week in undergrad would have a hard time with law school readings. There just... isn't that much to read (at least where I attend).

[OntheVerge]

3 minutes ago, CheeseToast said:

That's a very fair point. It's true I haven't written or received midterm grades back yet and everyone should read my comment in that context. I'm basing that part of my comment solely off the few assignments I've gotten back thus far.

My comment had nothing to do with reading speed, but the quantity of readings. I have a hard time believing that someone who read 500-1000 pages a week in undergrad would have a hard time with law school readings. There just... isn't that much to read (at least where I attend).

That's fine, you don't need to believe what I wrote if you choose not to. We obviously attend/ed different law schools, since my experience was far from unique amongst my peers.

I'll clarify my post, however, by specifying that when I said "reading" I meant actually reading word for word, from start to finish. And if I didn't understand a term, an argument, a leap in logic, I would re-read until it made sense or make a note to follow up with the next day in class. That's how I did my readings in undergrad. Reading case law and legal scholarly articles in this way took up a lot more time, especially with the higher volume assigned in law school. 

Class readings got a lot easier and faster when I decided to "skim" the readings or, just read the head note of a case, skim to the bottom, and move on. I had a much easier time keeping up with the readings once I started doing that. Perhaps that's what some people mean when they say they don't find the quantity of readings hard.

[GGrievous]

Reading the cases is one thing. Preparing to be able to draw details from them under a time limit to apply elsewhere is another. I’m not gonna have time to look things up and my CANs can’t contain every detail I’m gonna want to include (I think, I actually have no clue). This is the thinking that I go through when studying that makes it a lot of work. I’ve been getting about 20-25 cases a week. 

[CleanHands]

1 minute ago, Barry said:

I’m not gonna have time to look things up and my CANs can’t contain every detail I’m gonna want to include (I think, I actually have no clue). This is the thinking that I go through when studying that makes it a lot of work.

Okay, we've identified the problem here. You do not need as much in the way of details as you think you do. In fact, that will likely detract from your ability to analyze the exam fact pattern.

[GGrievous]

1 minute ago, CleanHands said:

Okay, we've identified the problem here. You do not need as much in the way of details as you think you do. In fact, that will likely detract from your ability to analyze the exam fact pattern.

So do I really just basically need to know the issue and the analysis? Because I can do that no problem. 

[CleanHands]

Just now, Barry said:

So do I really just basically need to know the issue and the analysis? Because I can do that no problem. 

Yeah, for the most part you do not need to know minutiae of cases. You want to have the ratios and tests down, then you want to focus on applying the facts of the exam fact patterns to them in a legally correct and hopefully nuanced way.

You've drowning yourself in unnecessary details that will distract from what you really need to zero in on.

[OntheVerge]

I think the best advice was given earlier in this thread - start using summaries now and modify them as needed in classes with any extra info the prof mentions when they're going over the case. Highlight anything the professor stresses. You'll be able to pay more attention to what the prof says as opposed to frantically typing up every word that's coming out of their mouth. Ideally you'll get a summary from someone you know and trust (and who got a good grade) but that's harder to do as a 1L so the earlier you start with a summary, the more you can trust that what's on it is accurate as you follow along over the semester. 

I eventually stopped taking my own notes and just modified a summary per course. Modifying it over the course made me more familiar with the summary which was great for exams, and with the information itself. It also reduced final exam stress by preventing the panicked, last minute attempt to turn a mountain of class notes into a more condensed summary for the exams themselves.

[123]

In theory, you need to know enough about the facts to know if the hypo is obviously factually distinguishable. But what you're faced with on the exam will be some sort of situation in which Angus asks Bertha a lot of questions about the cost of goods, and you'll be trying to sort out whether (i) Angus is making a "mere inquiry", in which case you can apply Livingstone v Evans and find that there was an acceptance, thus creating liability for Angus, or (ii) Angus was making a counteroffer which constituted a rejection.

If you're getting really interested in the details of the land at stake while reading Livingstone, then you're probably wasting time. You won't be writing the full back story on the exam. Nor do you need everything the judge said. You're trying to figure out whether one of the main holdings from a case  applies to these facts, briefly explaining how, and then analyzing the rights or responsibilities (or whatever) that arise. The challenge in preparing is figuring out what the main holdings from the cases are. Not learning everything in the case. 

[SlytherinLLP]

As a practical matter, it might be helpful to take a look at a past exam soon, they should be available to you. Maybe even take a stab at preparing an answer in terms of the law you have already covered. Work your way backwards from there.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of work/readings it is likely that you are studying inefficiently (the most common mistake law students make, along with psyching themselves out for no reason). As CleanHands just said, you really only need to be armed with a strong understanding of the legal tests to do well, don't get bogged down with the factual matrix/obiter of each case. Even less so academic or normative debates about the state of the law (which professors love to get into). 

Also try to prepare frameworks and tests that are as concise and logical as possible. Good frameworks need be only a few pages long. You will not have time to flip through a 90 page summary. 

 

Also get exercise and go on long walks. Ignore all of the chatter from stressed out law students. Helps with mental health.

Edited November 2, 2021 by SlytherinLLP