Ask a current TRU Law student

[m3l3phant]

Hi everyone, 

I'm going into my second year of law school at TRU. If you have any questions and you want to talk to a current student about it, hit me up here.  

I love this stuff, so don't hesitate if you've got something on your mind. I had a lot of fun lurking and participating in forums like this when I was applying to law schools.

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by m3l3phant

[Ave]

Incoming 1L! Thanks so much for offering advice. What are your thoughts on online textbooks versus hardcopy? What do most people use and why? 
 

Did you get involved with PBSC at TRU? If so, what was your experience like? Are there any other extra curriculars you recommend?

Thanks again! 

[m3l3phant]

Hi Ave, 

What are your thoughts on online textbooks versus hardcopy? Whether or not most law students use online versus hardcopy is information I'm not privy to. What I generally see when I am in a designated study space is students with hard copies, but that may not be reflective of the body at large.

What do most people use and why? What you should ask yourself is, given your personal attitudes and experiences, which method of learning works best for you? Some people like online text better because they don't have to carry around heavy books or worry about misplacing anything. Some people like textbooks better because they love the smell of a new book or it's more familiar to them. 

Did you get involved with PBSC at TRU? If so, what was your experience like? I don't know how much personal information I'm allowed to share on here, so I'll just tell you that I'm going to be an executive member for the TRU Pro Bono chapter this year. I knew when I got into law school that pro bono work was something I was going to do for as long as I was alive and healthy. People live extremely tough lives and the odds of being accepted into a Canadian law school are very low, so I think pro bono is a great way to pay it forward. Biasedly, I can't recommend it enough. It is a somewhat selective application process, as our program coordinators have to assign students to certain programs (that'll be advertised closer to September), but don't let that dissuade you. For now, look up the TRU Pro Bono site, trupbsc.ca. Learn about projects from previous years to get a sense for what kind of program might interest you or where your strengths lie. 

Are there any other extra curriculars you recommend? Go on trusls.org, and under 'Resources' click 'Clubs and Sports'. Plenty of law students are involved in clubs and sports that interest them. It's a great way to make connections and build your resume. I can't recommend one over another because it's up to you how you want to carve your path; no one extracurricular activity is inherently "better" than another. It's all about what you're motivated to do, how much work you're willing to put in, and what narrative you create around it. What I do advise is not playing a purely strategic game, like applying to a bunch of disparate exec teams just to be able say you did a million things. Your lack of interest in the subject of your extracurriculars will be revealed one way or another. So, try to focus on spending time on things that pique your interest. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by m3l3phant

[Ave]

Thank you! I’ll definitely check out those resources and do some research ☺️

[HarryCrane]

Ill echo what @m3l3phantsaid about not being strategic with extracurriculars. It's pretty clear when someone is doing it, and does the opposite of what you want it to do. Also important to not stretch yourself too thin, and taking on too many extracurriculars can have that effect.

[m3l3phant]

@HarryCrane That's right. First year is a tough year, there's no sugar-coating it. You're taking six courses per semester and the readings get heavy. For most of the way, you're just trying to figure out what all these terms you've never seen before mean. How are you going to do that and still be a reliable executive member for four disparate clubs? You're setting yourself up to do a lot of things poorly. Try instead to do a few things well. 

Edited July 13, 2022 by m3l3phant

[LShopeful]

Hello, 

I’m applying to TRU for fall 2023.  I have a 158 LSAT and a 3.8 GPA.  I’m also in my thirties and worked as an accredited financial planner for 5 yrs. 

Interested to know what you as a third year law student think my chances of being accepted are ? 

[amw26]

Hi! Im an incoming 1L, thank you for offering your advice. I have a few questions; 

What is your opinion/advice on CAN's, I've heard mixed things about making your own and using upper years just as a guide or alternatively using an upper years and adding to it instead of making your own. I think I would prefer to make my own and just use others as a guide but I'm interested in your take! What did you find worked best for you?

Similarly, I know what the reading load is quite heavy, and i'm also wondering if you used something like Quimbee or just an upper year CAN if you weren't able to get to a reading and what your thoughts were on it? 

More broadly, what was your 1L experience at TRU like? What are your tips on being successful in 1L and on exams? and is there anything you started doing in second semester that you wish you did in first semester? 

 

Thanks!

[HarryCrane]

On 7/22/2022 at 2:22 PM, amw26 said:

Hi! Im an incoming 1L, thank you for offering your advice. I have a few questions; 

What is your opinion/advice on CAN's, I've heard mixed things about making your own and using upper years just as a guide or alternatively using an upper years and adding to it instead of making your own. I think I would prefer to make my own and just use others as a guide but I'm interested in your take! What did you find worked best for you?

Similarly, I know what the reading load is quite heavy, and i'm also wondering if you used something like Quimbee or just an upper year CAN if you weren't able to get to a reading and what your thoughts were on it? 

More broadly, what was your 1L experience at TRU like? What are your tips on being successful in 1L and on exams? and is there anything you started doing in second semester that you wish you did in first semester? 

 

Thanks!

The answer is going to echo what has been mentioned before, it will depend on the person and how you best learn. Generally the advice will be to make your own because that’s how you really internalize and sort through everything you have learned, but I know people who used an upper year CAN and did fine on exams. 
 

My approach was to use upper year CANs for midterms because they didn’t really matter (help not hurt) and I wanted to get a handle on how to write law school exams, and then for finals I made my own for the most part. I also used some CANs for finals as supplements because I prioritized other classes readings- there’s a finite amount of time and you can’t do everything. 
 

I’ll end by saying I couldn’t imagine a better 1L experience than the one I had at TRU. Best advice I can give you is be nice, your classmates will bail you out more times than you can count. People will very quickly find out who the assholes are, and you don’t want to be one. 

[m3l3phant]

On 7/21/2022 at 8:06 PM, LShopeful said:

Hello, 

I’m applying to TRU for fall 2023.  I have a 158 LSAT and a 3.8 GPA.  I’m also in my thirties and worked as an accredited financial planner for 5 yrs. 

Interested to know what you as a third year law student think my chances of being accepted are ? 

Hi, 

For clarification, I'm going into my second year of law school, but I can still comment on this. 

The fact is that the vast majority of law students are between 23 to 30 years of age, with older students making up a smaller pool of candidates. I can't tell you how much of that has to do with some kind of bias against mature individuals or if far fewer of them apply to law schools. I have a feeling that it's the latter. But it's certainly not an anomaly, I know plenty of students in their thirties or fourties in the program. 

As for your GPA + LSAT combo, it's looking decent, however, it's not numbers that would guarantee you a spot. The current averages for TRU Law are a 3.7 GPA and a 160 LSAT. So, you have an above-average GPA and a below-average LSAT. You can find that information here: https://www.tru.ca/__shared/assets/Pre-Law_Guidelines55052.pdf. But averages are just that: a typical value in a set of data. There are plenty of students who fall below the 160 LSAT average who are sent offers. Given your financial planning background and life experience, that may elevate your application. I'd say you should apply with those numbers, although if you think you can do even better on the LSAT, give that a shot. 

[LShopeful]

Thanks for the information and detailed response.  Much appreciated. 

[amw26]

Thank you for the response @HarryCrane!

 

Can anyone else speak to their experience managing readings and what your strategy was if you couldn't get to all the readings? (i.e do you recommend finding a friend you trust and splitting the work, using Quimbee, or just relying on upper year CAN's to get the important info)

 

Also looking for feedback/tips on how to best be prepared for and do well on exams! 

[m3l3phant]

On 7/25/2022 at 8:33 AM, amw26 said:

Thank you for the response @HarryCrane!

 

Can anyone else speak to their experience managing readings and what your strategy was if you couldn't get to all the readings? (i.e do you recommend finding a friend you trust and splitting the work, using Quimbee, or just relying on upper year CAN's to get the important info)

 

Also looking for feedback/tips on how to best be prepared for and do well on exams! 

Hi! I'll answer all your questions. 

Opinion on CANS: My opinion on CANS is that you should approach them with enormous caution and skepticism. Anybody can post a CAN if they're a confident-enough person to share such things, whether or not they have the grades to show for it. You will never be a consistently above-average student relying entirely on CANS. But they're not irrelevant either. Once you develop a baseline understanding of the material and your own study habits, CANS are useful in assessing whether previous students felt the same way about a topic that you may be confused by. If most of them agree on the thing, they may just be right. 

Advice on law exams: If it's important to you to be in that upper echelon reliably, then in my opinion you need to do all or most of the following:

(a) DO the readings, (b) take extensive textbook + lecture notes, (c) consolidate them in a way that makes sense for you, (d) have people around you who have their head in the game that you can bounce your thoughts off of, (e) regularly talk to your profs so you know exactly what they're looking for on their exams, and finally (f) compile a bunch of CANS that discuss the same topics and compare them to each other & to your own work, cautiously and skeptically. 

What to do if you can't do the readings: everyone has different strategies. A good one is to find a few people you trust and then set it up so that every week one person writes notes on x readings, another person on y readings, etc. That way, if you're in a rut, someone is there to pick up the pieces. As I've alluded to, relying on CANs as a substitute for readings is not a good idea: people get things wrong all the time.

[amw26]

Thank you! That is all really helpful information 😊

[Dan-Sam]

On 7/12/2022 at 1:57 PM, m3l3phant said:

Hi everyone, 

I'm going into my second year of law school at TRU. If you have any questions and you want to talk to a current student about it, hit me up here.  

I love this stuff, so don't hesitate if you've got something on your mind. I had a lot of fun lurking and participating in forums like this when I was applying to law schools.

 

Hi there, thanks for sharing, I will go to TRU law this fall, just wondering if we could do summer courses so that we can graduate in a shorter period? Thanks!

[HarryCrane]

On 4/28/2023 at 10:28 AM, Dan-Sam said:

Hi there, thanks for sharing, I will go to TRU law this fall, just wondering if we could do summer courses so that we can graduate in a shorter period? Thanks!

As far as I’m aware, the only real way to graduate in a shorter period is to do the clinic in 2L (and I could be wrong but my understanding is that the 12 credit clinic is really for the summer, not for fall/winter terms) and overload a semester afterwards. Summer classes otherwise are not offered.