General expectations for workload

[found.antlers]

I may be jumping the gun as I am still in the application phase, but I find myself wondering about what to expect in terms of workload while in Law School. I have heard a lot regarding how strenuous it is in terms of readings and such but I am hoping for a general picture of what that actually looks like. Should one expect most waking moments, while not in school to be spent studying or reading? Lets say if you are attending classes 3 days a week, how many hours a week apart from that can one reasonably expect to spend studying? What is the average number of pages one can expect to have read per week? Is it the type of situation where as long as you stay on top of things you can expect to be able to keep treading water? Does it change from year 1 to year 2 to year 3?

[Whist]

If you note up every reading, make your own CANs/outlines, always go to class, always take time to review, are thorough with written assignments where they exist, go to office hours, do a clinic or two on the side, you can be a very busy person. It's not rote memorizing like many undergrads are, but it can consume a lot of time. The readings lengths can vary - sometimes for a given class that week it'll be 30-50 pages, but the next week it'll be 100. You'll likely have six courses on the go overall, but different schools organize their foundational classes differently. In 1L, there's a lot less leeway to choose your course times so expect to have to be on campus every weekday, with 2-3 classes per day. They can be 1 hour to three hours in length, although most often you won't get 3 hour courses. 1-1.5 hours of in-class time per course per day is more normal. Especially in first term 1L, the type of thinking/type of content is very new, so it may take you longer to get through readings until you find your footing. 

In upper years, you choose your own classes with much more freedom, so you can schedule it so you don't have to be on campus Mon-Fri. People are often still busy, but from new clinics or jobs or roles they've taken on. A lot of people give up on doing readings by second year (not advising you do this) and rely on the lectures to get the content mostly. 

Some students love to brag about how much they're studying, and it'll often make people who are already working hard feel like there's still more they can do. But the amount of studying doesn't inherently correlate with grades. You can read about a legal topic for 4 hours but if you don't get it, you don't get it and you're just wasting time. I'm not the person to give studying advice, but many people realistically can't get to every reading even if they wanted to and even if they understand the content well. Some courses you'll find harder than others and everyone's a bit different.

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Whist

[LMP]

Law school is as hard as you make it. 

1L is "harder" because you have no agency in your course selection and you don't know how to study the law yet. 

But people pour hours of work into things that don't need hours of work. They do readings that aren't needed and build out massive case summaries that could be have been four lines long. 

I actually found 1L to be ok and 2L has been really easy. Once you get a handle on how much you need to need to *actually* do, you realize there's actually a lot of free time.

[myth000]

I don't know if it works the same at all schools.  In my experience, my 1L year-long courses had the same amount of material to learn as my 2L semester courses.  So, I felt the workload double in 2L relative to 1L; my efficiency stayed the same.  Some 2L/3L required courses had a 7500-10,000 word writing requirement; writing an essay that length can take me 3-4 weeks (maybe I'm just a slow writer), so I felt far more pressured for time after 1L. 

[Byzantine]

The advice I generally got was to treat 1L like a full time job, so 40-50 hours a week (this includes classes). I found that to be good advice. If you’re consistent with that, and work smart, you shouldn’t have to increase your time too much during exams. I ran into trouble when I got behind due to burning out and had to catch up. If you put too much time in early in the semester, or fail to keep up with other habits such as exercise, you risk burning out.

Saying all that, 2nd semester is going to be pretty hectic and stressful regardless  but you’ll get through it! 

By working smart I mean focusing on understanding the material, preparing outlines/CANs/essays/practice tests. You probably want to start the year by briefing cases although I found it to be too time intensive to continue that after the first month (especially if you want to do extracirculars) 

Your school should have academic success workshops on test prep, canning, study habits. Make sure to attend those. 
 

YMMV 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Byzantine