is working 8 hours per week reasonable / not advisable during first year?

[thesamasaurus]

is working 8 hours per week reasonable / not advisable during first year?  How many hours per week apx should I expect to be spending on coursework?

I'm @ Ryerson and have 18 hours per week of classes.

Edited August 9, 2021 by thesamasaurus

[Renerik]

Would like to know this too. I'd like to continue parading with a reserve unit and the time commitment would be 1 night a week for ~5hrs, no weekends.

[Telephantasm]

It's not recommended, but the answer varies a lot by person. I worked well over that during both undergrad and law school, including 1L. However, I did so out of necessity (really low-income background). I know some people who managed work during 1L fine, others who imploded. To that end, there's no average or objective answer to your question. You just need to have a candid conversation with yourself about how much you feel like you want/need to study, how much work you can practicably get done in a given day, and whether you need the income.

You can make the workload significantly more reasonable by learning how to study efficiently. Doing so often comes slowly to 1Ls. It certainly took a long time for me. I think it's feasible to study about 3 hours per day and do well (excluding finals season, obviously). I generally got all of my readings done Friday through Sunday, doing 8-ish hours per day, leaving the week for work, class, exercise, and social life. If you can pull a schedule off like that, I'd imagine 8 hours of work could be feasible.

But also keep in mind that you'll likely want to do co-curricular activities likes clinics. So that'll add your hours up. This is a personal calculus that you're going to have to do with yourself. Try your hardest to be candid with yourself about the limits of your attention span. I see a lot of people, myself included, vastly overestimate how long they can feasibly study before their brain turns to mush. Having a low bandwidth job works well on that front, as it becomes a bit of a break from studying.

Happy to chat about working during law school if you want to DM me.