The initial shock of law school happens when you look around and realize that it’s not so easy to be the best in the class anymore.  You’re now surrounded by a swarm of Einsteins, and the intelligence of many will baffle you.  You prided yourself on being the straight-A student; the president of every club.  You were the kid who did hours of community service and was saving the world.  You were unshakable.

It’s hard to swallow the fact that you may not end up at the top anymore.  It’s hard to deal with not being the kid who is always getting some type of over-achievement award.  Everyone around you is a splitting image of the perfection you thought you were.  Sometimes it leaves you feeling bitter, and other times it leaves you wondering what your identity really is, since everyone is now just like you.

Law school is competitive, but only as competitive as you make it.  The way I look at it, you should feel honored to be at a school with so many accomplished individuals.  You’re surrounding by people who will do big things someday, and knowing and supporting those people may get you far in the future.  I admit, I have my moments of bitterness, but it only goes to show how much intelligence the people at this school really hold.  And this is why I always tell prospective students that rank is just a number, the personality of the school is what you should be looking at.

It’s easy to get bogged down by the fact that there’s so much competition, but doesn’t that just mean that our school is doing its job in fostering bright minds so that we can be competitive in the job market?  Food for thought.

I’m almost a year into law school and it’s been the worst rollercoaster I’ve ever rode.  One of my biggest lessons from this entire experience, is that you need to balance law school with time for yourself.  I know we barely have five minutes to eat, but take a few hours out of your Saturday and enjoy the city.  It helped with my stress more than anything else.

Some things you can do:

Kayak in La Jolla

Hike along Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach

Hit up garage sales in Coronado (Thursdays)

Run along the harbor

Dance and Culture Shock Dance Studio ($14/class or $80 for 10 classes)

Wine tasting at Wine Steals

Take time for yoruself, enjoy your surroundings.  It’s the only way to enjoy law school.  They say that those who do the best on exams are those who are the most relaxed.  When I look around after grades, I firmly believe that this saying is true.

Cal Western’s trial team is nationally recognized and full of fierce competitors who know what they’re doing.  Trial Team is definitely a MUST if you want to practice criminal law or if want to be a litigator.  In order to get onto the Trial Team at Cal Western, you have to attend Boot Camp in the summer where you compete in 3 mini trials.  From there, the coaches recruit who they want on their team.  To make it to Boot Camp, you have to get an invitation: the shiny “Distinguished Advocate” pin.  To get this, you MUST compete in one of the school’s mock trial competitions and be named a Distinguished Advocate. 

As the trimester is coming to a close, so are chances for you to participate in a mock trial before this summer’s Boot Camp.  If you’re interested, here are some important dates:

Gill Competition (open to second semester 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls) — Deadline is around March 5 to sign up

1L Legal Skills Oral Arguments (do well, or express your deep interest to go to finals to your Legal Skills professor.  Some Professors take your interest into account)

Good luck!

The hardest thing about law school: having to do what everyone tells you to do.

Second semester of your first year is ROUGH.  All of the upper division kids tell you it’ll get easier, but it never does.  There’s more work, harder concepts, and more responsibilities.  Once you’re in your second semester, the doors of posibility open.  Suddenly Moot Court competitions become available to you and Career Services start pushing you to apply for summer jobs, not to mention the plethora of student organizations and programs that begin recruitment.  As hard as it is, that’s what I love about this school: they push you.  However, because I have so much more on my plate, I’ve found myself investing so much into Red Bulls that I should almost purchase their stock.  The only thing that gets me through are my good library friends who are there pushing through with me until midnight, secondary sources, and tutor handouts.  USE THESE!

Secondary source to use: Gilbert’s on Property

I know it’s hard, but keep at it, we’re all doing it with you =)

After you first semester finals, you think it’s all over.  All of the sleepless nights and the stress; all of it done with.  You go home for the holidays and forget that you’re a law student.  But the day comes, too soon, that you have to go back to class.  You sit and wait for another month before you know if you’ve even made it; before you know if you’ll stay.  The stress and fear makes you exhausted.  Drown yourself in Vitamin C, because you’re immune system will be working hard this month.

Winter break here could be longer, MUCH longer.  I wasn’t ready to go back, and didn’t know one person who was motivated to start the process all over again.  However, you know that you only have to do it until April, and then you’re done.  Getting out in April allows our students to get a head start over other schools in finding jobs, and still being able to study abroad.  The trimester system allows lots of flexibility in planning your year.

The fact that grades don’t come until a more than a month after finals is the hardest thing to go through as a 1L.  You’re already unmotivated, why the added torture?  However, our school does PLENTY to keep us busy.  Start on your Career Services stuff EARLY, if you put it off you’ll regret it, learn from my mistake.  There’s also the 1L competition in January which is the best experience I’ve had at this school so far.  Our school’s trial teams are nationally recognized and this is a great way to get on a team.

This school provides lots of opportunities, but don’t take on too much, or you’ll let everything slip.  Again, learn from my mistake.  Law school is a marathon, not a sprint.

Hey guys…here are some important deadlines coming up for all of you interested in trial advocacy:

Moot Court application: Due 1/21/10 at 5 pm

Why do Moot Court?  It’s a great opportunity to meet professionals in the field and network because in organizing the competitions for the school, you contact legal professionals in the community to participate.   More involvement = more connections.

1L Competition: Must sign up by THIS friday 1/22/10.  Last day to cancel is Saturday, 1/23/10

For the 1L Competition, there are DVDs in the library reserve for examples of opening and closing statements.  Some Legal Skills professors are giving extra credit, so this is a VERY good opportunity.

Have fun, good luck, and let’s make our Legal Skills Professors proud!

As I walked up the hill from Little Italy to my first law school final, T.I.’s song “Live Your Life” was playing on my iPod (coincidentally).  I remember feeling scared; nervous; doubtful.  Scared because of the uncertainty that my hard work would even pay off; nervous for the possibility of disappointment; and doubtful of my abilities to be a successful attorney.  I was always told that law school is meant to break you down, and only the fighters survive.  That morning, I didn’t know if I had fought hard enough.

Regardless of how afraid I felt, I knew it was too late to turn back.  As I neared school, I passed the dumpsters on the side of the road.  I saw early shoppers digging through to be the first to claim the abandoned goods.  Watching them stuff their raggedy bags with our garbage, hoping to make 5 cents off of recycled cans reminded me of my hometown, and why I decided to go to law school in the first place. 

The neighborhood I grew up in is what some would call “the ghettos.”  Not quite the slums, but almost.  I watched my friends get into trouble left and right, and one by one, they disappeared.  I saw so much potential that went to waste because the youth in my neighborhood was invisible to the rest of the world, and all they knew were drugs and hardship.  I grew up poor, but my experiences taught me how to not be poor morally.  I vowed that I would devote my time to help at-risk youth and indigent communities through the law, and had all the motivation in the world to make sure I succeeded in doing so.  But with a law student’s first semester of law school comes many distractions.  The worries of ranking become overwhelming.  I stopped exercising and doing things that helped me get through the day.  The stressors prevented me from sleeping at night.  I started to pity myself and wondered what exactly I had signed up for.  I’ve gone through difficult times, but nothing like the first semester of law school.  The exhaustion, the pressure, the fear of failing consumed my thoughts; I had lost sight of my purpose here and the once vigorous motivation that moved me was gone.

The morning before my first final, seeing the homeless diving for trash, and remembering my life back home gave me all the determination I needed to push through.  Suddenly it didn’t matter what rank I was; it didn’t matter whether I finished first or last; it didn’t matter how exhausted and defeated I felt.  I was going to fight through, because I knew I had something to fight for.  I was always told over and over again by attorneys that you have to really love what you do, because the stressors of law school never fade in your career as an attorney.  The thought is a frightening one, but one thing I learned this semester was that if you never lose sight of why you’re here, you’ll always find a reason to keep going.

Regardless of the outcome at the end of January, we should all be proud of how far we’ve come.  We survived the horror stories of Civil Procedure I, and that, my friend, says a lot about our character!  Congratulations and welcome back!

My first two law school exams are out of the way…two more to go.  There’s so many thoughts that run through your mind from the time that you begin test prep up until that exam that you worked so hard for.  After I walked out of my first exam, I didn’t even know what hit me.  You are required to do so much in so little time that you don’t even realize what you just did.  People gather around after the exam to talk about it, but you can’t even talk about anything because it went by so fast that you don’t remember what happened.  It’s like being in a time warp for 3 hours and 15 minutes of your life.  I walked out thinking there are so many things I could have done better; so many things I could have talked about; so many multiple choice I could have gotten right if I would have just slowed down.  But you can’t dwell on what you could have done, and have to just keep on treking.  In law school, there’s just no time to dwell.  Your first semester of law school is definitely a period of trial and error. 

Things I would do differently:

1. Outline for exams from the BEGINNING of the quarter

2. Don’t spend hours book briefing and reading cases. 

3. Do more supplemental reading to understand the material and begin prepping for exams earlier

4. Do more practice exams and mulitple choice and turn them in to professors to review

5. DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE AFTER THE EXAM (it sykes you out for the next one)

6. Exercise, get on a better sleep schedule, go grocery shopping (save money and it’s healthier)

7. Don’t buy all of the supplements (althought buy their stocks…it’s easy to sell ”exam pass” products to 1Ls)

8. Visit professor hours more often

9. Take better notes in property class

Things I would do the same:

1. Attend ALL of the tutoring sessions

2. Get into a good study group, talk through the material, and quiz each other

3. Find someone who you could teach the material to while prepping for the exam.  It TREMENDOUSLY helps both of you to do well.

4.  ALWAYS remember why you’re here.  You’re competing with yourself and no one else.  Don’t let the numbers scare you, it’ll only consume you.

HINT: for the property final in Salzberg, use Gilberts to supplement the scarce lecture notes.  It’s amazing, it goes with the book, and if you read the text book at the same time, things will make A LOT more sense.

GOOD LUCK ON EXAMS!  2 DOWN, 2 MORE TO GO!

I remember sitting in class in undergrad and thinking, “When am I ever going to have to know how to do integrals?”  In law school, you will never find yourself thinking that.  Everything applies to real life; everthing is important to know.  Take this article, for example, http://topics.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-1107.  It gives a preview of a currnt case Hertz Corp v. Friend (08-1107) in Supreme Court.  The debate is about where a corporation’s principal place of business is, and currently we use the Muscle/Nerve Test to determine this, but the Court is now contemplating altering this test to be where teh corporation’s headquarter is.  Will this result in drastic consequences to corporations  if a corporation’s principal place of business is now strictly just where the headquarters is located?  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…isn’t law school interesting?

One month and a week until finals begin.  I was talking to a few upper division students who gave great advice for test prep:

1. Get on a study plan NOW.  Finish all of your readings for the entire quarter before Thanksgiving and have ALL outlines up to date by Thanksgiving.

2. Try to get done with your Legal Skills memo in the next week or two.

3. Have a study schedule for finals.  Study for your last exam first and your first exam last. 

4. Practice practice practice!

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU and relax.

ILs in Section 2: Our tutors are doing review tutor sessions through 2 clubs on campus (one of them is the Women’s Law Caucus).  Each tutor review session is $10, but if you join one of the clubs that are putting this event on, it’s $10 for membership and you get into the review sessions FOR FREE. 

Prospective students: Start law school applications now and try to get early admissions.  Now that you have your LSAT scores, find out about “special programs” each school has.  If your scores aren’t as great as you expected them to be, some schools have programs, through which, the accept students with outstanding grades and personal statements, but not so great LSAT scores.  Be sure to know the programs offered!  Good luck in your application process =)