All the tools you need for law school success
Law school in and of itself is challenging, but can you imagine having the added pressure of a language barrier? It happens frequently enough that professors sound like they’re speaking a foreign language, but what about when they actually are? [Read more…] about How to Navigate Law School as an ESL Student
If you’re in law school, you can probably relate to the feeling of getting into the zone with an assignment or preparing for exams and completely forgetting about something important: someone’s birthday, the fact that you have a dog that needs walking, when your credit card bill is due, etc. It’s understandable—you have a lot going on! This is one of the reasons we here at the Law School Toolbox encourage our students to keep detailed calendars—not so much to remember holidays and things like that, but to make sure that nothing important is falling by the wayside. What qualifies as “important,” you might ask? Well, scheduling time to write practice hypos, going to your professor’s office hours, deadlines for applying to jobs, or following up on ongoing projects. [Read more…] about How to Stay Productive and Remember Everything in Law School
In talking with my three year-old niece Ava the other day on Skype (or “face chat” as she calls it), I realized some startling similarities between her and me when I was a law student. The wide eyes full of wonder, the slightly unkempt ponytail—-No! Besides that! I know, I know, as a 20-something in law school, I supposedly had my life figured out more than a toddler—at least I could read and walk around without toppling over for no reason. But seriously, the resemblance in some areas was uncanny. [Read more…] about The Care and Upkeep of Your Inner Law School Child
The other day, I received one of the oddest and frankly most flattering compliments of my life. I was working with a law student who hadn’t done the reading all semester and now it was exam time and she was starting to freak out. In our daily phone calls we would go through a plan for the day, discuss what to do, and almost more importantly, what not to do. We talked about the “red flag” activities that she kept letting herself slip into—checking her phone, tuning out by making long phone calls to her mom, re-reading her notes instead of practicing hypos. And this is what she said to me: “Ariel, you’re like Zen master, minimalist, AA sponsor. . . but for law school.” Hmm….. I had to write this one down. I was intrigued. [Read more…] about Do You Need a Sponsor to Stay Productive and Accountable in Law School?
Everyone wants to succeed in law school. While students might not know exactly what it takes to get there, we all know that watching 4 hours of Netflix per night is not going to help anyone. So, why do otherwise smart, capable law students allow themselves to slip into this kind of unproductive behavior? You know what you need to do—the reading, practicing for exams, outlining—but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. In fact, I’ve found that many students would rather do almost anything besides all the hard work it takes to get ahead. [Read more…] about How to Stick to Your Goals in Law School
Final exams! That wonderful point in the semester where everything you thought you knew turns out to actually be pretty confusing—when you re-do your attack plans because you realize you had the rule completely wrong—when you start to question your judgment, sanity, and basic ability to spell (is it foreseeable for the defendant to be “haled” into court, or is it “hailed”?—By the way, it’s the former). [Read more…] about The Most Surprising Things I’ve Seen During Exams