Cara Defilippis, Author at Law School Toolbox®

About Cara Defilippis

Cara Defilippis is a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She has a Bachelor of Science in Cultural Anthropology from Portland State University. Before attending law school she worked for the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization as an after-school activities instructor. Her combined work with the organization and her undergraduate discipline led to her chosen academic path. When not studying, Cara persists in her passion for dance, good food, and nature.

Lessons from My 1L Year: Make Friends

July 19, 2012 By Cara Defilippis Leave a Comment

Friends Making friends in law school is similar to making friends in real life.

The distinction, then, lies in the pool of potential friends: it is slightly homogenized in comparison.

Is everyone in law school an archtype?

The moment you enroll in law school you already share a number of commonalities with your first-year class. This is because law school appeals to only a handful of personalities: the hard worker, the go-getter, the do-gooder, et al. Of course, law school is only a means to a professional end, but neither is for the faint-of-heart.

I was tempted to write on the typical archetypes you are likely to encounter in law school (and how to navigate among them). Most books on surviving/succeeding in law school do this (e.g. “the gunner”). You can read these books.

Lessons from My 1L Year: Have Fun

July 1, 2012 By Cara Defilippis 5 Comments

You are about to experience dramatic changes to your social life. It will be poked, prodded, gouged.

Just don’t lose it. (Your social life, that is. Don’t lose your mind either, for that matter.)

Do You Have to Give Up All Your Existing Friends?

In whatever your preparation for law school, you have likely developed some understanding that it will be demanding of your time. Some of you may even believe that adjustments to your life must include adjusting the fun out of it.

I recall telling my group of friends toward the end of last summer that they were not likely to see me for some time.

Sure, I was being a little dramatic — but my premonition proved right. And I had everything to do with its coming to fruition.

Lessons from My 1L Year: Be Careful with Study Groups

June 23, 2012 By Cara Defilippis 1 Comment

Last week I encouraged you to evaluate your place of study. When you get to law school, ask yourself: Am I being most effective in the law library or at home?

Another common experience of the first-year law student is the study group. The same rule of self-evaluation applies: Are you most effective in solo or group study?

Oh, Study Group

I think the study group is the hardest practice to wrest from one’s routine because it makes us battle the notion that two heads are better than one, which is surely the case for many things.

The potential problem, then, is that the study group may make you feel that you have two heads — it is prone to giving the impression that what is understood as a group is understood by its members.

Lessons from My 1L Year: You Don’t Have to Live in the Law Library

June 16, 2012 By Cara Defilippis 5 Comments

Our fantastic intern, Cara Defilippis, shares more lessons from her 1L year. If you missed her first post, check it out!

One effect of attempting to manage the newness of the first-semester of law school is to adopt the mainstream approach to studying. After all, doing what everyone else is doing comforts us that the method works. And it does, for some. But everyone is different.

Let’s identify two mainstream approaches to studying of which everyone is aware:

Living in the law library.
Joining the ever-popular study group.

I took these approaches to heart, and by finals, I quickly figured out that the way I had been studying all semester had not left me well prepared for exams. This is not an uncommon experience.

When confused by not doing as well as in undergrad, we rarely ask ourselves: Is it simply that I need to take a different approach to studying?

Second-semester, I made some changes — and got better grades. I hope to demonstrate that you can make these choices early on to best achieve success on exam day. So first, let’s tackle number one: The Law Library.

Lessons from My 1L Year

June 5, 2012 By Cara Defilippis 7 Comments

We’re excited to introduce you to our new intern, Cara Defilippis. Cara just finished her first year at the University of San Francisco School of Law, and she’s going to be sharing her experience — and what she learned — with you this summer. Give her a warm welcome!

There are many things the first-year law student should aim to keep in mind throughout the year. Unfortunately for this student, keeping anything in mind beyond a day’s work is difficult, if not seemingly impossible.

We are in uncharted territory, fielding an unrelenting workload, and sometimes the only way to make it all seem manageable is by doing two things:

living one-day-at-a-time
adopting mainstream approaches to your first year.

However, these choices can have the harmful effect of clouding the Big Picture: success on exam day.

Cara Defilippis

About Cara Defilippis

Is everyone in law school an archtype?

Do You Have to Give Up All Your Existing Friends?

Oh, Study Group

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