Before I started law school, I got a lot of great advice. (Read about the best nuggets of wisdom I received here!) While these conversations definitely helped me avoid a lot of potential 1L pitfalls and assuage many of my worries, it’s hard to know what law school will be like, and particularly what it will be like for you personally, until you actually do it. Now that I’m finished with my first year and have the benefit of experience, I want to share a few things I wish I could tell my pre-1L self before entering law school.
1. Stay open-minded—you might like what you don’t expect.
I came into law school with ideas of which classes I would find interesting and which would be a slog. In reality, you don’t really know what will end up piquing your interest, and your enjoyment of a particular class can be dependent on your professor. (I can tell you from experience that a good professor can make a dry topic engaging, while a bad one can make a fascinating topic dull.) For example, I feared I would hate Contracts, but it ended up being my favorite class of 1L, and I’m going to be a TA for the course next year!
I also came into law school knowing little about what different kinds of legal work actually involved. I discounted litigation based on stereotypes from pop culture of litigators as showy, aggressive trial lawyers in court all the time, thinking that I would never fit that role. But through talking to those who actually practiced litigation, I learned that in reality, litigators do most of their advocacy through writing and rarely go to court. The litigators I’ve met have a variety of personalities, with no single “litigator personality.” After opening my mind to the possibility, I realized that litigation really interests me and was able to further explore the area my 1L summer job.
2. You don’t have to have everything figured out.
It can be overwhelming thinking you have to have your whole life planned in your twenties, especially when many of your classmates seem to have everything figured out. While some people enter law school with a clear idea of what kind of law they want to practice, many are unsure—and that’s okay. If I could go back, I would tell myself to try to make peace with the uncertainty and focus on taking the (many) opportunities law school offers to explore.
Though I still don’t have everything figured out, I’ve learned a lot and am continuing to learn more about what interests me. Instead of jumping five or ten years ahead, my mantra lately has been, “take it one step at a time.” Each time I’m faced with a decision, I’m making the best choice I can based on the information I have, and not getting too far ahead of myself because, let’s be honest, things don’t often go according to plan!
3. Stick to what’s right for you, and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.
I did receive advice along these lines before starting law school, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to follow. Despite my best efforts I still found myself getting swept up in how others were “doing” law school. While I did end up bucking many of these, I still spent way too long fretting about forging my own path rather than just doing it. I agonized over whether I was doing outlining wrong because my outlines looked different from other people’s, or whether taking notes by hand would come back to bite me come final exams, or whether I wasn’t involved enough in extracurriculars. It’s easier to follow what other people are doing, but it’s important to stay true to yourself. If I could go back, I would tell myself to have more confidence in my own sense of what was and wasn’t right for me and sticking to it, even if it wasn’t what others were doing.
4. Don’t be so hard on yourself!
Law school is a difficult adjustment and not something most people are immediately good at. I wish I had had more patience with myself as I learned how to read a case, how to do legal writing, and how to understand legal concepts, because doing those things for the first time involves a steep learning curve! Looking back on 1L year, I’m so proud of how far I’ve come—I pushed myself in new ways and accomplished things I never thought I could one year ago. But pushing yourself is uncomfortable, and accomplishments don’t come easily. Expecting myself to be perfect from day one was completely unrealistic. If I could go back, I would cut myself more slack and concentrate on the process of learning rather than focusing on the ways I felt I was falling short.
While I unfortunately can’t go back in time to share these words of wisdom with my past self, I hope my lessons learned are helpful to you as you embark on your law school journey!
Looking for more advice? Check out our compilation of Practical Advice for New Law Students.
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