Pragyata is a current second-year Law student. In this article, she gives some advice based on her first 1.5 years of Law school.
I started my first year of Arts/Law in 2017, and looking back, it was nothing like I expected. This probably had something to do with the fact that most of my impressions of law school came from How to Get Away with Murder and uni students telling me that first year is a breeze. Needless to say, I got a bit of a rude awakening when the year began. I’m halfway through second year now and have collated some advice on how to approach that daunting first year of law school. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get into things, you’ll be asking for Law! (like, asking for more!) (I was forced to make this joke.)
DO… get used to people congratulating you for getting into law.
It is one of the most competitive degrees to get into. It’s an achievement, and you should be proud and excited for the journey that lies ahead, no matter how annoying it is for people to keep making a big deal out of it.
DON’T… be intimidated by your peers.
It’s without question that there’ll be some students in your cohort who seem like they were born to be a lawyer. Only a few weeks into my degree, I felt like there were so many students who just ‘got it’. They weren’t afraid to contribute to discussion, to ask questions in lectures. They were always on top of readings or way ahead on assignments. While there are certain people in any degree that are seemingly perfect, it’s more often than not that they’re just pretending. The more willing you are to discard any fears of judgement and just ask questions about what you’re confused about, the more comfortable and engaged you will feel about the material you are learning.
DO… get used to doing an awful amount of reading.
It is an inevitable part of such an analytical degree and can be exhausting. Cases are most important, and when you start reading them it’s likely you’ll feel as if you’re reading a different language. Trust me, I’ve been there, but I promise that after making an active effort to keep going, the legal jargon and convoluted sentence structure will get slightly easier to understand. (And more interesting too!) In any case, most lecturers will go through every case on the reading guide in their lectures, outlining its key facts, its legal issues, its final decision, and if they’re generous, the rationale for reaching its decision. Your job as a student will be to record all of these details in your notes as brief summaries of law, which you can apply to any factual scenario. HD students will often associate trigger words with certain cases to help them remember what happened e.g. McHale v Watson (1966) – metal rod.
DON’T… rely on notes written by a previous HD student.
Most law exams are open book, but that doesn’t make them easy. Put in effort. Buying HD notes a week out from exams is fool’s accent. Law exams require deep analytical thinking and detailed application of law to specific facts. Notes not written by yourself (or rote learned material for that matter) will not help you. The best exam notes are ones written by yourself, and that follow some sort of ‘checklist’ or ‘script’. This means you won’t waste precious time in your exam trying to gather together relevant laws in a coherent order. If you are well prepared, this will be done prior to the exam, so that when the time comes you’ll be answering all your questions in the order of how your notes are written.
But how do you know what order to write your notes? This brings me to my next point.
DO… prepare for tutorials.
When you first start doing practice exam questions (which should at latest be around week 10 or 11), you’ll come to realise that structure is everything. The best exams are those that are in a logical and coherent order with relevant headings and subheadings. In my first semester of law school it was only till SWOTVAC that I realised this, and I kept wishing to myself, “man, I wish someone had told me how to structure all my answers.” Well what if I told you this: that’s what tutorials are for!!!!!!!! Every week/ every second week you are literally going through past exam questions with someone who has been a law student themselves and is now currently working in the legal industry in some way. Needless to say, they know what they’re doing. If you come to tutorials having attempted the questions yourself you can then contribute to your tute’s discussion, and your tutor can listen to your response and give you feedback on your answers, including whether it is structured appropriately. If you don’t prepare, it’s likely you won’t find tutes nearly as helpful, and you’ll be putting yourself in a difficult position come exam time.
DON’T… neglect your me-time.
It’s easy to get sucked in by the sheer amount of work your law degree requires of you. But don’t let law control your life!! Sleep, go out, see a movie, or do nothing at all. The point is, you both need and deserve breaks, so take them. Most universities have established law societies that run great social events, all of which are a great way for meeting new people, especially in first year. They also run cool co-curricular activities and competitions like moots, client interviews and negotiations. All of these are a fun way to get involved but also use practical skills that will help you throughout your degree.
If you are already at law school, then welcome and good luck! If not, hopefully this gives you a realistic insight into what it’s like to be a first-year university student. I promise it gets way more enjoyable as the year progresses!
Good luck!
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