Tips and tricks for 1L

1. Ask for help.

I can't tell you how many times students run into trouble and don't tell anyone. You could be having personal problems with a relationship, financial problems, academic issues in class, etc. None of us are superhuman. We all have other responsibilities, jobs, family obligations, etc. It can be a little overwhelming to try to complete a really difficult and challenging graduate program like law school and juggle all the other things that happen in "life". However, resources are available. Ask for help. Come see me (tmccoll@law.whittier.edu), make an appointment with Dean Carnahan in the Student Affairs Office (bcarnahan@law.whittier.edu), visit with the Director of the Academic Success Program, Jenny Homer (jhomer@law.whittier.edu), talk with your professor, speak with your teaching assistant ("TA" - see below), etc. The key is to just ask for help. We are all committed to your success but often times we don't know you are having a problem. Reach out to one of us.

2. Practice.

People will laugh but I tell students all the time that in order to do well on your final exams, you need to do ten (10) one hour practice exams for each final exam. Think about Michael Phelps. He has won 16 Olympic Medals! If anyone thinks for one second that he woke up one day, rolled out of bed, jumped into the pool and won all those medals and broke those world records without practicing is crazy. Legal Analysis, the application of facts to the law, is a learned skill. Most people who start law school have never done such a thing. In law school we call it "IRAC" which stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion. In order to do well in law school, you will need to practice and perfect this skill. That means doing a LOT of practice exams. We have practice exams on the library website, we have exams available in the Academic Success Program and even the first year professors have practice exams that you can download/copy and then work on. When you complete a practice exam, try to do so under "exam" conditions. This means that you do so without referring to your outlines, that you do so under timed conditions, and that you spend about 15 minutes of each exam "hour" outlining the question. If you do, you'll develop the timing and the organizational skills to match up with your legal analysis.

3. Treat law school like a full time job.

For most of you, it's a 1000 days until the bar exam. When you put it in those terms, it's right around the corner. That also means that now is the time you start acting and thinking like a lawyer. Before you begin law school, you should create a calendar (it's good practice when you become a lawyer). Start out by putting in all of your law school classes. Then put in all your "homework" hours. For every hour of class, you should count on three hours of homework. When you begin law school, it will feel like you are learning a foreign language. The first year classes typically have older case law that is difficult to understand and concepts that you have never heard of. It is common for 1L's to spend a lot of their time reading the cases more than once and looking up terms in their Blacks Law Dictionary. With the ratio I described above, that means that if you are going to law school full time, then you will be in class for 15 credit hours a week. 15 times 3 equals 45 hours of homework each week. When you factor in the class time and the time set aside for homework, then that puts you at 60 hours a week. If you came to law school at 7am and left at 8pm each day, Monday through Friday and took just an hour for lunch, then you could complete your law school preparation without ever having to study on the weekends. Make it a commitment and do it right. When finals come and go and grades come out, you will be glad you did.

4. Create balance in your life.

It's very difficult to spend the next 3 years (4 years part time) only concentrating on law school. For most students, the law of "diminished returns" applies. The theory is that after doing something (i.e. studying) for multiple hours at a time, that at a certain point, your brain cannot continue to absorb the information and you begin "wasting" time by studying for that long at a stretch. Get up, take a break, go for a walk around our beautiful campus, go get a cup of coffee or a snack from our on campus cafe, make a phone call and catch up with your family. The point is to do something and to take a break. Many law students develop a hobby in law school. It could be something like going to the gym, mountain biking, surfing, taking a yoga class, etc. Having something to do besides law school will allow you to focus that much more when you are trying to study, working on your outlines or completing practice exams.

5. There is nothing "wrong" with supplements.

For your first year, you will be buying case books for all your law classes. The case books have a list of cases that have been "edited" by the author of the case book. Sometimes during this editing process, important facts or issues have been removed and it can put the 1L student in a position where they do not fully understand what the case stands for or what the author is trying to convey to the reader. When this happens, its perfectly acceptable to refer to an outside source. This could be a commercial case brief (Westlaw, Lexis Nexis, High Court Case Summaries, etc.) or an upper division student's case brief or a book "supplement". Before going out and buying a bunch of supplements that you may not use (you definitely won't need to buy more books to read with all the assigned reading you will already have), check in with the bookstore and see what other students have bought. In addition, ask the upper division students themselves what they recommend. Each first year class typically has a Teaching Assistant (TA) who is hand picked by the professor. The TA typically received the highest grade in the class and took the same final exam that you will take less than a year ago. Ask the TA what supplement that they would recommend for your class. Finally, many professors already have a "favorite" supplement that they recommend. In summary, don't be afraid to use supplements. Just make sure that you are not relying solely on supplements or you will miss important information that the professor is trying to convey that won't be in the supplementary material.

6. Live within your means.

For some the allure of law school is a six figure salary. For some of you, that will become a reality. For most it won't happen until you have been practicing for many years. A majority of our students take out loans to help pay for law school. I want you to key in on the word "loan". It's money that you have to pay back. If you only borrowed $100,000.00 for law school, then over a standard 10 year repayment plan that will cost you about $1,000.00 a month! If you haven't ever lived on a budget, then start. If you haven't paid off your credit cards, then begin to do so. The financial aid "change" checks that you pick up at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters are for cost of living while in law school. If you don't need that much money because you are on a solid budget, then don't borrow the maximum amount of money. When you graduate and pass the bar and go into repayment, you'll be glad you did.