# # # What I wish I knew before starting Law school

Welcome back to another video. So I'm currently a rising 2L which means that I just finished my first year of law school. In honor of finally being done with my first year of law school, I decided that there's no better time than to make a video on all the things that I wish I knew before I started law school. Just for some background, I didn't really have anyone that I knew personally that went to law school in the United States. I really just didn't know anyone who could offer me the proper guidance. I went in completely blind and I think that a huge thing a and I know that it's really frustrating to not be able to prepare for something. The general consensus with preparing for law school, and like I personally agree with this, is that there's no real way to prepare for law school. It's such a different way of learning. The material is so different from what you see in undergrad that there's nothing you can really do in the few months that you have before you start law school in order to prepare for it. I know I personally didn't know this so I was trying to read Getting to Maybe. I was also just very excited so I was trying to just do random things to prepare for law school but in reality I think there's not really a way to prepare. I will say the one thing that I did do that I don't regret and I highly recommend is find somebody who's an alum of that law school or really any lawyer in your area that practices what you think you want to practice and reach out to them on LinkedIn or whatever form of communication and ask for some guidance or maybe if they can be your mentor or hop on a phone call. I remember that I connected with a couple of attorneys on LinkedIn and I ended up having a phone call with an attorney who to this day I still talk to and he's been a great source of like confidence, advice, and guidance. Yeah, highly recommend finding somebody on LinkedIn. The second thing I wish I knew was that learning how to take your own notes is so important and some people get it later on in the year some people get it right away but I don't know it's very important that you know your learning style especially when you're covering a bunch of cases in different classes. It can be very confusing and overwhelming when you're assigned a lot of cases for every single class then you have to take class notes and then you don't know if you should take notes in a different color or if you should do different word documents. Everybody has their own style but I think that a very important part of the process is learning how to do it yourself because some people do ask other people for sample notes to see how they take notes but I think you're taking away the opportunity to figure out how you learn best. I think taking notes is such a personal thing that you can't really learn how to do it from somebody else but if you don't know where to get started what I ended up doing and what I do now and I wish I had done this when I first started I personally brief every case so I'll do like issue, rule, facts, reasoning, holding. I think I'm a last category for class notes and I write in my class notes in the class notes section but that way I have everything on one document. I know somebody who takes notes on like three different word documents. I don't know how they study when finals comes up but I think the key is preparing yourself for outlining. Start outlining early or have notes that are super well laid out so that outlining is a breeze for you. On top of that something I recommend whether or not you take notes how I do or not is to always have a takeaway from each case because at the end of the day what most people say is true. In most of the classes you don't have to technically read every single detail you really just need to know the law and how to apply it. I will say though I do recommend reading like as much as you can. There are some people who don't read at all and there are some people who have to read everything. I personally have to read everything or else I feel like I'm not understanding everything as well as I could. Everybody has their own method but highly recommend doing a takeaway section for every single case and if you don't know the takeaway then you can go up to the professor in office hours or after class. I'm sure that they'd be more than happy to help you. I remember doing this for a couple of cases where I really was just confused. It's also very important to know the black letter law from each case. Yeah there's no way to prepare and then try learning how to take notes early on. The third thing that I wish I knew was that you should be doing practice exams to prepare for every single final exam and I don't know if your school will outright tell you that there are some practice exams on reserve but you should definitely ask around and see if there are. I do think that most schools do that. I'm not sure if every school does that. I would think that they do but practice exams are a huge part of exam prepping and some professors put exams and some professors don't. It's preference for them but if your professor does put them out I'd say use them very sparingly so once you've reviewed like most of the material or all of the material start taking them and then look at the model answers. The model answers are a huge part of it. I remember in my torts class almost all of the model answers for years prior were kind of the same format and I think that that's what helped me during that final exam is I knew what format the professor wanted. For the classes that don't have practice exams on reserve I'd say try to go to their office hours. I think that's a huge mistake I made in like my first semester and half of my second semester was that I didn't use office hours as much as I wish I did because the professors are there they want to help you and there's no reason not to. They are the ones who make the exams and you want to know what they want to hear. I do regret not going to office hours. Most students don't go to office hours at least from my experience. On the note of grades and exams I will say there's something called the curve and at some point you will learn what the curve is but I personally think you shouldn't even pay attention to that. A lot of people do pay attention to it a lot of people don't. I think that for the most part when I was studying with people who would focus on the curve there's just it doesn't bring you anything it's just a waste of time because either way the curve is gonna be applied so all you can do is your best and I would say just like try to minimize as much time thinking about the curve as possible because it changes nothing. Another thing I wish I knew is that you should really try to drown out the noise because there are a lot of people talking about them wanting to do this and them joining this club and then being president of this and then being a senator and them getting perfect grades and them having a full scholarship and then having parents who are both like these prestigious lawyers and them having so many connections. I promise you life gets so much better if you just drown out the noise especially in law school because there are so many people who are in either better positions than other people and also there's people who just plain out lie about stuff and then that stresses you out because you think you're so behind like people saying that they studied for 24 hours. I don't know just try not to compare yourself too much I feel like as long as you're doing your best it's all you can do and it's really easy to get discouraged because this field is so competitive. Before law school starts the competition has already started and the stress has already built up so just try to do your best try to be easy on yourself. Burnout is super real in law school. I also learned that the hard way because you get stressed out about exams you want to like spend all day studying for exams but you're hurting yourself in the end if you don't rest so be kind to yourself and also take out time to do other things other than just reading and studying because the majority of your day will most likely be you reading before class going to class reading after class like reading at almost every point in the day and it gets super stressful if you don't give yourself some time to do a hobby or go to the gym or walk or watch tv or do whatever you want that relaxes you but having that time to yourself is so important. On the same note of habits though something that I heard before studying law school which I want to echo because I think it's very true is that you should create habits that you want during law school and after law school before you start law school because once you get into law school if you don't do things you're never going to make time for them so for example if you love going to the gym make sure you take out two hours three hours however long you need to go do that because once you start pushing that to the side it's very hard to add it back into your life. You're in law school you want to do well you want to dedicate all the time you have to doing well but like I said if you don't rest and if you don't do things that you love then you're going to be so miserable in my opinion you're going to burn out a lot faster. I'd say as soon as possible start incorporating things to your normal routine or else they're just never going to happen and then what I've heard is that if you haven't built these habits during law school then you're just never going to build them as an attorney because your life is just as busy or busier so I'm trying to be better with that because I do want to start going to the gym more but it is very stressful when you have so many things on your plate it's a lot so this one I read online but I highly agree with it knowing the material well is not enough to do well and as you've probably gathered a lot of the exam type questions are issue spotters. Well I've had professors that do multiple choice but most of them like 90% of classes are issue spotters. An issue spotter is basically a problem that has a bunch of issues in it and you have to figure out what the law is and then explain it in your essay and it depends on the professor's preference but some professors want you to analyze both sides and say you know it depends but other professors want you to defend your argument like still share both sides of the argument but at the end choose one argument to side with and then others want you to be completely neutral and like analyze both but act like the judge and the judge is supposed to choose like the best answer. That was probably confusing but my point is is that there's a lot of different ways that professors want you to answer but for the most part an issue spotter is figuring out what the issues are so for example if it's in a torts exam you're gonna get this hypothetical question about crazy things happening like a car hits someone and then they lose their arm and then this all happened while they were at work and then they did this but it was by accident so then you have to write an essay about all the issues that you saw so it could be like that or your negligence or intentional infliction of emotional distress or like negligent infliction of emotional distress there's so many things you learn in torts but my point is it's like they give you this story where a bunch of crazy stuff happens and you have to literally write as many issues but analyze them well to the best of your ability in a very short period of time but yeah I loved torts, torts was so fun. As I was saying knowing the material is not enough to do well on the exam you have to be able to apply it you have to be able to find the issues articulate them well and at the end of the day if you and your friend both spot every issue which for a lot of classes that's literally impossible I remember there are so many classes where they put like a million issues but that's on purpose in my opinion I think professors do that so that students have the opportunity to show what they know some people make analogies to cases that you learn in class and some professors love that and some professors don't care for it I don't know there's a lot of stuff that comes up which in my opinion is just horrible the whole system of law school sometimes bothers me because why is there a curve there's a curve because that's the easiest way that big law firms can filter out which student is the best another reason could be like for schools to filter out which students are not going to pass the bar so they can drop them whatever that is a whole thing in itself that bothers me a lot point is just make sure you can apply what you learn another thing that everyone says your classmates will become your colleagues so your reputation starts the moment you step into the law school campus and I find that to be very true so just remember to always be nice to everyone try to stay away from the drama the rumor is true law school is basically high school part two so just try to stay away from that try to be like a good person and just remember that the people around you could either become your bosses your co-workers your opposing counsel your co-counsel a judge as a general life tip you should be nice to everyone but especially in law school because that's going to affect your career especially if you're practicing in the state that you're living yeah if you guys haven't heard of Quimby definitely look it up I personally pay for the subscription and I'm gonna pay for it again next year I'm not gonna get too into it because it's kind of self-explanatory if you search it up it just gives you case briefs and you can watch videos don't rely on it too much but watching the videos can be super helpful before class so highly recommend Quimby another thing a lot of people don't talk about before you start law school is that getting a job is actually very hard the field is so saturated that most people do struggle to find jobs and that's why networking is so important like so incredibly important because if you know the right people they can get you in those positions and that's why it's very stressful to be in a class with people who have like all these pre-existing connections and I'm not complaining but I'm kind of complaining because it's kind of unfair but it's okay because you can network and you can build those connections for yourself there's a lot of events on campus I would say try to attend as many as you can without compromising your grades because not only can you network but also you can learn about different fields I found that to be huge for me during my 1L year I'd never really considered international law but I went to this little seminar where an attorney came he practiced international law it was like during lunch or something that was super interesting although I don't know if I will end up practicing that but that's not the only thing like there were personal injury lawyers who came who are UM alum you can also network with them slash learn from them so I would say keep your doors open don't put all of your eggs in one basket in terms of a field of law because there's so many things that you're going to learn in law school and so many things that are going to surprise you like you may have never known you loved maritime law but then you came to law school and you loved it so that's what I'm trying to do right now is not get too set on one thing the world really is your oyster especially if you've already gotten to the point of being admitted into law school like once you have your JD after the three years you can do whatever you want it's so common for people to start in personal injury but then end up in like maritime law like two completely different things definitely keep your doors open I think the last thing I'm gonna say is law school is what you make it you're never gonna get these three years back they're gonna be stressful but they're gonna be so fun because you're learning about everything you love look at what pro bono opportunities your school is offering you guys because for example I went to San Diego and Mexico through my school and it was to do some pro bono work that experience changed my life I saw so many things that changed my perspective on like what I would like to do how I want to help people so you never know what may come out of it and if you don't like what you do during those little trips then knowing what you don't want to do is just as important as knowing what you want to do don't think that you're too good to do something I just know a lot of people when going into law school are like so focused on big law and that's the one thing that they're trying to do which is fine if you want to do big law there's nothing wrong with that but there's so many other things you can do other than big law that not enough people talk about don't forget there are a lot of pro bono things you can do it looks great on your resume it's a great interview conversation starters and also you're helping people who need help the most I'll end it off there but if you got into law school congratulations that is a huge accomplishment and you should spend all summer celebrating it getting into law school is a huge challenge in itself like taking the LSAT then figuring out loans and figuring out scholarships figuring out like if you have to move setting the LSAT honestly in itself is a huge challenge so congratulations and I hope that you could at some point put these tips to use or like I'm sorry if they were completely useless but I think that they're all super super super important like maybe they won't be that important to you in your first semester but then in the second semester you'll be like okay I see where she was coming from and that's all for today hopefully you enjoyed these tips and good luck!