Now that you have chosen your law school, and are all ready to begin your journey as a law student, here are some tips or advices you must know before joining law school.
Law School Involves Endless Reading
As a law student, it is almost expected from you to be a voracious reader because law school involves a lot of reading. From statutes to journals, articles and research papers, reading in law school never ends. It is important that you develop a reading habit if you want to succeed in law school.
If you are someone who doesn’t do a lot of reading, well remember. You can always start now. Reading is not a hard habit to cultivate. do not start this reading journey with complex bare acts or research papers. The legal maxims and jargons might make you feel lost and hence, you will end up discouraged. Start with a fiction book, or any subject of your interest. Start with 5 pages, then 10, then so on and keep adding more and more pages to this habit of yours.
Mugging Up Isn’t Enough
There are students who tend to be overly academic. They memorize all the case laws and legal maxims and ace all their exams. While this inclination towards academics is certainly helpful, it is not enough to excel after graduating law school and might also eat away the time that you should be spending on developing other skills.
Law is profession where it is more important to understand every small detail in order to excel in the field. As a lawyer, your job will sometimes make you criticise and reject the ideas that you might have learnt in law school, for doing the same you need to think out of the box and start developing critical thinking skills.
Apart from that, you also need to have good communication skills, as this is the base of this profession. As a law student, you must invest your time wisely and spend time in establishing professional connections with peers and must participate in seminars and conferences to improve your public speaking, and work on building your collaborative skills. These skills will take you a long way once you graduate.
Practice Self-Care
Life in law school is hectic. A students’ normal day involves sitting and attending lectures, eating fast food, staying glued to the screen and pulling all-nighters. In no time you will find yourself stuck in this endless cycle on exhaustion. It is important to be conscious of such behavioral patterns and be really careful about what habits you pick.
Eating healthy is perhaps the most important advice of all. Believe me, you don’t want to be someone who survives on two packets of chips and coffee every day.
Exercising regularly is something that you must include in your lifestyle, regardless the context or place. Take out one hour from your schedule and go for a walk or run, or hit the gym or dance and have fun, just move that body a little.
Now that we have talked about physical well-being, let’s talk about mental health. Law school can be exhausting. Do not let anyone or anything disturb your mental peace. Take time off your schedule to be alone and reconnect with yourself. Universities teach you a lot about human nature and tendencies, take all that in without compromising your metal peace.
Learn To Think For Yourself
During your time in law school you will come across many people and blogs who will give you all types of advices (including this one!) but you need to start thinking for yourself. Every advice that you are given, do not follow it blindly. Think of all the possibilities, all the advantages and disadvantages and then decide whether to follow that advice or not.
Listen to everything that a person has to say, but think. Think- how doing something or not doing something might affect you today, tomorrow and in your future.
Do not be affected by what people are doing around you. There can be circumstances where you might feel insecure and you might start doubting yourself and feel inadequate or as if you are left behind. Realize that your peers are also experiencing everything that you are and are dealing with it in their own ways.
Do not do anything just to please someone or to prove a point. Retain your individuality and clear out your aims and aspirations in your head and work towards your goals.
0 Comments