August 21

1L Exams

So you got into the law school of your choice.

Congrats!

But the journey has hardly begun. If you believed the admissions process was difficult, you’ll be surprised what the first semester has in store for you.

I’ve seen it happen many times: young, brilliant graduates enter law school thinking they can succeed the way they did at the undergraduate level. Then the first semeseter exams roll up, and they find themselves confused, in a crisis, with little or no idea on how to prepare for the exam.

Your first semester at the law school will be the hardest. Quite simply, the law school requires a different method and level of committment to your studies to succeed in. Most first year students are simply not prepared for this change and fail miserably in the first semester exams, a pattern they find hard to shake off.

Do well in your first semester, and trust me, you’ll do well throughout law school.

To that end, here are a few tips to keep in mind before you enter law school. Write them down, bookmark this site, or stick a printout on the wall above your desk, but always keep these in mind:

1. Start Early

This is the first and the biggest mistake you could make: fall behind from the very start.

Students have a tendency to pull the foot off the accelerator in the first few weeks of college. This can be disastrous to your success in law school. Quite simply, the amount of work you’ll find yourself buried under will be too huge to make up for any past courses missed.

So start working right from the very go. It’ll save you a lot of trouble as the semester end exams approach.

2. Make Outlines

So, its exam time and you’re stuck in the library, tearing your hair out making outlines of all the classes.

Save yourself the trouble and the insanity, make regular, weekly outlines of all the classes you attend. It’ll take time and discipline and training, but trust me, the effort will be well worth it before exam time when you find yourself buried under thoudands of pages of courses and little idea of how to proceed.

3. Keep Out of the Study Groups

I’ll admit this: study groups are fun. You can hang around with a bunch of friends, pick up a text and go through it in a lot less time than you would alone. More brainpower, less time. Why, it all makes sense, doesn’t it?

Wrong. If you’ve ever been part of a study group, you’ll know that they soon devolve into BS and gossip sessions where your roommate will show up late without his notes, your serial procrastinator friend will show up high or drunk, and all the while, you’ll be eyeing that pretty girl who sits next to you in class.

Save yourself the trouble. Go solo. If you really need help, pick up one classmate who’ll be sincere and committed to the course and discuss your problems with him/her.

4. Read Your Professors

The blind grading system employed by universities today means that you can’t really charm your way to the top of the class, but reading your professors (that means literally ‘reading’ what your professors have written lately or shown an interest in throughout their career) can give you a lot of insight into the kind of questions you can expect in the exams. Is your professor interested in South-East Asian economic policies? Has he written extensively about personal injury laws in Germany? If you can pinpoint one particular area of your professor’s (consistent) interest, you can be quite sure he’ll pop up a few questions on that subject in you exams.

5. Relax

This might sound obvious, but the number of students I’ve seen biting their fingernails and comparing notes right before the exam always keeps on increasing each year. Let me tell you a great, secret truth: those last few moments of cramming up won’t make you ace the exam.

So relax, get inside the exam room, make yourself comfortable, look around, say hi to your friends. When you get the question paper, lean back and go through it once. Analyze the marks distribution, the main issues dealt with, and map out your own response to each question. Don’t just grab your pen and rush in to the first answer; clever analysis will end up saving you more time than being speedy.

After the exam, don’t devote the next hour and a half to dissectin the questions and trying to calculate your own marks. Relax, chill out, grab a beer and have some fun. You’ve earned it.