The Lollygabber

Lies About the 1L Experience

September 21, 2010 at 10:06 pm 2 comments

“If you’re a good writer, you’ll have a huge advantage as a student.”

Most first-year legal writing is almost entirely devoid of creativity and requires a penchant for monotony and verbosity.  Even during second semester exams, I was very distracted by my instinct to write good prose.  On a timed exam, your spelling, grammar, diction, and syntax aren’t worth a damn.  And for every second you spend thinking about how to rephrase something so it flows better, you’re losing precious, precious points.

“You should learn to think beyond the legal doctrine.”

Professors will tell you it’s not about the black letter law, but it really is.  And it’s about IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion).  That’s it.  Nothing else really matters.  The most fascinating things—policy concerns, socioeconomic implications, historical backgrounds—are rarely tested and, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant during the first year.

“Having a life is not mutually exclusive with being a 1L.”

You can have a life.  People do it.  But those people do not get very much sleep, or they simply do not care about their grades, or they never had lives to begin with.  To really have a life as a 1L, you have to…painstakingly…carve…out…your…opportunities.

But, hey, at least it’s not med school!

Entry filed under: Law, Law School, Ranting. Tags: Law, Life.