Make it Your Own: Navigating Your First Year of Law School

Sadie Buckel*

For me, starting law school was equal parts exciting and terrifying. I remember taking my seat at orientation and having no idea what the next three years of my life would look like. It has been almost two years since then, and looking back on that time, I can say that my experience has been full to the brim with new friendships, joy, learning opportunities, stress, success, failure, and unbelievable amounts of growth. Based on what I have learned during the first two years of law school, my main piece of advice for new law students is to approach law school with authenticity. That is, intentionally make it your own. Yes, law school will be hard. But, if you show up on your first day and have a strong sense of who you are, your non-negotiables, and how you define success, it will also be extremely rewarding. To illustrate a few ways to do this, I polled my classmates and asked them to share their experiences and advice regarding two important subjects: adjusting to law school and defining academic success during your first year.

What were your non-negotiables and how did you assess your limits?

I experienced time crunches in law school like never before. There were days that I was certain I could not fit everything that I needed to into twenty-four hours. As a 1L, I know I would have benefited from taking time to assess my limits and define my non-negotiables before trying to balance classes, extracurriculars, work, and social activities. I asked my classmates to talk about how they defined their non-negotiables and assessed their limits during their first year. Here are some of their responses:

I never sacrificed sleep to get an assignment done or do readings. This required planning and focus during the day, but when you’re well-rested, it is easier to focus and get things done efficiently.

It is important to make sure you are taking care of yourself and saying no might just be that! Before joining a club, doing an internship, accepting a job, take a second to really analyze your capacity and what you are able to do. I think that it is important not to just “make it to the end of the semester,” but actually learn something from your professors, peers, and lawyers within the field. It is also important to take a step back to consider what you are giving up in order for you to pick something up. You only have 100%; if 50% is going towards school and 50% is going towards work, then you have nothing for yourself. Find a good balance that keeps you feeling good and ensures your mental and physical health are cared for.

Managing my time was difficult 1L year because I had no sense of how long an assignment would take me to complete. In the beginning, I would set a stopwatch before diving into any reading assignment. I would only stop the clock once I finished reading and taking notes. I discovered that some classes took me 1-2 hours to complete, while others took me 3-4 hours. This allowed me to assess how much time I needed to set aside for school each day or each week, and how much time I had leftover to devote to other activities.

The most important thing is you need to know your limits. Use past experiences when you have outworked yourself, research the stats of burnout, being overtired, or overstressed and check in with yourself periodically during the school year to see if you are nearing your limit.

The only things that were non-negotiable were survival and the honors code. Basically, be breathing at the end of the day and don’t do anything against the honors code. Lawyers take ethics very seriously. That was my floor. On the worst days, or when I made a mistake and was desperate, having humility, admitting the mistake or that I forgot, not lying, and moving on was the only and best thing I could do.

I balanced my personal life and academic life my first year by designating time every week to not work on school. I really recommend dedicating at least one evening during the week to spending time with friends, family, or your partner and some time on the weekend. This really helped give me perspective on school, and not burn out in my studying. Personal relationships are so important and make up your support system, they shouldn’t be neglected because school is so busy.

I recommend attending non-legal school events when you can. Sometimes the best way to let off some steam about school is to talk about it with people that are in the same situation as you. Social committee events are a great chance to nurture your personal life while building your community at school with people that are in the same spot as you.

 While not ideal, I can usually tell I’ve reached my limit when I notice I have a headache or am fatigued. Whenever I feel this way, I know that it’s time to schedule some time to relax (whatever that means for you) or a nap, even if it is at the expense of completing a reading or case brief. Paying attention to your body is extremely important, especially as we encounter new challenges and are still trying to figure out where out limits are.

How did you define academic success during your first year?

I personally think this is one of the most complicated questions that students face during their first year of law school. It is likely that if you were accepted into a law school and plan to attend, you have achieved great academic success during your lifetime. However, entering a new learning environment, surrounded by equally smart and successful students, can be intimidating. I asked my classmates to talk about how they defined success during their first year. This is what they had to say:

This was hard to gauge at first because comparing yourself to others is an easy trap to get into your first year. However, I reframed my thinking and started defining success against my own personal goals. I would go into the semester with goals for myself, for example, how long to study for each class, contributing in class every so often, and what grade I wanted to get in the class. Throughout the semester I would work toward those goals and if I met them, I was succeeding.

I won’t lie, my understanding of “success” has shifted significantly since law school. I have learned to view success as doing the best I can with the time and resources I have available, because that is all we really can do. The intense pressure that students feel to view their academic performance as a reflection of their success can be debilitating and, to some extent, fails to prepare us for a realistic career as competent practitioners.  

I defined success my first year of law school by measuring my progress, not my results. Starting law school is like learning a new language. There is so much new information coming at you all at once, there is no way that anyone is perfect right away. I defined success by comparing where I started to where I was going. Applying a growth mindset to your learning will be hard, but it is a great way to stay motivated to continue learning.

Success for me first year meant taking my time. Coming from a corporate job in marketing, I was used to short deadlines and pivoting quickly to adjust for trends in the marketplace. At first, I tried to use this approach with my assignments for school: How can I maximize the amount of information I am gathering in the shortest amount of time? This didn’t work. For a first year, the law is too dense and abstract to just lightly skim. It takes a significant amount of time to peruse through the material—often stopping to look up terminology or concepts you don’t yet understand. Giving myself permission to take my time and stopping myself whenever I wanted to cut corners or move faster turned out to be my “success” first year.

Law school has held some of the most exciting and stressful times of my life. Over the last two years, I have found time and time again that showing up authentically each day, understanding and enforcing my boundaries, and tirelessly striving for my personal version of success makes a huge difference in how I experience law school and has allowed me to succeed and grow as a student.

* Sadie Buckel, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law, Class of 2024, Senior Editor.

I sent out a survey to classmates to obtain comments for this blog post. Special thanks to Emily Toms, Gabrielle Murphy, Courtney Annakin, Erika Clyma, Kate Mohn, Morgen Dempsey, Shannon O’Rourke, Caroline Osborne, Olivea Boyer, Hanna Day, and Louisa Botten for providing such insightful feedback.