Managing Your Workload in Law School

When I was am English teacher, I had to be sensitive to novels with long expository openings: without the proper scaffolding, some students would inevitability comment after the first two classes that “nothing was happening” in the story and subsequently lose interest. These detached students would suffer in the long run, because that seemingly bland opening material often became critical to understanding a narrative in the long run.

For instance, the first chapter of Brave New World involves a kind of walking tour of a cloning facility, where scientific processes are described using words and names Huxley invented for his fictional world. If, as a sixteen-year-old, you don’t find walking tours of research laboratories compelling, you might not give the book much attention.

Of course, if you make it through the mundane in chapter one, by chapter five the book has turned its gaze to narcotics-laced strawberry ice cream consumed amidst group intercourse, which some readers find more attention-grabbing.

I have found that success in law school mirrors success in engaging with literature. It is important to gain a firm understanding of a course’s foundational concepts at the outset in order to grasp a complete longterm understanding, even if the foundational concepts appear dry or inaccessible.

After a few semesters, my routine for accomplishing this consists of some obvious tasks and some less-obvious routines that I did not adopt until slightly later on. Doing the assigned reading, attending class, and taking notes in whatever form works best for you is important. So, for many, is attending office hours if you have a question or in order to hear other students ask questions you might have overlooked. But I’ve found that using professor-recommended supplements, testing your comprehension as the course proceeds, and “outlining” early are key to making the week before the exam feel less stressful.

By supplement I mean a book that offers an overview of the course you’re taking, offering a mix of both digestible summaries and in-depth explanations of concepts fundamental to the topic. Your casebook and the cases you read for class will indeed cover these same concepts, but those sources are not necessarily built to be review tools. A good supplement will assume you’ve had some exposure to the course material and help you place that material in the course’s larger context, even if your class has not gotten there yet.

To return to my English-class analogy, it would be like reading the first chapter of a novel and having your teacher explain how the confusing and seemingly random details were meaningful and relevant to the novel’s climax or conclusion, or to some central character’s development later on. That is, the supplement is a helpful spoiler.

Spoilers in English class are often not desirable. But in law school, they are very helpful. I think that I struggled my first semester at BU Law because I took a totally linear approach to the course material, taking in one concept at a time, unaware of where we were headed.

These supplements often include practice problems at the end of each section. As you cover topics in class, it’s helpful to visit these to see what concepts you’re picking up and which remain elusive. Also, in courses where professors provide less thematic structure, these review questions can help frame complicated concepts within the course’s larger architecture.

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