Advice for the Summer Before You Start Law School
If you made it into law school: congratulations! Now, what comes next?
The first year of law school is as crucial as it is daunting. You have to adjust to a new setting with new peers, expectations, and social and extracurricular activities. Your grades can make a difference in your prospects of landing a job or a clerkship, but it can be hard to know your academic standing until the end of the term once final exams have been completed.
The following tips can help you prepare for law school in the summer before you begin, so you can hit the ground running.
Seek Advice on Your Application
Law is a fast-evolving field. Instead of asking older lawyers or reading legal dramas to get a sense of what the first year of law school entails, try to contact current law students or recent alumni. If you do not know anyone in law school, you can build connections, friendships, and mentorships through various campus activities. You can also ask the admissions office to connect you to current students; they can be great sources of advice if approached professionally and respectfully.
Establish a Routine to Build Skills
Setting a plan and sticking to your daily schedule is a great way to prime yourself for the grueling workload of law school. It might be helpful to experiment to determine the time of day when you feel most productive and focused, the distractions and temptations to beware of, and your ideal working environment.
Since law school requires extensive reading, get back in the habit of reading and analyzing texts if you have been out of school for some time. Consider learning speed-reading techniques to improve your ability to digest information and get through dense texts easily.
Set Career Goals
While college often encourages curiosity and broad-mindedness, law school rewards career focus. Whether or not you end up practicing law, law school is designed to propel you along a legal career path. Setting clear career goals can help you make the most of the opportunities that law school offers to set yourself up for success after graduation.
Familiarize Yourself with Basics Law Concepts
Law school classes are based on the Socratic method, using a mix of real and hypothetical legal cases to elucidate various rules and concepts. Each student must individually integrate the concepts and ideas into outlines and lessons to apply legal reasoning correctly and perform well in exams.
You can get a jump on law school by familiarizing yourself with the basic concepts of first-year law classes. Online video lectures, books, and guides are especially helpful in this. Without the stress of exams or homework, you can explore these concepts more sustainably, and at your own pace.
While it is important to rest up before you get enrolled in a law school, consider using the summer beforehand to get a head start and build stamina for the marathon ahead.
[Next Read: How to Survive and Thrive the First Year of Law School]
