Law School 101

Many have heard of the (horror) stories about life in law school. This is the place where engagement to your law books is considered the norm and not some abnormal occupationnot a deviation, where complete sleep is like a distant memory of a time long past, and digesting cases does not literally mean that but more like digesting your brain, and the anxiety of everyday classes, let us not start on that.

In short, being a law student is a difficult so much so that anyone would just want to get over with at the soonest. And to the point that a law student may even question himself at one point, why he subjects himself to such 'torture.'

It is not a joke that some students have lost their sanity trying to pursue that dream or become shattered souls never to become whole again. With the help of perseverance, luck and charm, others survived and a few triumphed over the hurdle with flying colors, til the bar examinations. But the journey is not over yet, there is still the waiting period for the results.

It takes more than intelligence and guts tosurvive law school. You might be top of your college graduating class but law school is a totally different challenge, much more than anything one will encounter. It takes a bit of strategy, and conniving to survive law school. Luck may play a little role but if you’re gunning for honors, studying 10 hours a day would be a good start. Say good bye to sleeping regularly and say hi to dark undereye circles.

Most law student who are now in their senior years, whom I'd like to refer to as the 'survivors' would testify that prayers helped a lot, especially when you haven’t studied for the day’s recitation, you got to pray and pray harder that by some divine intervention, you will not be 'star' of the day or hope that a something would happen so your classes would be cancelled for the day.

Some stay a week or two and then got booted out, others voluntarily. And you think undergraduate courses like Political Science, Economics, or Legal Management would give one an edge. Think again. Studying for your law degree is a totally different thing. It’s like apples and oranges. Whatever you learned in your undergraduate course is not really that much of a help. Law school is just a totally different monster. Even those who might have taken their postgraduate degrees in law related courses might confidentially hope to breeze through law school. Definitely, you won't. Law school is way different from anything you’ve known. You will experience being grilled, tossed over, chomped, and stomped upon by your professors on a daily basis.

For a chosen a few, law school is a drug. Try ending your stay, am saying this for those lucky enough to have survived a few sems, and you’ll see what I mean. Your system will go into freeze mode; you will experience haunting nights when your mind screams for the mountains of cases and laws! You would long for the days when hours seems to last like minutes because you only have 1 hour left before class starts and still have a dozen of cases to read. You would miss those sessions and you wonder why in the world are breaking into cold sweat despite freezing temperature inside your classroom. Who knows how long it would take before you can recover from law school mania. I bet you won't.

Those who remained or the 'survivors' credited it to innate brilliance, others for their passion and drive, sacrifice, wit, prayers, and perhaps, a bit of luck. Whatever the reason, the dream of become a lawyer spurs them to prod on. For a handful, maybe they are sado-masochists. Me? I lie somewhere in between and holding on.