So you’re going to law school this fall. Congratulations! Getting in wasn’t easy. Last year 132,000 people took the LSAT. The 196 ABA-accredited law schools across the country received more than 173,000 applications. In 2023, 117,000 students matriculated.
Obviously you’re a hard worker (or you wouldn’t be coming to law school, and you wouldn’t have read past the first paragraph), so you may be wondering what you can do to be ready to start.
First, let’s get the legal disclaimers out of the way. There are no guarantees, warranties or promises of any kind. There is no magic bullet for preparation. There are, however, a few tips toward a happier, healthier and more productive beginning.
Get yourself situated
More than one-third of you will be going to law school in some place other than your home or college town. It is important to have housing set up so you can move in at least several weeks in advance. Find the stores you’ll need, arrange your banking, stock up on supplies and grocery staples. Students struggle when they land suddenly in a new town and promptly start law school.
Law school requires more focus than other forms of education. It starts immediately and is difficult at first because students may be called on to speak in class or have writing assignments due. If you get behind in the first few foundational weeks, it will take a lot of work to catch up later. In undergraduate lectures, you were free to fall asleep perusing Instagram or X. Not anymore.
Arrange for your computer or laptop or any upgrade at the beginning of the summer, so you have plenty of time to become familiar with it. In short, get the distractions out of the way.
You can also learn more about the school that you’ll be attending. You may think you read enough about your school during the application process. Drill deeper now. Take some hours to play around on your school’s website. If you explore, you’ll see things you haven’t noticed before — an interesting fall lecture on multidistrict litigation or famous trials, an Association of Women Law Students pancake breakfast planned, or a professor’s bio that shows he shares your passion for kayaking.
You can find people who share your interests. Many law schools have student emissaries and almost all have a coordinator of student services. Especially if you’re attending school in a new state, consider calling or emailing your school and ask to be put in contact with representatives from unofficial groups, like a pickleball club or a running group.
Do seek the advice of mentors. You’ll probably find a very supportive community ready to embrace you and offer guidance. It’s like one of the last lines in the book that sparked an interest in law for many of us, To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus confirms Scout’s discovery that “[m]ost people are” essentially kind and helpful “when you finally see them.”
Speaking of which, do re-read To Kill a Mockingbird. Reading this classic before law school is analogous to playing “We Will Rock You” before a sporting event.
Prepare yourself mentally
Two of the major law school stressors are a fear of failure and fear of the unknown. The fear of failure is most often voiced by students. Nationwide, few students are dismissed for academic deficiency.
Professor Michael Olivas, who specializes in higher education law, said, “In most law schools, only a small number of students fail because of poor academic performance.” It is not like the Kingsfieldian sort of imprecation, “Look to your left, look to your right, one of you won’t be here next year.” Instead, “Look to your left, look to your right . . . you are looking at people who will be friends and professional colleagues for the next thirty years if you treat them right.”
When students fear failure, often what they fear is not succeeding in ways to which they are accustomed. Many students define failure as not receiving grades in the top 10%. That means they fear something that will affect 90% of the class. One suggestion is to address this conundrum head on by preparing to approach law school with a specific set of attitudes.
Come to law school to learn about the law and find your “fit” with a career in the law. To be successful, you must adopt a positive attitude about competition.
There are many paths in the law, so you don’t have to view your fellow law students as racing down the same track as you, with only one of you being able to take home the prize. So focus on your own goals, values and learning, not on getting better grades than everybody else.
An interesting set of studies about learning in law school shows that students who concentrate on mastering learning objectives (“Can I explain the concept of res ipsa loquitur to my 10th-grader nephew?”) actually performed better on exams than students who fret over grades (“I wonder if I’m studying hard enough to get a B?”).
Grades do have importance. They matter for clerking and law review opportunities as well as job prospects. But don’t let either your happiness or your attitude toward law school be defined by your grades. Don’t step onto the institutional glide path, where you unquestioningly decide that you must have top grades so that you can work at a large law firm. Think instead about your values, your strengths and your interests and ways to build them.
Prepare to support and nurture the people around you. People who socialize “a reasonable amount” are happier and better grounded as law students. Avoid competitive impulses and negative people. Hang out with your upbeat fellow travelers. Studies in organizational behavior show that their positive moods will transfer between people and spread throughout a group.
Learn to make downward comparisons. An important study in the happiness literature has to do with Olympic athletes. It showed that the bronze medalists are almost uniformly happier than the silver medalists. Silver medalists looked upward (“Just a fraction of a second better and I would have had the gold.”), while bronze medalists look downward at all the other athletes who didn’t even make it onto the medal stand.
It’s an attitude you can adopt in numerous ways. Do just a little pro bono work, law-related or not — for instance, do volunteer income tax preparation, stock the shelves at a food pantry, pitch in on a weekend project to rehab a low-income house. Or in your fifth week of law school look back at your first week and see how far you have come.
Uncertainty about what law school will be like is also scary. On one hand, nothing can really prepare you except just doing it. On the other hand, you can read up about it. Scott Turow’s One L is a classic. It’s a well-written snapshot of what law school was like at Harvard back in the 1970s. Everyone’s experiences are different, so you’re likely to find law school much different in many ways, but some things remain relatively unchanged, and it’s an interesting read.
One of the best books about law school is Professor Andrew McClurg’s 1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School. This fun-to-read book is by an award-winning professor who writes about the best habits to develop, and offers strategies for notetaking, studying and test-taking.
Empower your brain
Your brain is your most important asset. There are some important habits to adopt now to empower your brain, enhance your memory and strengthen your resilience: healthy snacking, exercise, sufficient sleep and stress management. Continuing your commitment to these practices during law school will ensure you give your brain its best shot at thinking, learning and developing expertise.
Although your brain is only about 2% of your body mass, it is fueled by 25% of the calories you consume and 20% of the oxygen you breathe and 25% of the blood in your body delivers these resources to your brain. It is recommended to eat a variety of fruit, vegetables and nuts, while limiting heavily processed, fried and sugary foods. Pack an apple, some baby carrots and your favorite nuts in your backpack, rather than snacking on cookies and soda.
The most important habit you can establish for building and protecting your brain’s capacity — exercise. When exercising, three important things happen in the brain:
- Blood flow is enhanced, delivering energy from food and oxygen deeper into the brain.
- Neurotransmitters are increased and rebalanced, helping the body feel better and cope with stress more effectively.
- Brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) is released, assisting new brain cells to grow and thrive in the memory processor.
Memory is processed in a brain structure called the hippocampus. One unique capacity of the hippocampus is that it can grow new brain cells for our entire lives. But it is also extremely vulnerable to stress.
BDNF is fertilizer for hippocampal brain cells, protecting the neurons and assisting the birth of new neurons. Moving our bodies is the most effective way to increase BDNF in our hippocampus.
Research indicates that cardiovascular fitness translates to brain fitness. You don’t have to be an athlete; simply engage in regular activity that raises your heart rate. A brisk walk is sufficient. You could take a page from Socrates outside the classroom and hold walking study meetings with your study group.
It’s also recommended to establish a sleep schedule that ensures adequate sleep each night to empower the brain process that develops expertise. Memory is consolidated mostly when sleeping. The memory consolidation process is how knowledge is secured in networks of neurons in the brain.
In school, memory consolidation begins with activities such as reading for class and outlining important parts of court cases. New knowledge is built when classes are attended, hypotheticals are practiced with study groups, and outlines are developed for exams.
Each learning activity strengthens the signals along the network of brain cells, gradually establishing expertise. While engaged in these learning activities during waking hours, the brain continues to process the information while sleeping, and especially during REM cycles.
To benefit from four REM cycles, 6-7 hours of sleep is needed each night. Shortchanging sleep gravely impairs memory, which includes learning new material and recalling material. Pulling an all-nighter makes you up to 40% less effective on an exam than crafting a reasonable study schedule and committing to sufficient sleep.
It’s best to establish a stress management plan. This will look different for everyone. The brain boosting habits of getting ample exercise and sleep provide stress resilience, but law school can be a uniquely stressful experience. Consider one or two additional practices that enhance stress resilience, such as:
- Relying on a social network outside of law school. Maintain routine contact with important friends and family.
- Calming practices such as deep breathing, meditation, yoga or tai chi. Mindful breathing and mindful movement can quiet the fight-or-flight stress response.
- Resisting the glidepath of toxic competition and limiting contact with folks who are spiraling down that path. You can make lifelong friends in law school if you remain collegial.
- Starting or continuing therapy to help you process the emotions that attending law school can inspire. Many schools offer free counseling services for students, and increasingly, student wellness and wellbeing groups are emerging.
Professor Austin’s book, The Legal Brain: A Lawyer’s Guide to Well-being and Better Job Performance, discusses many ways to optimize brain health, enhance mental strength, and maintain well-being through law school and into law practice.
There are so many important contributions you can make with a law degree. Professor Levit’s book (with Professors Christine Coughlin and Andrew McClurg), Law Jobs, explores the literally hundreds of different types of law jobs and career paths in law, from large, medium and small firms, to corporate law and in-house counsel positions, to government agencies, non-government public interest work, prosecution and criminal defense.
We are excited that you are starting law school, and we wish you the best of luck starting the process of finding your place in the law this fall!
Dr. Debra Austin, J.D., Ph.D., a professor of the practice of law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, is a nationally recognized expert and scholar in lawyer well-being.
Nancy Levit is the associate dean for faculty and a Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, and a co-author, with Professor Doug Linder, of the books, The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Lawand The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality in the Practice of Law, and the co-author, with Associate Dean Allen Rostron, of Beyond One L: Stories About Finding Meaning and Making a Difference in Law.
