5 Tips To Maximize Your Summer Before Law School
5 Tips To Maximize Your Summer Before Law School
5 Tips To Maximize Your Summer Before Law School: The summer before law school is exciting, and it can also be nerve-wracking. We are posting this a little early so you can best prepare to maximize your summer before law school. Given your past academic and professional success, you’re likely trying to prepare yourself for what’s to come.
5 Tips To Maximize Your Summer Before Law School
Here are 5 things to focus on the summer before starting law school that will help ease the transition in August.
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1. Spend time with your family and friends.
You’ve likely heard this before but repetition doesn’t make it any less true. Law school is a lot of work. It will consume much of your time and focus for the next few months. Enjoy the company of your friends and family in your summer before law school as much as you can. You may have to skip social events once law school begins (and even more so as exams approach). It may be helpful to have conversations with loved ones explaining the expected shift in your time and schedule once school begins. While you can surely emerge from the law library for special occasions, you won’t be out every weekend.
Rest assured that the December break from school will be here before you know it!
2. Focus on your summer reading list and preparing for what lies ahead.
In the summer before law school begins, many schools will provide recommended reading lists put together by law professors. It is not necessary that you read all of these books in order to be successful in law school. However, they can be very helpful in providing you with a realistic understanding of what the 1L experience is like. It is incredibly helpful for you to know what’s coming down the pipeline and remember that you’re not alone in this experience.
We also recommend you check out our law school tips in our blog and check out our law school preparatory course here. This will help you prepare best for law school because unfortunately once you get to law school, nobody will tell you what you need to do to succeed.
3. Mentally prepare for the long haul.
Whether you’re going to law school as a second or third career, or you just graduated from undergrad in May, it is imperative that you enter law school with the correct mindset.
Much like undergrad, you will be living like a student again, spending nights and weekends in the library, forming study groups, and going to office hours. However, unlike in undergrad, law school is a professional school and you’ll be expected to conduct yourself accordingly. It’s unlike undergrad in that you’re responsible for getting your own work done. No one will check that you’ve done your readings (unless of course you get called on randomly in class). Generally, just a single final exam will determine your entire grade.
Take time to think about how you learn best. Is it in a group or by yourself, in a coffee shop or in silence? Think through the best environment for you to study and commit to replicating that as much as possible. It’s tempting to study from bed when there’s nothing stopping you from doing so, but that may not be the most effective environment to read and retain new information.
Law school is a marathon, not a sprint. And like any long race, it takes preparation and mental fortitude to successfully complete it.
4. Prepare yourself for law school like it is a job.
Most successful law students find that if you treat law school like a job, you’ll do just fine. Although classes may not start until 10 am, commit to waking up early. This will give you time to prepare for the day.
We have several posts on how to make a good law school study schedule. Treating it like it’s your job will help you stay on top of your work and not stress out.
5. Relocate early so you can settle in.
If you’re moving to a new city for law school, give yourself time to acclimate to your new neighborhood in the summer before school begins. Do not try to move in the weekend before the start of class. There are so many stressors affiliated with starting law school, do what you can to make it easier for yourself.
Try to schedule a move at least one or two weeks before orientation begins. For many schools, the academic year begins during orientation. You will be inundated with daylong events and your first law class, which is typically legal research and writing course.
Give yourself the time you need to succeed by preparing for school in the summer before law school begins. The last thing you want is stress about where to buy groceries and what it means to brief a case. You’ll thank yourself later, trust me.
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