1L Life Hacks!
Hey everyone,
We're just going to jump right into it! Two life hacks that you may, or may not, know that can help your law school experience run smoothly from the beginning.
1. Use The Law Library!
- Right now you're all taking Legal Research and Writing, which is a critical course for all law students. In order to become a great lawyer, your ability to research and legal writing skills must be on point! Your law library includes one of the most important friends you'll make in law school, the law librarian. These individuals can help you find almost anything law related that you're looking for. They can help with using legal databases, finding the right books, and more importantly, they save you from hours of confusion and frustration (comes with the research).
2. Organization is KEY!
Let's admit it, law school, it's like a full time job! Here are ways that I like to organize to help keep everything in order and my sanity in tact:
- GET A CALENDAR & STICK.TO.IT!
- This can be a yearly planner or even the calendar on your iPhone. Whichever one works best for you, use it! For me, the iCalendar works the best. I have an iPhone, a Macbook, and an Apple Watch, all of which I would pretty much be lost without. This is because of the synchronization feature! Whenever I add an event or reminder to my calendar, it's automatically pushed through to all of my other Apple devices. With all of the events, interviews, papers, and classes, it's pretty easy to forget about that one quiz due 30 minutes before the next class period. Avoid having to explain that to your professors and GET.A.CALENDAR!
- FOLDERS!
- Whether you like to take notes by hand or take them on your laptop, organize your notes. I take notes by hand and computer. At home, I brief the cases on my computer and save them in their respective folders. For example, for week 2 notes and briefing, I have a file folder that is set up like this: Fall2018>CrimPro>Week 2 Docs, and I save them there. I do this for every class and this way, if I need to look back at a week 2 document, and it's week 10, I won't have to scroll through a plethora of pictures, documents, notes, and other miscellaneous files on my computer. In class, when I take notes by hand, I use a 5 subject notebook, because I have 5 classes, and slide my handouts and other important papers into its respective folders, which I also use as dividers for each class.
And THAT concludes my 1L life hacks for this week!
