I am one of the youngest people in my law school class. As far as I know, I am the second-youngest person in my law school class, as far as I know. Like many law students, I cam to law school directly out of undergrad - I obtained my Bachelor of Science in Political Science in May of 2016, and began law school the following August. However, I actually only attended undergrad for three years. By some luck and apparently overloading on classes, I was able to get my degree an entire year early. Not only that, but I have always been young compared to my classmates - I turned eighteen the July after graduating from high school. So, all things considered, I began law school barely a month after I turned twenty-one.

Being young in law school has definitely contributed to a unique experience among my peers. There are a handful of other twenty-one year-olds in my class as well, so I am not alone. However, the majority of my classmates are at least a year or two older than me, and some even more than that. However, being young in law school hasn't been detrimental to my law school career in any way, and if anyone else is in a similar position, I advise you not to let it deter you.

Most people associate being twenty-one with a year of partying, fun, and free-spirited shenanigans. Being in law school, this is clearly not an option. I've replaced bar crawls with bar prep, hangovers with early morning study sessions, and spontaneous roadtrips with well-planned library trips. Law school isn't necessarily boring, but it is serious. If you want to spend your time partying and having fun, I recommend you get that out of your system before taking the plunge into your 1L year.

Another way being young might impact you while attending law school is lack of life experience. Some of my classmates have used their time in undergrad to study abroad, other have years of work experience, and others just seem to be better adults. I didn't have time for any of that - I spent three straight years studying in undergrad, and then came straight to law school to study some more. Sometimes this makes me feel a little intimidated - like I am less of an adult than my classmates. But then when it comes to reality, I feel like I have a better grip on most things like paying bills, handling insurance claims, going to the DMV, etc. So it's all about how you handle things.

Overall, I wouldn't change my experience of being one of the younger ones in my class. Sure, it brings a variety of challenges. But it also brings an opportunity for me to prove myself. Unless I tell people, they usually don't realize how young I am, and I certainly don't act like a typical twenty-one year old. So don't let being young hold you back from going to law school. If you have an experience anything like mine, it won't matter a bit. I'm not ready to let go of my immaturity yet - I still have stuffed animals and toy trinkets stacked on top of my law books. But I'm ready to be a law student, and nobody but me knows the difference.

As of now, I've been a law student for a little over two months. It kind of feels like it has only been two weeks; at the same time, it feels like it's been about two years. Overall, I'm starting to figure out what this whole "law school" thing is actually about, and I'm starting to find my identity as a law student. So I wanted to write this post to summarize for both all of my readers as well as myself what my first two months of law school have been like.

Emotions

Classes

Budgeting

Overall

Last week was a hectic week for me at school, because not only did I have my first writing assignment due, but I also had my first research assignment due. The research assignment was little bit shorter and easier, and was only worth 10% of my grade. But since every person this year has told me that my grades are the most important thing, I still wanted to do really well. My law school splits our writing and research classes into two separate, 2 credit classes. This is somewhat nice, but also more tedious at times since each class comes with separate assignments and tasks. Especially since each class had an assignment due at the same time.

My first research assignment was to look at a hypothetical client problem and research the issue trying to find the answer to the client's question and then writing a short, informal memo about the issue. For this first assignment, we were specifically researching case law. Later in the semester, we will have assignments about statutory law and administrative law, as well as a wrap-up assignment that pulls everything together. Limiting the research to only one type of source makes things a little bit easier.

Most law schools provide you with a plethora of research tools. Obviously, every law school has an extensive library with volumes and volumes of legal authority looking regal on the shelves. However, in the modern day, the electronic databases that your school provides are probably what you use most. It's so much easier to type in a search query and get thousands of results than it is to browse the shelves of the American Law Reports or legal encyclopedias. My school provides LexisNexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg, HeinOnline - basically all of the sources you can think of. This is both good and bad. Having these resources is great, because it makes research a hell of a lot easier. It also can be detrimental, because not all of us will have access to these amazing tools when we actually enter practice.

The assignment that I had made me use Lexis, Westlaw, and HeinOnline to find the answer's to the client's problem. The assignment was actually pretty easy - there was a number of guided questions, and as long as you followed directions, you should have got the right answer. The informal memo I had to write was a little more open-ended, as was the research log I had to make while I was doing the research. Because grading in law school is based on a curve, I knew that I had to put in more effort on these sections. I couldn't focus on just getting the right answer, I had to have the best and most thorough answer.

Luckily, my efforts paid off. After turning the assignment in and waiting about a week for grades, I earned my first A in law school. Although it's only a small portion of my grade, I was pretty proud of the score that I received. I definitely earned points for being the most thorough, so I would recommend doing the same on your assignments.

Good luck to everyone as you begin turning in your graded assignments as well!

One thing that I have had to get used to in law school is the lack of papers, tests, quizzes, and other graded assignments throughout the semester. For the most part, grades in law school are limited to the finals, and maybe participation or attendance depending on the class. The few exceptions to this are legal writing and research classes. Most law schools require first-year students to take some sort of legal writing and research classes. Mine are two separate classes, but some schools combine them. These classes tend to have a few more assignments throughout the semester than the doctrinal classes, such as torts, criminal law, civil procedure, property, contracts, etc.

Having more assignments through the semester is both a blessing and a curse. Although it creates a nice contrast to what I do in my other classes (a.k.a. reading all of the time), it adds a little bit of pressure. Your torts professor likely won't care that you have a quiz on the Bluebook the same day they assign 60 pages - so the graded assignments are just one more thing you have to balance in your academic life. However, it is nice to know that my grade in at least one class won't be entirely based on a single test.

About a week ago I had to turn in my first graded assignment for my legal writing class. The assignment was to write a formal office memo regarding a hypothetical client situation using provided legal authority that the professor gave to us. We had done a short, ungraded e-mail memo prior to this as practice, but this assignment was the real deal. Essentially, a legal memo is paper in which you analyze a client situation using legal authority such as cases and statutes to explain why you think the court will decide the outcome of a case in a certain way. Our memo was limited to 8 pages, and we were provided four cases to use as legal authority. You might think that 8 pages is long - but it was actually rather difficult for most of my classmates to not go over the page limit.

Learning how to write legal memoranda is important, because many of law students are required to write these memoranda as part of their law school internships. Along with that, the memorandum that you turn in for you legal writing classes will likely be the writing sample that you will submit to potential employers when applying for jobs. That fact, combined with the fact that the assignment is graded, means that writing my first memo came with a lot of pressure. I had two weeks to complete the assignment. However, because of one of my friend's passing away and needing to travel for a funeral, I really only worked on the assignment for a little over one week. For me, this was adequate time to feel like I did well on the assignment - but I know some of my classmates needed longer and some only took a few days to write their memos.

I am still anxiously awaiting my grade for my memo, but I feel as though I did fairly well. Pending feedback and completion of the next memo I have to write, I will eventually write a post on writing legal memos. However, until then - here are some general legal writing assignment tips:

• Consult the Bluebook - you have it for a reason. Make sure your citations are correct and that you follow Bluebook style to avoid making stupid mistakes.
• Edit, edit, edit! Edit your writing as you go, take breaks from writing to go back to edit, edit when you are finished, then wait a day and edit again. Your professor will be able to tell if your writing is polished or not.
• Read your paper out loud to yourself. It will help you catch little mistakes you might not notice if you read silently.
• Know your school's collaboration policy - my school doesn't allow us to discuss any aspects of the assignment with each other. You don't want to lose points or fail the assignment for discussing your writing with your friends.
• Take breaks from writing. You need to be able to walk away from your assignment and come back to it to create your best work. It's pretty unlikely that if you sit down and do the assignment all at once that you will create quality work.
• Remember basic grammar. Seriously, this is not the time to misplace commas or forget basic sentence structure.
• Don't overthink it. You'll do better if you just relax and have some confidence that you are producing your best work.

It's that dreaded time of year when the weather gets colder, leaves start falling, and signs for flu shot clinics appear in every pharmacy. Yes, friends - it's cold and flu season. As a student at a giant university who is consistently surrounded by twenty-somethings who aren't very good at keeping their germs to themselves, I am constantly in fear of catching a virus or whatever sickness is plaguing the college community at the time. I walk around my apartment twice a week with Lysol wipes in hand, disinfecting every surface I can think of. A bottle of hand-sanitizer is constantly clipped to my backpack, I constantly take my vitamins and stay hydrated, and I avoid hanging out with people the second I hear them cough. Despite all these precautions, somehow I have caught a bug and now I have to deal with feeling sick in law school.

You've probably heard a lot of the same statistics I have about the average adult getting about 4 colds a year. Despite the commonality, I still feel shocked every single time I come down with the slightest illness. I'm sure many of you feel the same, but I advise you to embrace the inevitability and prepare for how you will handle yourself when you do eventually get sick. As I am trying to stay on top of things and be the kickass law student I know I can be, while battling the plague of the common cold, here is my advice on how to handle sick days in law school:

Know Your Class Attendance Policies

Don't Let Yourself Fall Behind In School

Hydrate, Hydrate. Hydrate!

Get Enough Sleep

Stay Away From Booze, Drugs, Etc.

Take A Deep Breath and Chill

Hey, everyone. So you may have noticed that I have not posted in a few weeks. I am sure most of you have probably attributed this to me being extremely busy with law school - and you are not entirely wrong. This week my first two graded assignments are due which is taking up most of my time. I'm either working on them, or stressing about how I should be working on them. But due to some circumstances in my personal life, I haven't really felt like posting a lot or writing happy posts. So I apologize for being away, and I will try to get back to a normal amount of posting here soon.

Unfortunately, a little over week and a half ago, I found out that an old coworker and friend of mine had passed away. His tragic and untimely death definitely had an impact on my emotional stability these last few weeks. Grieving is hard in general, and it is even more difficult when I am 1,000 miles away from my friends and family and have to continue to stay on top of my law school assignments like nothing is wrong. I was able to travel back home to attend the funeral, which was sad, yet emotionally healing as well. One good thing that came from this was that many of the friends that I have made at law school reached out to me to just give me hugs, offer to bring me cups of coffee or lend me their notes, or just hang out with me when I need a distraction. People need other people. I need other people. And grieving has made me realize that more than anything else.

If you are away from home at law school, college, or anywhere in your future - you will likely have some similar experience where you may have to grieve from a distance.  Everyone has their own grieving style - you may need to cry for days, you may want to distract yourself, or you may want to do nothing at all. Whatever you need to do, just do it. There is no wrong way to grieve. Let your professors know, let your friends know, let your coworkers know. Do whatever you need to do in order to feel okay again. It will be hard, but you can get through it. And if you ever need to reach out to anyone, you can always reach me by email or in the comments on here.

So, now that I have addressed this, I will try to get back to normal posts about law school. Any questions you guys have? Anything you would like to know? Leave them in the comments and I will write a post!!

I will talk to you guys soon.

- Bailey



If you ever feel alone, are having problems with addiction, or need any other help - check out these resources below. Your life is precious. People need you and want you here. Love yourself and help yourself, because you are worth it.

For help finding mental health or substance abuse treatment centers: 1-800-622-HELP

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK