And it begins...

Well, I am sitting in the library and finished up all my reading for Criminal with a few minutes to spare, so I thought I would get down some impressions of law school thus far.

First of all, once you get to law school, LSAT, UGPA, and that awesome internship you did with your Father's Sister's Boyfriend's Cousin at that great awesome firm don't matter. At all.

What I mean is, at this point, when someone asks you for this information, you can stop worrying about being judged on how good your grades were in undergrad, how well you scored on the LSAT, and what your did or did not do for your resume. As our dean said during his presentation, "When someone says what did you get on your LSAT, tell them you got into law school."

Also, so far amongst the entering students this kind of one-up-manship has ended as well. Everyone sort of takes everyone else at face value as a 1L. I have yet to hear anyone bragging about other schools they got into, or their LSAT scores, or any of that. It is refreshing, really. During orientation there was a bit of name dropping about what firm you interned for, but once classes started that pretty much has stopped as well.

Second of all, you know how everyone is always so concerned about what to do to prepare for law school? Having gone through it, I would say it is true that there is not much to do, other than relax. In fact, I would say relaxing is actually a necessary step. You do hit the ground running in law school, there are no fifteen minute long first classes where the syllabus gets handed out then everyone leaves. You are doing substantial work from the first minute. Therefore, I hold that taking time off prior to law school is a great idea, as you want to be ready to work hard from day one.

Otherwise, I think I would have liked to review some basics prior to starting. Mostly, I am concerned with those little things that you sort of know, like you can recognize them in a sentence, but can't exactly define. Things like the difference between Circuit Court and District Court, or how Legislature really works, or the Constitution. In law school, you are expected to not just know, but understand these and any other term you run across. I think if I had spent some time doing some light reading (or even watching the History channel or PBS) would have gone a long way to lower the amount of time I spend with my dictionary, legal dictionary, and the appendices of my casebooks.

Oh, one last thing: Get a big backpack.