Life at a Law School - 10 Things You Must Know
So, it is once again “that” time of the year – University admissions and the same old question popping up right in front of eyes, in a scarier and bigger version, “What am I going to do in life?”. As to answering that question, you would have most likely chosen your favourite stream by now. This post is… Read More »
So, it is once again “that” time of the year – University admissions and the same old question popping up right in front of eyes, in a scarier and bigger version, “What am I going to do in life?”. As to answering that question, you would have most likely chosen your favourite stream by now. This post is absolutely about what exactly you should learn during the course of training yourself for the future, especially if you’ve chosen the law stream.
1. Violence? No. Argument? Yassss!
So, contrary to the popular conception that one would get into a fistfight when there’s opposition to one’s views, a law school beautifully and strictly teaches you that not only your views deserve to be heard, your opposition party deserves to be heard too – I.e., you’ll be trained to give respect to others’ opinions. Guess what? You’ll also be taught to learn from that argument rather than to keep a grudge and severing all connections with that person.
2. Real Secularism
So, if you’ve been trained to be a narrow-minded stereotypical person by our famous film industry, your law school will definitely change that for you.
Saying from my personal experience, at first you’ll either be confused with diverse social background placed in front of you, then you’ll try understanding them and try speaking with them, your stereotypical mind will blossom in front of them, your mind will get in a war – “is this real or whether films’ ideas were real?”, then you’ll realize that even you’ve been looked at stereotypically and then you realize that you should start accepting people.
Once you start accepting them, you’ll learn various things including language and food types (not to forget their homemade food brought after holidays. Yum!)
3. Real Struggles
So, now that you’ve landed in law school, a wave of new strength enters you and try to exercise your rights or already start fighting for society or animals. Guess what? It will never be as easy as you wish.
You’re going to be mocked by your very own classmates to seniors and then they start supporting you and then you realize that you all are together in that and actually start facing struggles together. It may sound abstract to you if you haven’t experienced this already, but there are people who become spies just to get marks on their papers and you’ll have to be careful to get the marks you deserve. From my own experience, I say that there are kids who show your class – group chats to gossip and get others into trouble.
4. Real Research
Now that until 12th grade, you’ve successfully the art of copying Google pages into your project, once you enter law school, you’ll start learning the actual way to do projects. From footnotes to your very own 3000+ words, you’ll learn to stay awake at night at look into the sky and realize that you aren’t romantic but running out of ideas.
But once you complete that and close all tabs and get a very less plagiarism percentage, everything is worth it. That moment you’ll sigh and crash on your bed for the entire night and binge-watch your favourite shows or moves as if you’ve achieved very big – that’s very beautiful, actually.
5. Common Questions
You’ll actually get used to questions like, “So, can you explain this law to me?” And sometimes even be invited for legal arguments.
6. Moot and Friends
It may sound funny but you’ll actually get to know your strength and weakness and most probably befriend your opposite team member during moot court competitions. Maybe, lawyers prioritize knowledge before beauty. 😉
7. Magical Analysing Power
I don’t how but once you enter into law school, your brain automatically starts thinking at all different dimensions of a problem in ways that you’ve never thought before!
8. Speaking with Proof
Maybe in your school days, you were like “Oh my God, seriously?” When you hear a tiniest of the tiniest gossip from your best friend. But, once you enter into law school your mouth will automatically spill out pearls, “Seriously? Proof?”. Yes! You’ll definitely say that! It may shock you the moment you ask for the first time but once you start asking, the time you ask it for the last time would be before your death – i.e., there’s no end to that question in a lawyer’s life, irrespective of whether you’re getting into a law-related job or not!
9. Own Stance
In law school, you’ll be taught the different dimensions of law and be given the liberty to choose one’s own stance and it is all in your hand to defend it and stay true to it. Like, you want to support capital punishment? Yes, you’re free to do. Do you want to stand against the same? Yes, you can. And well, don’t freak out, you’ll learn in due course of time to stand against as well as in support of any law – i.e., your arguing skills will get honed up.
10. The Joy of Internship
I don’t know about other streams but law schools have this amazing scheme of sending students for Internships during every semester break where you’ll be sent either from your Law School directly or be let on your own to get your Internship in your personal capacity.
Well, speaking of the joy of an Internship, one may think what’s the joy in this when you’re actually made to work for 15-30 days during semester break where you’ve actually planned to do nothing but be with your family and pet.
Here is how you can enjoy it – let us all accept that 45 long days with absolutely no job to do is boring and stressful. How long will one keep scrolling down the Instagram or Facebook feed and keep watching the same old serials also with adults at home? Instead, imagine that you’ve got enough work experience, you’ll not only be confident but would be pumped up all the time that you’re travelling towards your goals.
Also, few Internships pay good, who would say no to money where you can actually flaunt to your friends the things you bought with your own money and you can also buy things for your parents and pet. Not to forget the contacts you’ll build – let’s be frank, in this competitive world, it is tough for us to climb with no ladder and with people pulling our legs 100 steps back when we put one step forward. So, Internships are the places where you can get good contacts to build your network and also be motivated by the people you meet there.
Well, that’s it for this post – very few of many things you’ll learn in law school. All the very best if you’re actually getting into one
