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In this episode, let's talk about why you as a law student should treat law school like a full-time job. Let's talk about it.

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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school. Let's get started.

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So you may hear from people now and then, law students or lawyers who you network with or professors that you should treat law school like a job. In this episode, I want to talk a little bit about why you're getting that advice and exactly what it means and how you can execute on it to advance in law school and to perform as best as you possibly can. So we're going to talk about the how and the why essentially. So, law school, as you may be figuring out, can be overwhelming. It can be all-encompassing. When you're in law school, it can feel like you are spending all of your time reading lengthy cases that are difficult to understand, briefing those cases, outlining, maybe writing things for your legal research and writing class. And so many law students are kind of like a hamster jumping on a wheel and just running and running and running and never taking a break. It can feel like you are working 24-7. It can feel like you never have any time off. And that's really too bad because law school is probably the last time until you retire that you will actually be able to wake up and no one is going to be able to tell you what to do that day. No one is going to be able to tell you how much time you should spend studying or reading or what you should do and in what order. When you start your career, it's going to be much more regimented. And especially if you're a lawyer and you use your law degree to be an esquire, you are in a service position. No matter what, you're going to be working for other people. Whether that's clients, whether that's bosses in-house, whether you're in any kind of position representing someone else, you represent their interests and you have to work within the structures created by our court system. So if a judge says you've got to be in trial this week, you go to trial. So law school is really a time when you have a ton of independence, but you don't necessarily notice that easily when you're in the midst of it. In the midst of it, it can feel like I have a ton of stuff to do, and this is taking up all my time. And you work and you work and you work. And doing that, working that hard just creates more stress about law school. So it's a vicious cycle. You are stressed about doing well in law school, so you work a lot. And the more you work, the more stressed you become. It just cycles over and over and over again. Unfortunately, many law students, as they run on that hamster wheel, are being both inefficient and ineffective. They're being ineffective because they're probably spending a lot of time on things that will not lead to them doing the very best that they possibly can during their law school career. When you are in law school, you don't get a better grade because you read a case and understood it better than any of your classmates. You don't get a better grade because you wrote impeccable briefs summarizing those cases. You generally don't get a better grade if you were called upon in class and gave an impeccably well-phrased answer. The exception is there could be some participation points. But for the most part, you get a better grade in class, depending on what you do during an issue spot or exam at the end of the semester, one exam that lasts for a few hours. What matters is what you put on paper in that two-hour period. And spending another hour reading late at night or getting up early to brief a case doesn't necessarily or directly help you get a better grade in that exam room. It's one thing that can contribute to the overall knowledge that is going to get you a good grade, but it's pretty indirect. And there are other things you can do that are going to more directly help you get a better grade. We've talked about them in other episodes, like building an outline that you can easily deploy by copy pasting phrasing from your outline onto your exam, by thinking about how you will analyze issues on an exam persuasively, like a lawyer would. Those are things that are going to matter more. And the stuff that you do during the semester doesn't necessarily promote that success. It doesn't. Reading the cases really well just won't directly do that. So you're ineffective when you are spending a lot of time focusing on that day-to-day minutiae. You're also inefficient. Because you have all the time in the world, you aren't very good with it. I'll tell you that when I am busy, I do some of my most efficient work. When you have a full day ahead of you, you need to work swiftly. And that's how you should read your cases, and that's how you should breathe is swiftly. You should move through them as quickly as possible so you can get to what matters. Building your outline, practicing exams, using that outline, having an outline by the end of the semester that you worked on throughout the semester that you're really proud of, and that you're very comfortable using going into the exam to write an exceptionally well-crafted, well-organized, well-presented exam answer. So you as a law student, if you are spending a lot of time working and finding yourself overwhelmed by it, may be both inefficient and ineffective. Especially at the beginning, you may also just be slow. You are getting used to these cases. Their procedural posture is convoluted, they have twists and turns. And so it takes you time to get used to that. And you're using supplements to try to understand them a bit better. And that takes more time because you're throwing more resources into the mix. Well, one solution that can help you perform and work a little bit better and more efficiently in law school is to treat law school like a job. A job generally shouldn't be this boundless, all-encompassing work all the time, work all hours of the day, work weekends kind of thing. Instead, when you have a job, ideally, you want to have set hours. And during those hours, you want to be fully, solely committed to everything that you need to do to be successful during that window. When you're locked in at a job, you are plugged and locked in. You are focused only on that job. But then when the day is over, you clock out and you're done. And you don't work on it anymore. That can be helpful to do with your law school career as well. To say to yourself, I'm going to have a routine. I am going to work these hours and really try to stick to it. I am going to focus during these hours and really try to stick to it. If you do that, if you say to yourself, I'm going to be done with this homework by 5 p.m., you will probably be more efficient. You will probably get through it more swiftly. And you will be better because of it. In law school, when you are studying, you want to focus on quality over quantity. Studying more isn't necessarily going to help you, or at least spending more time studying. What's more important is that you do a good job studying when you decide to lock in. I'll tell you, I remember from my law school career that some people who were really good law students had kids. And that meant that they were forced to stop studying and to stop working at a certain time because they had to clock in at home and take care of their children. They had something really important to do outside of law school. And by having that forced stop time and that family time built into their schedule, they had a set law school schedule. And so during the times that they were studying, they were working really hard. They were really efficient. They were flying through readings. They were flying through briefs. They were working, churning out that outline as the semester went on, whenever they had free time to devote to school. They treated it like a job because they were working for something bigger. They had something else to do outside of law school. You should do that too. You should focus on what matters when you are studying. Focus on your exam success. Get what you need out of your cases and move on. Get the rule. Identify the issue that that case is discussing. Write all that down in your outline so that when you see that issue on the exam, you know how to write an issue statement because you've already written some drafts of it. You know how to write the rule statement related to that case because you've already written the draft of it. And you know how to analyze that issue because you saw how it happened in the case that you were presented with, where you learned it. And now you have the chance to do that as you present the rule on your exam when you spot the issue. Focus on your outline throughout the semester. That's what matters. One thing that I see too often is people who are in law school or doing any kind of work getting distracted when they are clocked in by personal things. They have their phone out. They are getting messages. They are scrolling Instagram or whatever the social media app is of the day. So you don't want to do that because that's not you being plugged in at work and that's inefficient. When you are clocked in for law school, put the phone away, turn it off, put it away from you. Make sure that it does not distract you and that nothing distracts you to the extent that you can, because you want to be solely focused on ripping through those cases, on crushing that outline as you are doing it, on taking whatever you notes you need to be ready for class and to walk in confident. And then when you're not reading cases, refine that outline. Go back and make it better, organize it, understand it better, get to know it over time, because the more comfortable you are with it, the more comfortable you will be using it on your exam. But when you set a schedule, that can help you with your work-life balance as well. Because when you're working, you're working. You're not going to be doing personal things. But when you aren't working, you should truly be clocked out because working more isn't going to help you. What's important is that you're efficient and effective during the time that you're clocked in. Working more and more and more isn't going to get you a better exam answer. Diving into supplements and learning rules that your teacher isn't teaching you in the class isn't going to help with your exam answer that you needed to write. So treat law school like a job, treat it like a nine to five, where you are going to hustle when you are plugged in, where you are going to be focused when you are plugged in. But when you're clocked out, you are clocked out. And as someone who's a practicing lawyer, I just want to say again what I said earlier. Once you start your career, you're going to be working, working, working for decades in all likelihood, if everything goes well. And it's going to be the last time in your life until retirement or until you take a big break with your career. It's going to be the last time in your life law school when no one's going to tell you what you have to wake up and do every day. Take advantage of that. You do have time to devote to your family, to your friends, and to your own personal life and betterment. Do it while you can. I wish so badly that in law school, I focused on exercise, I focused on cooking and eating better because those habits would have helped me professionally later on. I got badly out of shape when I started practicing and was super busy. I was just learning to cook when I started practicing. And what I found was because I didn't get in a good habit of cooking during that personal time in law school, I wasn't cooking when I was working and I was eating out a lot and spending too much money. These were the early years of my career. I should have been saving and investing every dollar that I could, including beyond my 401k, beyond my retirement accounts, because that way I could retire earlier, right? The more time my money would have to compound, the more I wouldn't have to work later on because I would have those financials set up. But I didn't understand that earlier in my career. I'm going to do a whole nother podcast episode on finance concepts that law students and young lawyers should know because I think it's absolutely critical. But do what you enjoy in law school because you have all the time in the world to do it. I tell my friends all the time, we had no money in law school and all the time in the world to hang out. And now we make money, we have income, but we have no time to get together. And that's sad. And we do our best to try to make that happen because we have a good little friend group. But focus on how you want to better yourself in the three years that you are in law school. Think about who you can become if you exercise, if you learn to cook new things, if you go hike, if you play sports, and then carry that into your practice. What I'm talking about, treating law school like a job, you want to treat your practice like a job as much as you can. I was somebody who spent my earlier years working a ton of hours, working late, billing a ton of hours. What I eventually found was that my work was not better all the time because I was working more. My trial presentation wasn't better all the time because I was working more. I wasn't better in depositions because I was working more. It just stressed me out too much. And so I wasn't really performing better. If I'd worked a little less, I could have and should have focused more on the quality of my practice and getting better at the things incrementally so that I could be the best lawyer that I could be. What mattered was how I performed in those depositions and in trials. And when I sat down at my computer to write a brief, and the more time I was spending, I wasn't necessarily getting more talented at those things. So if you take this approach in law school, if you treat it like a job, you will probably be more efficient as you study, you will probably be more effective at preparing yourself for the exam and to succeed on the exam. You will start to maintain a professional attitude towards life in general that also allows for you to thrive personally. And that's what you're going to want for your career overall. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I hope this is a message that you take to heart. Thank you so much for joining. We will see you next time.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at Lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law, one step at a time.