1L

I was just reading this advice to students who are starting their first year of law school. I wish this had been around back in 1995. When I entered law school, I thought it would just be a slightly more difficult version of college. And most of college had been extremely easy for me. I quickly discovered how wrong I was. It probably took me a whole year to learn how to think and study like a law student should. But that first year also served as a much-needed kick in the ass for me. I needed to realize that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was and that there were lots of people smarter than me. That first year was also my first year away from home, so I attribute some of my poor performance to general “Doing Whatever the Fuck I Want” Syndrome.
The Web can still weird me out sometimes. If you go here and scroll down, you’ll see that I’m someone else’s footnote (except he spells my first name with the oh-so-European C). It’s an article I wrote in law school and you can probably still find it on Lexis-Nexis. I must admit that it’s one of the better things I’ve ever written.