My First Two Weeks at Harvard Law School
First impressions, managing the work, and making friends
I’m happy to report that I survived the first two weeks of law school. For the most part, it was what I expected: intense, stimulating, at times frustrating, alien. In other ways, it was vastly different: my professors are accommodating and kind, my section mates are extremely chill and fun, and I even find my Property class incredibly interesting. Seriously, who would’ve thought?
Although I’m a first-generation law student, I started the semester feeling very prepared for what’s to come, thanks to the Law School Master Plan. In exceptional detail, it broke down all of the essential skills that I need for a successful 1L year: how to read cases, schedule and budget my time, prepare for exams, and manage the (seemingly unmanageable) workload. If you’re unsure of how to effectively navigate your first year, I can’t recommend the program enough. While much of 1L seems to be trial and error, and I’m figuring out what works best for me as I go, having this foundation has enabled me to merely refine, rather than invent, my approach.
These last few weeks have been a true whirlwind and I’m only starting to get my feet under me. Time flies when you literally don’t look up from your coursebooks! I’ve been largely absent on social media — I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things soon — but I recently took your questions to answer in this post. Let’s chat!
What is your schedule like?
All first year law students take the same doctrinal courses: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property, and Torts. From what I understand, most law schools also require a class that teaches you the mechanics and skills of writing legal language (this is called Legal Research and Writing (LRW) at HLS, and it’s a fewer-credit, full-year course that meets only once a week).
This semester I’m taking Civil Procedure, Contracts, Criminal Law, and Property.
In the first year of law school, you’re placed into a “section” of students that you take all of your courses with. At HLS, they split our class of 560 into seven sections of 80, though I’d imagine they might be smaller or larger at other schools.
Each section has a schedule that looks a bit different — I know one section doesn’t have any 8am classes, and another has an 8am on Thursday and Friday. It just kind of is what it is!
While there isn’t much class time in law school, the time you spend preparing for each class far exceeds the amount of time you’re actually in it. I could cry thinking about how much time I spend reading and reviewing for Civil Procedure.
What is your favorite class?