John Espinosa, 2L 2007-07-05T13:46:41Z B.A., Suffolk University tag:mblog.lib.umich.edu,2008:/michiganlaw14/5516 Movable Type Copyright (c) 2007, johnespi Transitioning 2007-07-05T13:46:41Z 2007-07-05T03:30:59Z tag:mblog.lib.umich.edu,2007:/michiganlaw14/5516.30961 2007-07-05T03:30:59Z Less than a month into my 1L summer I find myself comparing my daily routine now to what it was before law school. Like everyone else I wondered what the transition would be like. Everyone approaches it differently. From what... johnespi web page johnespi@umich.edu Less than a month into my 1L summer I find myself comparing my daily routine now to what it was before law school. Like everyone else I wondered what the transition would be like. Everyone approaches it differently. From what I’ve seen so far law school becomes, for many people, an extension of whatever they were doing before. Some come straight out of undergrad and treat law school in much the same way. In my case I’ve spent several years working as a paralegal for a sole practitioner, so my transition is a bit different.

Before starting law school, a normal weekday for me went something like this: I’d start work at 8:30am. During the day I’d face some new client’s problem thrown at me to think about and research, I’d read some cases and other materials then discuss my findings with my boss. These cases and the client’s problems were often strange and interesting, my boss and I would bounce ideas around and I often learned a lot in the process. Depending on what was needed I’d also get to write a variety of contracts (with my boss checking to make sure they will get the job done and pointing out when I needed to tweak them), and of course the usual office busywork here and there. I took lunch at noon and was home by 5:30, off the clock and free not to think about work until the next day.

After starting law school, a normal weekday for me is something like this: I start class at 8:35am (except Friday’s we only have one class at 10:30am). During classes we discuss cases from the assigned reading and hypothetical situations thrown at us that are often strange and interesting, with the whole class bouncing ideas around and often learning a lot in the process. In Contracts we don’t actually write contracts, but we discuss a variety of situations from the assigned reading about contracts that didn’t quite get the job done and what was wrong with them, again with the bouncing around of ideas. Classes are done at noon (except for two days a week when we have to come back later for Legal Practice), I eat some lunch and I do the reading for the next day. On the days I have Legal Practice we talk about basically the same things that I did all the time at work, legal research and writing. I do all of my studying at school. Some days I’m done earlier than others, but getting home later than 5:30pm is unusual unless something else was going on that day.

Of course I put in more time for things like the memo we are doing now for Legal Practice, but in general my daily routine is not awfully different in law school. For me treating law school as a full time job is working out pretty well so far.

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