'The 3L Diaries': Our Biggest Regrets in Law School
By Devon Lamont
Law school is a daunting place. Attended by those bright and diligent few who managed to get accepted, it can inculcate a constant feeling of competition. The sense of not knowing what you’re doing, where you’re going, and who you want to be is often both ubiquitous and overwhelming. This is especially true in 1L—a veritable “trial by fire” whereby students either learn to manage their professors’ immense expectations or get torched on the exams.
When I was a first-year law student, I asked some upper-years to share their advice on how to navigate this challenging new academic environment. The kernel of wisdom they invariably bestowed upon me was as true as it was succinct: “Just survive.” Did I take the advice? Of course not! I was a try-hard, just like the other 1Ls. And guess what? I still got torched on my midterms. As it turned out, I was not immune to so-called “student burnout”—a concept I had earnestly believed was a myth before I developed my crippling caffeine addiction.
In our final year of law school, we 3Ls are often left with some regrets. For Joud Dweiri, a 3L with a passion for corporate, employment, and international law, her biggest regret in law school was her lack of confidence. “I entered law school doubting myself and my capabilities,” Joud admits. “I felt lost and overwhelmed,”—symptoms of what she diagnosed as an acute case of “imposter syndrome”. It’s easy to feel like an imposter in law school, especially when surrounded by intelligent and disciplined peers. Looking back, however, she wishes she had given herself more credit and realized that she does deserve to be here—she wasn’t accepted into the faculty for nothing, after all! For all upcoming 1Ls, Joud bears a critical message: “Believe in yourselves, and remember: you got into law school, and you got in for a reason. […] If you get lost along the way, there are people to help you get on track.” Despite her initial doubts, Joud has managed to not only survive but thrive in law school, and she now looks forward to articling at PooranLaw in Toronto after graduation.
Allison Arcand, a 3L with an eye for criminal defence or prosecution after graduation, has two regrets. Firstly, she wishes she hadn’t spent her first year of law school living across the city. Without a car, she had to rely on public transit to get to campus—and for those who have never had to wait for a bus in Ottawa, it’s a lot like waiting for the Senators to win the Stanley Cup. With traffic and frequent bus stops, her commute was pushing forty-five minutes to an hour each way. “I wanted to get more involved on campus,” she admits, “but it was a challenge being so far away.” Having since moved closer to campus, Allison has been able to spend more time with friends, stay out past 9:00 pm, and become more active in student life. Examples of the latter include co-hosting the uOttawa Fashion Law Society’s Fashion Show and joining the FTX Productions musical as a choreographer and dancer. As for her second regret, Allison wishes she had participated in the 2L Recruit last year. Regardless of whether doing so would have yielded an internship, she believes that preparing for and participating in the structured interview process would have helped her learn “how to build a resume [and] how to coffee chat and network.” It would have also equipped her with a firmer grasp of recruitment in general, which she insists could have served her favourably in 3L.
Fumi Shibutani, a 3L who is leaning towards a general transactional practice or a career in civil litigation, regrets not staying in better contact with the people she met in 1L. For her, the “small-group and large-group format in 1L [provided] a systemic way to build a friend group.”
However, when you begin to take different classes in 2L and 3L, she warns, it becomes easy for that friend group to “evaporate” if you don’t put in the work—and putting in the work becomes difficult when you’re concurrently working towards acing your upper-year courses. Importantly, she notes that striving for academic excellence should not come at the expense of your relationships or your personal growth. As Fumi puts it: “You’ve gotta take some ‘Ls’ for the sake of character development.” She intends to carry these lessons with her during her upcoming clerkship at the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
Sarah Hooper, a 3L who is interested in corporate, employment, and privacy law and eager to article at a full-service firm in Toronto, echoes this sentiment about balancing school with other priorities. In her first year, Sarah concedes, she sometimes sacrificed sleep, exercise, and leisure in pursuit of higher grades. Looking back, she wishes she had been “more intentional” about setting time aside from studying for the sake of her health and wellbeing. According to Sarah, she along with many other first-years believed that “to be a good law student, you have to be reading all the time.”
She claims that this perspective “backfired”, as excessive preparation can in fact hinder academic performance, and having a healthy work-life balance is paramount to success. Her experience has shown her that “letting go of the pressure [helps] you do better in law school.” She therefore urges upcoming 1Ls to “adopt a healthier mindset,” “focus less on the outcome” of their work, and prioritize manageable, realistic study habits. Perhaps most importantly, she encourages all law students to “care less about perfection” and not be afraid of failure. After all, “when you fail […] that’s when you learn.” Lastly, Sarah wishes she had gotten more involved in experiential learning opportunities like SPIs and other internships since they can be “more practical” than traditional academic classes. Those kinds of hands-on experiences, she points out, are extremely valuable for recent graduates trying to kickstart their law practice.
As the above stories demonstrate, no one has law school “figured out” in 1L, 2L, or in many cases, even 3L (and those who aver otherwise are likely lying or in denial). This reality, however, should neither come as a surprise to upcoming 1Ls nor as a portent of insurmountable tribulation. Law school is hard—no doubt about it.
It’s confusing. It makes you want to defenestrate your laptop and burn your overpriced, mandatory textbooks. But believe it or not, that’s normal. It’s normal to struggle and feel like you’re in over your head. This will happen no matter your most assiduous efforts. And most certainly, you will have regrets by the end of it all. Thus, faced with this inevitable truth, you can either embrace your mistakes and learn from them or let them weigh you down and spoil your academic experience.
The choice is obvious, but it is still yours to make.