Can't Keep Up? 10 Easy Life Hacks That Will Save You Time During Finals Season

It’s that time of year. Students are walking faster in the hallways. Faces are visibly more frazzled. We are all dealing with the fact that no matter how hard we tried to keep up during the semester, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day.

Since we all get the same 24 hours, the key to keeping it zen during finals is making better decisions about where and how we spend our time. Here are 10 simple life hacks that will save you time during finals season and give you more freedom to focus on studying during the final stretch:

1. Say no—often.

People often ask me how I have time to write a book, run a business, and manage a blog while I’m in law school. Simply put, I’ve gotten really good at saying no. If you're looking for the right words to decline a request for your time or energy, Twitter exec Claire Díaz-Ortiz recently wrote a great post on 50 Ways to Say No.

How soon is too soon to start preparing for finals?

During my first semester of law school, many people told me not to start worrying about finals until after Ex Parte, which was at the end of October. Any time anything finals-related was mentioned, my friends and I were constantly told that it was really too soon to even worry about it. However, as finals approached, and we continued to have classes until less than a week before finals, I realized I really wished  I had started sooner.

The biggest lesson I took from last semester was that there's really no such thing as too soon. The anxiety of trying to outline, study and get everything together while still keeping up with classes, readings, etc was so unnecessary. If I had followed my gut instinct and started earlier, I wouldn't have been as stressed out during crunch time.

Now that it's March and the pressure of finals is going to kick in in a few weeks, I've decided to learn from last semester and start early. Now is the perfect time to review everything I've learned so far this semester and begin organizing my notes so that by the time "finals mode" officially kicks in, I'll already be ahead of the game.

Best Friends at the Bar: Should Law Schools Be More Like Medical Schools?

Should law schools be more like medical schools as teaching institutions?  No, I am not suggesting pulling a week's worth of all-nighters and hooking up with every hot body in every nook and cranny of the hospital (Grey's Anatomy style) and justifying it because of fatigue, the absence of other forms of recreation and basic bodily instincts that medical students seem to view a little differently than the general population.

No, get those images out of your head!  Substitute images of the Socratic Method of law school education that we all love to hate and compare that to the on-the-job training (OJT) methods of medical schools.  I heard it expressed especially well by a professor I know at Washington & Lee Law, who teaches in the new curriculum there, which is focused on turning out practice-ready law graduates.  Professor James Moliterno made the following comment at a conference on the future of law school education last year at American University's Washington College of Law , and I discussed it with him again later when I spoke at W&L Law:

"Medical schools prepare future doctors, and law schools prepare future law professors." 

Think about it.

Ms. JD Public Interest Summer Scholarship Winner: Judith A. Pond

Editor's Note: Ms. JD is pleased to feature  Judith Pond, winner of Ms. JD's Public Interest Summer Scholarship. Here is her winning essay submission:

I knew before beginning classes that Georgetown Law has one of the country’s largest student enrollments. What I did not realize, however, was how its size would affect my experience. During college, most of my courses enrolled twenty students or fewer; those with larger enrollments divided into smaller sections, ensuring interaction with professors and teaching assistants. In law school, however, my first-year section of 100 students took five of our eight courses en masse, which presented a challenge to me in two ways. First, our professors’ pedagogy is geared toward teaching a large group of students at once, rather than focusing on individual student experiences. Second, developing relationships with professors becomes a difficult proposition.

Professors who teach large groups face a complex task in ensuring that all students are engaged in discussion and comprehend the material. In law school, this challenge becomes more pronounced because students are expected to distill the relevant rules and ideas primarily from the reading assignments, and only secondarily from classroom teaching. In class, professors might call on two or three students for discussion. Everyone else listens to the conversation without being an active participant. Even in classes where several students raise their hands to volunteer, some professors will not deviate from their system of focusing on only a few students each class. After the first few weeks of school, I noticed that many of my classmates read this dynamic as a tacit release from their obligation to learn. Some students routinely skip class, while others use class as a time to browse the Internet or catch up on other assignments. The temptation to cease paying attention is great; after all, students are not held accountable for having done their homework until the final exam.

Best Friends at the Bar: Teaching Law Students To Be Lawyers

I am back from my speaking engagement earlier this week at Washington & Lee Law, and I am pleased to report that I found the entire experience enjoyable. It does not hurt that W&L is in a quintessentially charming small town nestled between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains of Virginia and that the campus itself is about as picturesque as it gets. Those things are frosting on the cake, however, for a top-notch legal education program. Most of you know the reputation of W&L Law, but you may not know much about the innovative program they have adopted to actually prepare law students to be lawyers.

The program is in its third year, and, by now, all 3Ls are involved in the new curriculum.  It includes speakers to prepare students for the real world of law practice and a practicum program that includes typical legal challenges and role playing as corporate lawyers and litigators. Although there are no exams, there is plenty of accountability, just as it should be. The object is to make the students as practice-ready as possible without returning to the days of “reading the law” and “apprenticeship” that were alive and well in the Commonwealth of Virginia until well after these methods of legal preparation had gone out of style in other jurisdictions.

Best Friends at the Bar: Teaching Lawyering - Is This Too Much to Ask of Your Law Schhol?

The New York Times hit the nail on the head in its November 19, 2011, article “What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering”.  This is a big soap box of mine, and another reminder from me seems appropriate as I prepare to go to Washington & Lee Law School next week to speak to students in the program that W&L has designed to address this issue.  Students in this program gain practical experience in lawyering in their final year of law school by participating in mock law firm exercises.  They get experience acting like litigators and corporate lawyers to help make them practice ready after graduation.

Bravo!  This is a real breakthrough in legal education, and it certainly is preferable to what is described in the NY Times article.  Here is what should NOT happen.

Law firms should not have to teach associate attorneys the fundamentals of law practice.  If an associate took Corporations in law school, that lawyer should know the fundamental steps to accomplishing a corporate merger.  Not just what a “merger” means but how to make one happen.  Knowing the meaning of things without being able to put those meanings in context is not useful in most settings, and the law is no exception.

Arguendo: Gender and Representation in the Academy

Welcome! I am thrilled to begin 2012 as a Writer-In-Residence for Ms. JD, and I hope that the experiences and observations that will form the substance of this column will stimulate conversations around ideas of race, gender, and power in the legal profession. To wit:

I am a first-year law student. As is typical, all of my classes for the year have been assigned to me. Unfortunately, however, the eye of arbitrary assignment is blind to the realities of (mis)representation in the classroom. In the fall, 3 of my 4 professors were men; in addition, 3 of my 4 professors were white.[1] For another section, all of their 8 professors for the year will be men.

Montessori 1L: First Exams Edition

I have to admit, this isn’t my favorite part of law school so far. My first semester exams are coming up this week. My bookshelf is cluttered with hornbooks, my mind a tangle: res ipsa loquitur, promissory estoppel, maybe I should have taken Latin in high school.

At the same time, I feel pretty lucky. First-semester finals at Yale are different from any other law school. From the outside, the tests don’t look so unique: we aren’t invited to answer questions in interpretive dance or finger paint (though one classmate suggested idea map answers for the professor who covers the chalkboard in indecipherable scribbles each class session). We’ll show up and type furiously for three or five hours, and then we’ll wonder how we did. But it’s the wondering that’s different, because I won’t have to bite my nails worrying about where I’ll end up in the class rankings: there are none. Nor will I fret about how my GPA will look to prospective employers, since I won’t have one. In fact, we won’t get grades at all. The first semester is credit/fail, or, as many upperclassmen have explained, “pass/pass. You will all pass. Your transcript will look identical to everyone else’s.”

Through Feminist Lenses: Crim Law

The 1L course in criminal law is for many class-privileged and white students—myself included—our first real introduction to the criminal justice system, aside from the possible speeding ticket or traffic violation. We learn the basics of criminal law, from the prosecution (most of the time) and defense (sometimes) sides. Why forget the bigger picture, namely the racially disproproationate state of the criminal justice system?

I brought this issue up with a friend, and asked her how she thought we could frame a course in Crim Law differently and acknowledge the current state of incarceration in the country—even mention the problem of the “prison industrial complex.” She thought for a minute, and then said, “Well. I agree with you, but I don’t think that it’s the type of course for that.”

Here is where I differ, and think that the 1L Criminal Law course needs to address the realities of the criminal justice system—beginning with the racial demographics of whom the system affects, and who is imprisoned in the U.S. If we relegate such discussions to a separate course (“Critical Issues in Criminal Law”), some forward-thinking students may enroll. But such a class would be unlikely to have the reach of the mandatory Crim Law course.

Reproductive Rights Law & Justice Courses on the Rise but Only Available at 1 in 5 U.S. Law Schools

This post is written by Mariko Miki, Director of Academic & Professional Programs, Law Students for Reproductive Justice

The debate over reproductive rights –especially abortion rights— continues to dominate the political, legal, and social landscape in the U.S.  At the federal level, Congress recently attempted to defund Planned Parenthood, and abortion and contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act remains embattled. At the state level, between January and July 2011 alone, legislatures in 19 states passed 80 laws restricting abortion access; in no other year between 1985 and 2011 have states enacted so many restrictions. With the 2012 presidential election looming, women’s health will once again become a hot-button issue.