Jae Wakeling is a first-year student at Loyola Law School — she works full-time as a paralegal while attending Loyola’s hybrid evening program.
One thing that I heard a lot about prior to coming to law school was the importance of study groups, which I initially half dismissed and half scoffed at because when I was in undergrad (and even in high school) I absolutely HATED group work.
However, study groups have been indeed essential to ensuring I have been able to get through law school.
Before my Contracts midterm, one of my study group buddies (who commutes to school from Burbank) and I (I drive in from Irvine) had a three-hour long phone call where we went over our professor’s practice problems and talked through our analysis. Prior to my fall semester final exams, I hosted my friends over at my apartment a couple different times. We ordered pizza, went over practice problems, and talked through our outlines. I truly believe that these study sessions were the key to my success during exam season.
Law school exam questions (and therefore, law school overall) require different perspectives. You have to be able to attack questions from multiple angles and consider different arguments. For the evening program specifically, my study partners work for immigration advocacy groups, for huge entertainment groups, for tax and accountancy firms, etc. In other words, my friends not only bring their unique personal and cultural backgrounds but also have rich professional experience which elevates their thought process.
My study partners have helped me stay accountable by motivating me to get through more practice problems than I might have otherwise. They have talked me off the ledge when I started going down a rabbit hole when I was struggling through the “self-defense” aspect of intentional torts. Perhaps most importantly, law school is not an experience that you can get through alone, especially if you are simultaneously still working full-time. My friends I have met at Loyola have been an incredible balm for my mental health and general sanity. We vent to each other about law school stress, work-life balance, and they understand my current stressors like nobody else does. I think that’s why even though I didn’t really get the importance of study groups prior to starting law school, I’ve come to rely on my study group a lot to get through my time in law school.
TOPICS: 1E, Student Life