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.
Happy New Year! The dreaded question I got the most over winter break was “How did exams go?” My standard response was . . . “Well, they went.”
I admit, I do exaggerate a little. All in all, exams did not go bad at all. As an evening student, I only had two exams – a Torts midterm and a Contracts final, and they were both spaced a week a part so I had time to shift my focus from Torts to Contracts without my head feeling like it was spinning too much.
As soon as my exams were over, however, I had a different reason for staying up late and keeping busy – the law firm I work for has been gearing up for a trial that starts in mid-January. Pretrial deadlines (such as the filing of motions in limine, which is when a party requests that the Court order that none of the parties are allowed to use a certain piece of evidence at trial, usually arguing that the evidence in question is prejudicial and/or irrelevant to the case) had started during my law school finals and continued up until New Year’s Eve. So a majority of my holiday break was spent in front of my computer, preparing filings and refreshing PACER. Fun!
But – despite the less than ideal timing, there is nothing quite like the adrenaline of preparing for trial. After literal years of cooking on a case, trial is the ultimate culmination of all your efforts. This case that I am working on in particular is close to my heart because it is the first ever case I ever worked on – I listened in on the intake on my first day as a paralegal and three years later we are heading to trial to get a final resolution on behalf of our clients.
This isn’t my first trial – I was able to assist on a different one a year ago – but back then I did not have the rich legal context that my first semester at Loyola provided me. The res ipsa loquitur jury instruction would have just looked like gibberish to 2024 Jae, but 2026 Jae has a semester of Torts under her belt and is now able to actually follow along with what is happening.
TOPICS: 1E, 1E, Hybrid JD