"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not!"
Rooted in the Jesuit tradition of Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Law School fosters a campus culture that sets it apart from other law schools. Rather than harden a law student into a competitor, LLS inspires them to become collaborators. As a result, my law school experience has been far less cutthroat than I expected.
In class, many of my peers are driven by the desire to succeed for themselves and for their future clients rather than the desire to see others fail. Because of this, I believe we’ve created a kind of safe space in Section D3—or at least as safe as it can feel when faced with cold calls, writing assignments, and other law school challenges. Elle Woods may have led others to believe law school is, like, not hard, but the reality is different. My classmates and I quickly realized just how hard the material was, and rather than struggle in stoic silence, we turned to each other and decided to form a study group.
Together, we drilled essays and multiple-choice questions, coordinated our Google calendars, and worked through hundreds of hypotheticals out loud. And, on the day I write this, we celebrated a birthday brunch and then studied over fries and iced vanilla lattes—a questionable combination that, somehow, helped me grasp the doctrines of impossibility, impracticability, and frustration of purpose before heading off to our contracts class.
LLS has challenged the idea that law school is purely competitive, proving that students can find a community of goal-driven and compassionate people in a rigorous academic environment.
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