The Importance of Study Groups

Hopeful sports lawyer turning the academic study of law and history into practice

LLS is known for being a “friendly” law school, and that makes a huge difference. I quickly realized that law school requires sacrifices- unfortunately, this can mean not seeing friends and family as often as we might like. This means our classmates understand our struggle more than anyone, so we must lean on each other, even in a competitive environment.

Admittedly, I was slow to join a study group. I tend to be shy and reserved and built habits around solo studying in college and graduate school. While studying alone has benefits, discussing the material and sharing practice problems together helped me try out different ways of “attacking” exam essays. One of our professors even suggested texting him while we studied if we had questions, which we did (sometimes quite late at night!). Study groups are great practice for real world law.

The best practice I have learned in working collaboratively is always to offer something before asking for something. Classmates are usually happy to help, but it is also useful real world practice to be a good colleague. This means doing our own preparation so we can maximize our study group time.

TOPICS: 1L, Exams & Finals, JD Day, Peers & Colleagues