As finals season approaches, many of us are buried in our textbooks, reviewing case briefs, finalizing outlines and memos, and visiting professors during office hours. In doing so, a few may have encountered the doctrine of “implied warranty of fitness.” For some, this doctrine might sound familiar from contract law.¹ For others, it might sound familiar from property law.² But the “implied warranty of fitness” I’m referring to exists beyond model codes, cases, and classrooms: the implied need to be physically and mentally fit. 

For newly minted 1Ls, law school has shown us that we constantly engage in rigorous and complex thought processes, from comprehending unnecessarily convoluted cases and writing legal memos to pondering hypotheticals and participating in competitions. These “mental gymnastics” require countless hours studying in the library and at home on top of regularly scheduled class time—all of which is spent sitting down. Evidently, life in the legal world is largely sedentary, which makes sense considering that physical fitness is neither an ABA requirement nor testable material on the UBE.

I am guilty of missing workout days to keep up with assigned readings and to proofread major graded assignments like the Law Practice I legal memo. But when skipping exercise becomes a regular habit, fueled by excuses such as “I’ve got too much work today,” “I’m too tired,” or “the weather is terrible,” we impede our classroom performance.³ The irony is that by replacing exercise with study time to increase our class performance, our cognitive abilities—or the capacity to perform the “mental gymnastics” referenced earlier—decrease due to inactivity.⁴

Physical exercise produces several positive cognitive benefits that translate into better classroom performance.⁵ Research shows that moderate-intensity exercise enhances cognitive flexibility and working memory, while high-intensity exercise enhances the speed of information processing.⁶ Physical exercise also decreases anxiety, depression, tension, and headaches—all inhibitors to effective classroom performance.⁷ It is well established that critical reading is one of the most important skills that help determine the success of students in law school.⁸ It is also extensively reported that law students must often re-read text when attempting to analyze and comprehend it.⁹ If—through regular exercise—we can enhance our cognitive flexibility, working memory, and information processing while simultaneously decreasing the above-mentioned inhibitors to classroom performance, we will likely be able to analyze and comprehend assigned readings, exam questions, and other texts more effectively.¹⁰

One might ask, “Where can I conduct this exercise you speak of?” One obvious way is to sign up for a gym membership at the Margot Connell Recreation Center on campus. The center has everything one could hope for in a gym, including free weights, basketball courts, a running track, and even ping-pong tables. If that does not suffice, you can also get a private gym membership in the Newton area. For those interested in a more exhilarating workout, try signing up at a boxing gym or a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school. I personally enjoy boxing at Everybody Fights in the Seaport on weekends and have considered signing up at Gracie Barra Boston to continue Brazilian jiu-jitsu training. These are intense full-body workouts that will keep you physically fit. Additionally, there are plenty of students on campus who come together and play sports like basketball and tennis or run marathons. Ask around and participate in these activities, or start an activity of your own and send out some invites!

If none of these activities are possible, you can still perform exercises at home. Analogous to the model codes we have all covered at some point in class, I humbly posit a model code-of-sorts for an at-home core workout, which can be amended in any way to accommodate your needs and level of physical fitness. It is the Army West Point Boxing Team core workout, which is especially challenging (see a diagram of the stated exercises here): 

Set 1: 60x crunches, 60x sitting twists, 60x flutter kicks.

Rest for 30 seconds.

Set 2: 60x crunches, 60x V-ups, 60x scissor kicks.

Rest for 30 seconds.

Set 3: 60x crunches, 60x bicycle crunches, 3-minute plank.

Exercise complete.

Alternatively, you can do push-ups, body-weight squats, jump rope, jog, or go for a walk, which is great to do around campus or the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Set aside at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week to perform the above-mentioned physical activities or some other physical activity—no excuses.¹¹

But whatever you do, don’t breach the implied warranty of fitness. You just might get sued.

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Justin Sells is a first-year student at BC Law and brand new Impact blogger. Contact him at sells@bc.edu.

1. See U.C.C. § 2-315 (Unif. L. Comm’n 1977). ↩︎
2. See Reste Realty Corp. v. Cooper, 251 A.2d 268, 271-72 (N.J. 1969). ↩︎
3. See John J. Mitchell et al., Exploring the associations of daily movement behaviours and mid-life cognition: a compositional analysis of the 1970 British Cohort Study, 77 J Epidemiol Cmty. Health 189, 192 (Jan. 23, 2023), http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2022-219829 (finding that skipping exercise in favor of eight minutes of sedentary behavior decreases cognition scores by 1-2%). ↩︎
4. See id.; Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Skipping exercise in favor of sitting can worsen brain function, study finds, NBC News (Jan. 23, 2023), https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/skipping-exercise-favor-sitting-can-worsen-brain-function-study-finds-rcna66617#. ↩︎
5. See, e.g., Laura Mandolesi et al., Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive Functioning and Wellbeing: Biological and Psychological Benefits, 9 Frontiers in Psych. 1, 6 (Apr. 27, 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00509. ↩︎
6. E.g., id. ↩︎
7. See, e.g., id. at 4. ↩︎
8. Ann Gallagher, Key Skills Needed for Law School, and How They Continue to Shape the LSAT, Law School Admissions Council (Oct. 4, 2019), https://www.lsac.org/blog/key-skills-needed-law-school-and-how-they-continue-shape-lsat. ↩︎
9. See, e.g., Jennifer M. Cooper & Regan A. R. Gurung, SMARTER LAW STUDY HABITS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF LAW LEARNING STRATEGIES AND RELATIONSHIP WITH LAW GPA, 62 St. Louis L. Rev. 361, 363 (2018), https://www.slu.edu/law/law-journal/pdfs/issues-archive/v62-no2/jennifer_cooper_and_regan_gurung_article.pdf. ↩︎
10. See id.; Mandolesi et al., supra note 5 at 4. ↩︎
11. How much physical activity do adults need?, Ctr. for Disease Control and Prevention (June 2, 2022), https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm. ↩︎