Intellectual Life

These New BC Law Employment Numbers are Crazy Good

/ kristievhoang / Leave a comment

Numbers talk. 

BC Law’s Career Services office submitted its employment data to the American Bar Association this past month. Of a class of 243 students, 239 (or 97.9%) were employed, with 96.7% in a full-time, long-term, bar-passage required or JD advantage position.

72% were employed in law firms, and 22% were employed in positions in government, public interest, or a judicial clerkship. Massachusetts was the most popular destination for students post-graduation, with New York and California following behind. 

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Five Tips for Success When Applying for Law Review

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

As one of the Editors in Chief of the Boston College Law Review this year—and in keeping with my general life goal of seeking to encourage as many people as possible to consider law review—I thought I’d put together some quick tips for success in the application process. For my dear anxious 1Ls: I was in your shoes two years ago. I was exhausted. I was limping towards the summer break and trying to wrap my head around the commerce clause. But I did the application and got offered a spot on law review. And you can too. Here are my top tips for journal application success:

  1. Treat it like a job

Channel your inner Dolly Parton and treat putting together your journal application materials as a job. Take a couple of days off to recover from the post-finals malaise, then hit the ground running (but within the confines of an eight-hour-workday). Start work on the materials at 9 and finish at 5. You do not have to spend all of your waking hours on the materials—see my next point.

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Four Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2L

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

With less than a month before finals, the reality has dawned on me. After I take my last final for Con Law, on May 13, I’ll officially be done with 1L. Law school, thus far, has been a rewarding experience. I’ve learned more about the law than I could’ve ever imagined possible in just one year. 

Here’s what I’m looking forward to as I take the next step in my law school journey. 

  1. More free time 

Let’s face it. The 1L schedule is rough. In one way, it’s great to come away with exposure to all different types of law. But I definitely won’t miss the 8:30 am-4:30 pm school days. The main piece of reassurance I’ve received from my older peers has been that “it only gets better from here.” Having more of a work-life balance next year will certainly help. 

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Human Rights Field Trip: From BC to DC

/ Alex Mostaghimi / Leave a comment

“We of this Western Hemisphere, by movements such as that symbolized by this building, have taken great strides toward securing permanent peace among ourselves.” These were the words of Teddy Roosevelt dedicated to the Pan-American Union Building built in 1910. Only a few blocks from the White House, it now stands as the headquarters for the Organization of American States and was the setting for the BC Law Human Rights Elective and International Human Rights Practicum field trip in 2024.

The Pan American Union, a sort-of United Nations exclusively for the Americas, would transform into the Organization of American States in 1948. All 34 independent nations of the Americas hold membership within the organization and while it does not loom large in the American political imagination, it holds greater significance to Latin and Central American and Caribbean nations.

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5 Reasons to Join Law Review

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

Over the next few weeks, Boston College Law Review will begin its outreach and recruitment program to encourage 1Ls to consider applying to become a staff member next year. The annual journal information session will be held on Tuesday, April 9 on Zoom (details to be circulated nearer the time) and there will also be a range of other opportunities to speak to current staff members and learn more about the different journal opportunities at BC. With this in mind, I thought I’d write a post to share some of the main reasons I think 1Ls should consider joining law review.

The first thing I think it’s important to say is that no one must do law review. I repeat: no one must do law review. And no one should feel pressured to do law review if they’re not interested. If you genuinely don’t want to do law review, two years as a staff member will be an unhappy experience. I would be the first person to tell you not to apply if you definitely don’t want to do it. But I do feel strongly that no one should self-select out of applying because they think it’s not for them. 

Everyone knows the discourse around the potential career benefits of joining law review. There are lots of other articles that discuss this and I intend to leave it to those authors to make their case. I just wanted to share some reasons why you might want to think about joining law review, building on previous posts on this blog in years past such as this and this.

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7 Realistic Ways to Start Preparing for Finals Now

/ Reilly Doak / Leave a comment

If your last semester’s GPA wasn’t what you hoped, there’s still time to improve! Although this article is geared towards 1Ls, I’ve followed these tips throughout my law school career.

It’s true that 1L grades set the tone for summer internships and OCI, but demonstrating improvement, resilience, and an ability to learn from past mistakes can be similarly valuable in your job search. Below I’ve included some tips that helped me significantly improve my 1L GPA between my first and second semesters. Remember that at the end of the day, your best is enough!

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Finding Joy in Unexpected Places (the Trusts and Estates Classroom)

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

After the fall semester of my 2L year, I essentially decided to stop taking doctrinal courses. I did take Evidence and Corporations — because the bar exam is something that I’ll have to pass at some point — but I spent most of my time in either clinics or in classes focused more on experiential learning than casebook reading. I learned the ins and outs of Lexis and Westlaw in Advanced Legal Research, represented real clients in the Civil Rights Clinic, and practiced my oral advocacy in the Supreme Court Experience, but I didn’t spend many hours briefing cases or creating outlines.

As much as I loved this change of pace after 1L year, when it came time to pick classes for my last semester at BC Law, I knew it was time to get back into the doctrinal mindset. The bar was now looming closer and closer, and I had only taken two exams in an entire calendar year. Don’t get me wrong, I still was going to take Trial Practice, but I was also going to buck up and finally get around to taking Administrative Law and *gulp* Trusts and Estates.

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Write or Wrong: Is Creative Writing Helpful In Law School?

/ Eddie Godino / Leave a comment

Over a year ago – before I had even started my 1L year – I wrote my first post for the Impact Blog, which was largely about whether I felt moving from creative writing to law would be a smooth transition. With three semesters now under my belt (and the weariness to show for it), I thought it would be fun to revisit that topic and see just how accurate my predictions were.  

My perhaps overly-optimistic younger self believed that law school could be a progression of the creative writing skills I developed in college; that much of what I learned would carry over into the legal world. While that belief wasn’t 100% false, it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that. 

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I Used to Be Normal. Then I Went to Law School

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

I used to be normal. With normal ideas about normal things. You know, everyday stuff. I knew that only people could be people. I knew that property divided broadly into “houses and similar,” “cars and similar,” and “other.” I understood the Constitution. And I didn’t have this recurring dream where I’m waiting for a train and fireworks are going off, but instead of pinwheel lights and colorful explosions, the fireworks spell out “No Liability Without Fault.” The law (and lawyers…) was something best left alone unless absolutely necessary, and when it was necessary, I imagined it looked a lot like Judge Judy’s courtroom. It was a simpler time, with simple ideas and dreamless sleep.

Then I started law school.

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Six Tips I’ve Learned from 1L Year (So Far)

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

Entering the second semester of 1L, I’m definitely a little burned out. But I’m no longer burdened by the uncertainty I had when I came to law school. I’m a little wiser now. Here is what I wish I knew for my first semester of law school. 

  1. Prepare for every class like you’re on call. 

Many of us get to experience the luxury of not being on call every day. For all of my first semester classes, I either had an on-call day or panel system. In one of my classes, I wasn’t called on until the very end, so I prepared each and every Wednesday, week after week to be ready. A little annoying, but it paid off. This may seem obvious, but letting your mind think you’re always on call makes your understanding that much better. While not always feasible, it pays off in the long run – you’ve had more time to process the material and it makes finals season that much easier. 

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