Intellectual Life

With 100 Things to Do, What’s One More: Why I Joined Client Counseling

/ Samantha Torre / Leave a comment

It’s October, and across Boston leaves are changing color, the sun is setting earlier, and Christmas decorations are making an – excessively – early appearance at Costco. More locally, on the Newton Campus, the word outline is being thrown around, you can’t go 30 feet without hearing someone stressed about a memo, and the realization that “Oh, the summer job hunt starts now,” has hit. 

With my packed to-do list staring me down everytime I open my daily planner, you might expect me to be hunkered down in a study room somewhere, noise canceling headphones in, ready to methodically complete all my assignments. Or, you might expect me to be darting in and out of office hours, trying to make sure I have the best understanding possible before I really sit down and begin exam prep. You might even expect me to be opening SAGE and starting my summer job search. 

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BC Eagles or Butterflies? I Say Both 

/ Malcolm Baytop / Leave a comment

Lately, law school feels like I am slowly emerging from the eye of a storm, armed with the certainty of its chaotic whirlwinds but anxious about how I will forge a path through it. As a 1L, the uptick in unfamiliar networking events and professional panels amidst the first-time memos and midterms makes the near future seem especially tumultuous. Many of my classmates surely feel the same. While I cannot stop the inevitability of our chaotic law school eras, I can offer some existential insight on navigating them based on my conveniently related interest in the butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect stems from the scientific study of chaos theory, which explains limitations to predictions in dynamic systems seemingly governed by deterministic laws. It captures how small changes in initial conditions within one area of a dynamic system can result in substantial effects in another. Explained metaphorically, this means that the mere flap of wings from a butterfly in one area of the world could cause a tornado elsewhere—or it could not. 

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“Proficient in Law, Grounded in Love:” Why BC Law is a Different Kind of Law School

/ Christine Lenahan / 1 Comment

1L orientation sometimes feels like trying to drink from a firehose. There’s so much crucial information being delivered, but it’s overwhelming to process it all while trying to navigate the maze of campus buildings—Stuart Hall to the East Wing, East Wing to the Yellow Room— and meeting professors and students who will surround and support your legal journey.

Amidst the flood of presentations on clinics, externships, career services, and the basics of legal education, one question lingers: When do we actually start “thinking like a lawyer”? Right now, I’m more concerned with absorbing all this information and keeping track of acronyms (CSO handles OCI… right?).

Then, on day two, a man in clerics appears in East Wing 115A/B. Enter Fr. Jack Butler.

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What Does “Are You IPTF” Mean? Let Me Explain.

/ Justin Sells / Leave a comment

I first heard someone ask that question as I passed through Stuart House my first week of 1L year. I thought to myself, what on Earth is “IPTF?” Is it an acronym signifying some state of mind, or perhaps some other law school-specific parlance related to the trials and tribulations of being a law student? I was never really good at keeping up with the lingo in high school or college, so to find a possible definition of “IPTF,” I first consulted a secondary source that some young people consider to be persuasive authority: Urban Dictionary. To spare you the trouble of visiting that source, it defined “IPTF” as follows verbatim (with typos): “‘iptf’ stands for I PITY THE FOO!!! famous saying of Mr. T”.

Not relying on a sole source, I continued my research and found that at Boston College Law School, “IPTF” actually stands for the “Intellectual Property and Technology Forum.” The IPTF is both a club and a student journal. As a club, the IPTF helps prepare students to be zealous advocates in intellectual property (IP) and technology law by hosting various guest speakers, firms, seminars, and “technology bootcamps,” and by connecting students with alumni of the IPTF who actively practice IP and technology law. As a student-run journal, the IPTF publishes legal scholarship with the goal of furthering the development of legal thought in IP law (including trade secrets, patents, trademarks, and copyright) and technology policy (including inter alia web-based civil liberties challenges, data privacy, and telecommunications law). 1

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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 / 1 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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