advice

What’s the Deal with the 1L Elective?

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

We’re nearing the end of the fall semester, and course registration is almost upon us. For 1Ls, that means being able to choose your spring 1L elective. While the idea of an extra class may seem overwhelming, for me, the 1L elective ended up being an opportunity to discover a new area of the law.

The 1L electives fall into three buckets. The large majority are “Experiential” classes that allow 1Ls to gain practical knowledge from practitioners, in topics ranging from Mergers & Acquisitions to Criminal Law to Work Law. Some are “Perspectives” courses which push students to think about the meaning of “law” and “justice” through the humanities and social sciences. My 1L elective, Introduction to Human Rights, Refugee, & Humanitarian Law, was a Perspectives course, and taught me both the successes and challenges of defining and litigating human rights issues. Our class also visited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C. to see this work in action (check out Alex’s great article about the trip!). Finally, the policy-oriented courses, like Restorative Justice in Courts, take a critical look at our legal institutions and explore pathways for reform. 

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The Most Important Thing I’ve Learned About Law School So Far: The “I Love Me More” Approach

/ Alexandra Staller / Leave a comment

Now more than halfway through my first law school semester, the initial warnings and disclaimers that I had been told before coming are starting to make sense. This line I am walking between letting law school take over my time and giving myself time to breathe is one I find becomes blurry depending on what my days or weeks look like. For example, last week my section had our first memo draft due on Friday. On top of all the other classwork I had, all I could think about was the memo. Wake up: memo. Drive to school: memo. Read my Contracts cases: memo. Fold my laundry: memo. Call Mom: memo.

One night as I was laying in bed, I felt an overwhelming wave of law school rise over me. My post-9pm thoughts were racing, and I wondered if this was the thing that was bound to happen that would stick with me until my graduation in May 2027: that all I am is law school. 

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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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Does a “Not Real Job” On a Resume Mean Anything? Yes, and Here’s Why.

/ Catherine Beveridge / Leave a comment

The fall feels like the time of year everyone works on their resumes. Along with the changing New England leaves and pumpkin spice lattes, current and prospective law students all partake in a seasonal refresh after a busy summer. 

It was before one of these seasonal resume workshops I heard a common talking point. 

“Oh I’ve never had a real job.” 

“Is it bad that I have no political work on my resume?” 

“I was stuck working retail during the pandemic.”

This is an anxiety that many, if not all, law students have encountered at some point. Maybe it was during our application process, or maybe it’s manifesting now. We fear our experiences are not relevant to this field. Our skills from assisting with college orientation to dishwashing are not applicable to being an attorney. 

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Past Experience Pays Off: How A Podcasting Career Prepared Me For 1L

/ Ian Hurley / Leave a comment

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

A little more than four years ago, I found myself in the producer’s chair, attempting to put together my first podcast for Wondery Media. The episode centered around a mystery story, one that remains unsolved. It was no unsolved murder or whodunit yarn, but instead a tale about what happened to a 7-foot 900 lbs bronze statue of Joe Paterno, the disgraced former-head football coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. The statue disappeared in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal that rocked the State College community back in 2011 and led to Paterno’s firing; a previously unbelievable outcome for a coach who at that time led the NCAA in career victories. The whereabouts of the statue remain unknown, and while that mystery remained, what became clear to me as I bumbled my way through putting that story together was just how little I knew about what an adequate producer does every day. 

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Why I’m Okay with Being a ‘Non-Traditional Student’

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

I’ve never quite belonged in law school. I was told when I started the application process – and many times since – that I’m a ‘non-traditional’ student, which seemed mainly to mean that I was older than everybody else. I didn’t mind; I am older than everybody else. But before law school I never thought of myself as non-traditional. Or old, for that matter. Now it feels like I’m inescapably both, whether I like it or not.

Law school is hard enough without being told you don’t ‘really’ fit in – and that’s ultimately what being ‘non-traditional’ means. You don’t fit in. And in truth, I don’t. For one thing, people call me by my first name here all the time. Outside of a doctor’s office or Starbucks, I haven’t heard my first name this much in twenty years. It was always “Professor Deere,” or “Dr. Deere,” or just…Deere. Which is what I was before all this first-name calling business.

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Making the Most out of 3L Year in the AG’s Office

/ Eddie Godino / Leave a comment

I’ve heard many of my peers say that they think law school should only last two years. I see their point – after all, many of the subjects on the bar are covered in the very first year of law school. But beyond that, it can be strange to go from the classroom, to working in the summer, then readjusting to the classroom all over again. Particularly after 2L summer, when many students take on more substantial roles as summer associates and law clerks, it can feel like a regression to go back to class – especially if you already know where you’ll be working after graduation.

But law school is three years – not two. And although I’ve only just started my 3L year, I’m becoming more convinced that that’s a good thing.

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How Can Line Dancing Help Reframe 1L September? Let Me Explain.

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

By Catherine Beveridge

As a 1L, you might think the torrent of information coming your way will start to slow after orientation. We covered the major bases like the academic success program, experiential learning, the job search, and even heard an inspirational talk with Fr. Jack Butler. However, when classes start, it ramps up even higher. Every club has an introductory meeting, networking events pop up, and the career office promised to leave you alone but here they are with a resume workshop right as you want to go home on a Friday afternoon. 

After another day of classes, introductory meetings and workshops I found myself on my bed, exhausted and staring face-up at the ceiling. That was when I discovered a way to step back. 

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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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Two Weddings, a Funeral, and a Naturalization Ceremony

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

Two weddings, a funeral, and a naturalization ceremony. This pretty much sums up my time in law school, in many ways. I lost my dad suddenly at the end of my 1L Spring semester (during finals: really wouldn’t recommend). During my 2L and 3L years I had two weddings: one in the U.S. and one in the U.K., where I grew up and my family still live. (For the sake of clarity: these weddings were to the same person. I’m nothing if not consistent.) And after having lived in the U.S. since 2016, I became a citizen in February of last year.

Of course, my time in law school was marked by a great deal more. But, when I think back to my time at BC Law, these are the progress points—the proverbial highway markers as it were—that map out the last three years for me temporally. These events were the points at which “life” most intruded into law school. Law school is all-consuming in a way I do not think I fully comprehended before I began my 1L year. I had worked for five years before returning to school, including three and a half years in a high-pressure role in New York City. But nothing prepared me for the way that law school threatened to take over and take me away from my sense of self. The death of my father, marrying my wife, cementing my life over in the U.S.: these were the events and the life-is-what-happens-to-you-while-you’re-busy-making-other-plans moments that burst the illusion of the bubble of law school for me. 

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