advice

The 1L Summer Internship Search: Four Things to Keep in Mind

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

When I was a 1L, I thought I would secure my summer internship over winter break. However, I quickly realized that was a bit of a pipe dream as I kept applying to opportunities and getting little response. I wasn’t too concerned until February rolled around, when I started to fear it wouldn’t happen for me. I was a hard-working student! I had good grades! What if I never got an internship?!

If you’re at this point in your 1L summer internship search, be sure to remember the following:

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The Most Important Advice I’ve Received about My Summer Job Search

/ Michael Deere / Leave a comment

Along with every other 1L, I am applying for a summer job. I’ve been to networking events, workshops, panels, and how-tos. My notebook overflows with well-meaning advice and guidance. The problem is that none of it applies to me. I don’t have a resumé; I’ve never had one. 

I’m what people call a “non-traditional” law student. I came late to law school after building a career as a professor. I did have a distinguished undergraduate career, filled with awards, accolades and accomplishments. But I can’t put those things on my resumé. That was twenty some years ago. It would look weird, my notebook says. Out of place (underlined). They were important things. Bright, big things. They mattered then, and they matter now. But it won’t help me land a summer job. Employers don’t want to see that, quotes the notebook. So, /select/highlight/delete, and just like that, parts of my life are cut away. Besides, I need that space so I can focus on my strengths (circled; exclamation point). Because the resumé manuals tell me I have to…wait, where is it…oh, right. Lead with my core competencies (question mark). And above all, circled and twice underlined and given arrows all around it, the number-one-most-important-thing-to-remember-is…just be yourself!

But the problem with being yourself is that it’s hard to know who that is.

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4 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Panopto Recordings

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

When classes went remote during the Covid-19 pandemic, Boston College installed cameras in every classroom to record lectures. These videos are designed to encourage sick students to stay home, as they can now do so without falling behind on classes. However, there are many other ways to use these recordings to your advantage! Here are some tips for using “Panopto” this semester.

Review Material While Outlining

This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s probably the best use of Panopto recordings out there, so it’s worth mentioning. You won’t be able to watch every class lecture during finals week, so you shouldn’t rely on these recordings too much as the semester begins winding down. However, watching a class or two to refresh your memory on particularly challenging or confusing topics could be really useful.

I tend to only use these recordings during finals prep when I’m reviewing notes that no longer make sense to me. Going back to the Panopto from that class and watching the short clip where I took those notes can clear up a lot of confusion. This is a great way to quickly resolve an issue without halting your study progress to meet with a professor. Getting to the bottom of the confusion on your own will also help you remember the material better than you’d be able to if a peer simply told you the answer.

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Food Review: The Best Bagels Around BC Law

/ Travis Salters / 1 Comment

The Impact Blog is launching a new spotlight series focused on local foods! We believe that one of the most important features of an area is the food, and no one should need to search far for good options. We’ll provide critiques and reviews of foods in the immediate Newton area surrounding the BC Law campus. Not all establishments are made equal, so whether you’re planning on coming to BC Law or just recently moved to the area, we’ll try all the local spots so you don’t have to.

Our first review turns to an American staple that doesn’t receive the credit it deserves. An often overlooked, taken for granted, carb-y snack: BAGELS!

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11 Tips for Exam Season

/ Travis Salters / Leave a comment

Ahhhhhh. Deep Breath. Exam Season is upon us yet again.

For some of us at BC Law, exams simply need to come and go so that we can get on with our Winter Break. For others – particularly you 1Ls – these few weeks will be incredibly stressful as you try to figure out how to both study for and execute on exams, which are two distinct skills that each need attention. 

As we enter reading period, the BC Impact Bloggers compiled a list of 11 of our most effective exam strategies. Note: these are not necessarily academic strategies, but rather tips for enduring and persisting through this difficult time.

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A Neurodivergent Guide to Navigating Interviews as a Law Student

/ Jonathan Bertulis-Fernandes / Leave a comment

I have always found interviews challenging. As someone with a stutter and who identifies as neurodivergent, the interview format seems tailor made to cause me problems. Being a law student with a regular schedule of internship and fellowship applications has only added to my issues with them.

To me, the interview format is a uniquely discriminatory and exclusionary way of recruiting. Interviews feel inherently ableist because they benefit individuals who are able to perform in this very specific setting, while systematically disadvantaging individuals who cannot. Moreover, they provide a space for implicit bias to infect hiring processes and ensure that the same types of people get offered particular opportunities.1 This is a significant problem in the legal sector, where interviews effectively act as gatekeepers to a profession that is already overwhelmingly non-disabled and neurotypical (as well as white, straight, and cisgender).

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A Brief Guide to Selecting Your 1L Elective

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

At most law schools, the 1L curriculum is locked into place, meaning students don’t have the opportunity to customize their schedules. But BC Law gives 1Ls the unique opportunity to take an elective, allowing students to interact with peers from other sections, take a break from large doctrinal lectures, and get some experiential learning in a practice area of their choice.

Course selection is right around the corner at BC, so if you’re a 1L, you may be feeling pressure to pick the best elective. The common advice is that you’ll get a good experience out of any elective you choose, and I definitely stand by that. Yet, you should still take some time over the next few weeks to follow these steps so you can make sure you get the most out of your semester.

1. Read the elective descriptions

To help 1Ls choose their electives, professors provide little synopses about the goals of their courses, the material they cover, and in some cases, how their classes will be structured. If you haven’t already read the descriptions of the electives offered next semester, you can find them here.

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Law School Essentials: What You Need… and What You Don’t

/ Fiona Maguire / 1 Comment

When you’re starting law school, it can be hard to figure out what exactly you should be spending your money on. And as law students, we definitely don’t have money to waste. Here are a few products that my peers and I believe are “must-haves”–and a few you can skip.

Best things we bought for law school:

  1. Desktop monitor

Being able to plug in your laptop to a desktop monitor (or better yet – a dual monitor, check this thing out) is extremely helpful. If you’re taking any finals from home or working on a research project, eliminating the constant minimizing between programs is a huge time saver.

  1. Quimbee

Quimbee is an online subscription that provides access to case briefs, study-aids, practice questions, and more. I’m not suggesting that you should rely on Quimbee in place of reading cases, but it is a great supplement. I find the videos the most helpful. 

  1. OneNote

I’ve mentioned this before, but I truly can’t say enough good things about Microsoft OneNote. You can easily organize your class notes over the semesters and even embed professor’s powerpoints. Plus, your notes will always be safely in the cloud, accessible from any computer or on the mobile app.

  1. Noise canceling headphones

Sometimes I like to throw on some Lofi study music, and other days I just put them on silent to cancel out distractions. They are a great investment, especially if you plan on working in common areas like the library. 

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Live, Laugh, Love Tax

/ Melissa Gaglia / Leave a comment

Much like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, I came to law school to find love. Well, sorta… Unlike Ms. Woods, my love story is with the practice area of tax law. 

To be completely candid, I had no intention of becoming a tax attorney when I first applied to law school. I didn’t even intend to ever take a tax class. From the moment I signed up for the LSAT, my Uncle John, who is a CPA, always claimed I was going to be a tax attorney, and I always dismissed him. Tax law, for me, was like the quiet nerd the main character in a rom-com takes forever to see as more than just a friend. 

My “meet cute” with Tax was when I had the last pick time to sign up for classes for my 2L fall, and it was one of the only classes open that fit into my schedule. My Uncle John is always badgering me about becoming a tax attorney, I thought. Why don’t I take Tax I, ultimately fail it, and then never hear or speak of tax law again?

Spoiler alert: This ended up being far from the truth. 

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How to Leverage Social Media as Your Professional Brand

/ kristievhoang / Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: BC Law is launching a TikTok channel! Follow us @bclawonline.

You can’t BeReal if you’re in law school. 

Wipe your social media — make a pseudo Instagram handle, private your Twitter, and maybe even delete your Facebook if you’re feeling up to it. This is the advice commonly distributed to incoming law students and applicants alike across online law school forums. 

This advice is understandable these days, since employers Google everything, and law students have character and fitness standards to follow in order to be eligible to graduate and take the bar. This privatization movement strikes at the heart of #LawTok, though. 

#LawTok is a TikTok hashtag categorizing videos dedicated about — you guessed it — the legal field. #LawTok videos range from videos about navigating On Campus Interviews, networking tips, the latest Supreme Court case to hit the docket, and more. #LawTok boasts 1.7 billion views as of this article’s publication. 

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