advice

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

/ Michael Deere / 1 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.

Continue reading →

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. 

Continue reading →

My 2024 Law School Resolutions

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

After a long, relaxing, and unproductive break, we’re back at school. While it can be nerve-wracking to start a new semester, with new classes, professors, and expectations to manage, it can also be a chance for a fresh start. We like to set resolutions for ourselves each new year to (hopefully) guide how we’ll live moving forward, but as law students, the same practice can be useful before returning to the classroom. Here are three of my resolutions for this semester that I think could be beneficial for us all.

Outline (Semi) Regularly

I’ve heard the advice that law students should add to their outlines every week, and I even know students who follow this practice. While that sounds borderline impossible for me, I also recognize that my strategy of waiting to outline until classes end is also…not ideal.

Continue reading →

Get to Know the CSO: Michelle Grossfield

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

A career services advisor can be an amazing resource in law school as you navigate OCI, externships, clerkship applications, and more. However, it’s important that you find the advisor who can best help you reach your personal goals! To do so, follow along with this new series to learn about each CSO advisor at Boston College Law School. Here is our interview with Michelle Grossfield.

What was your path to the CSO, and why did you choose to go into career advising?

After law school, I practiced child welfare law at the public defender’s office in Massachusetts. It was an incredibly rewarding and challenging experience to represent children, families, and legal guardians in the Juvenile and Probate and Family courts in Plymouth and Worcester counties. The stakes in care and protection matters are incredibly high for families, given the fact that parental rights can be terminated, and parents may have no ability for future contact during a child’s upbringing. I was fortunate to have excellent mentors, colleagues, and training early on in my career, and was honored to advocate for the children, mothers, fathers, and parental figures appointed to me as they navigated incredible societal barriers and multiple complex systems.

Continue reading →

Sticks and Stones: Handling Confrontation Like a Lawyer

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

Today’s guest post is written by Glenn Cunha, a Boston College graduate, BC Law adjunct professor, a former managing attorney of the Criminal Bureau in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and retired Massachusetts Inspector General. He is currently serving as a special prosecutor to the Suffolk County District Attorney.

Please note that today’s post contains language and situations that may be upsetting.

As lawyers, we sometimes take for granted the skills we hav‌e honed over the years during law school and in practice. I wanted to become a lawyer when I realized I could have a career based on talking, arguing and going after bullies. It’s just who I am.  Teachers, family members, coaches and friends would always tell me that I would make a good lawyer someday.

The legal skills we use — advocacy, quick thinking, level headedness — are skills I’ve had my whole life. I certainly refined them as a law student and throughout my career but because they are so natural to me, I tend to think everyone has them. After a situation this past summer, it became apparent to me that this isn’t necessarily true.

Continue reading →

Get to Know the CSO: Chris Teague

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

A career services advisor can be an amazing resource in law school as you navigate OCI, externships, clerkship applications, and more. However, it’s important that you find the advisor who can best help you reach your personal goals! To do so, follow along with this new series to learn about each CSO advisor at Boston College Law School. Here is our interview with Chris Teague.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in law school, and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge in law school came during the spring semester of my 1L year. I started the semester very excited to take a class that was closely related to the type of law I wanted to practice, but much to my surprise, I ended up hating the class. This really threw me for a loop because I was one of those students who came to law school knowing EXACTLY what they wanted to do with their degree. When I realized I didn’t enjoy the class, I started to feel kind of lost. I had been so hyper-focused on one practice area that it was hard for me to start thinking about what my other options might be.

Continue reading →

Get to Know the CSO: Amy Kolb

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

A career services advisor can be an amazing resource in law school as you navigate OCI, externships, clerkship applications, and more. However, it’s important that you find the advisor who can best help you reach your personal goals! To do so, follow along with this new series to learn about each CSO advisor at Boston College Law School. Here is our interview with Amy Kolb.

What’s the best piece of career advice you can offer students?

I think it’s important for students to stay flexible and open-minded during their job searches and throughout their careers. By approaching a job search with an adaptable mindset, students may discover unexpected interests and opportunities they would’ve otherwise overlooked.

Continue reading →

The Implied Warranty of Fitness

/ Justin Sells / Leave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Get to Know the CSO: Dorothy Commons

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

A career services advisor can be an amazing resource in law school as you navigate OCI, externships, clerkship applications, and more. However, it’s important that you find the advisor who can best help you reach your personal goals! To do so, follow along with this new series to learn about each CSO advisor at Boston College Law School. Here is our interview with Dorothy Commons.

What’s the best piece of career advice you can offer students?

Believe in yourself and embrace a growth mindset. As an advisor, I often browse through LinkedIn to identify alums who are in certain practice areas or settings, and while doing so, I come across many who I worked with when they were law students. This has become a fun practice, because our alums are doing some really cool things with their careers — which should be no surprise because, like you, they are smart people who went to a great law school! I often notice that many are in very different positions from the first ones they had, and some have pivoted a few times. I know some started with what they thought was their dream job, and others began in positions they knew they would move on from. The common thread here is that they worked hard, remained curious, believed in themselves, and moved forward. 

All the stresses of law school can, at times, make some students doubt themselves, and the stress of any job search is real. But please remember that you are here for a reason. Believing in yourself, putting yourself out there again and again, and reflecting on your experiences will help you learn, grow, and find opportunities. 

Continue reading →

A Note to Public Interest-Minded Students

/ Haley Cole / Leave a comment

Entering law school with a focus on public interest can be a daunting process, especially at a school where the majority of students end up going into Big Law. You may have started school with the conviction that public interest was your calling – but what does it mean to engage in that kind of work? 

The diversity of paths within the public interest field can provide some comfort, but it can be overwhelming to navigate law school without a clear understanding of what this work really entails. It’s challenging to stay steadfast in your public interest passions when the first year of law school emphasizes concrete doctrinal teachings and does not elaborate on the abstract idea of what it is to be a lawyer. If you’ve found yourself questioning your goals or feeling lost on how to explore the broad field of public interest work, I want to offer some advice. 

Continue reading →