classroom

Cold Calling Is Good, Actually

/ Ian Hurley / Leave a comment

“I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me. Failure always made me try harder next time.” – Michael Jordan

One of the (many) things that causes law students the most angst is the dreaded cold call. The fear is so pronounced that before I even attended a single 1L class, BC Law had shown me the famous cold calling scene from Legally Blonde multiple times. I understand why cold calling induces anxiety, especially in your early days of law school when you have likely never experienced it in other classroom settings. To be clear, this post should not be taken to suggest that cold calling does not make me nervous or that I never get a cold call embarrassingly wrong (I definitely do). But getting things wrong is kind of the point of learning and law school; otherwise, we’d be practicing attorneys already. 

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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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A BC Law Bucket List — Five Things You Should Do Before Graduating

/ Tess Halpern / Leave a comment

As the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, it’s a sure sign that the school year is rapidly coming to an end. Graduation is nearing, and part of me feels like I’ve been at Boston College forever by now, but another part feels like three years have passed by with a blink. As I reflect on what is likely (definitely) my last year ever as a student, there are some experiences that I’m grateful to have had, but also some opportunities that I wish I hadn’t let slip by. If you have more than four weeks left in your time at BC Law, here’s a list of things I did that I would recommend to anyone, along with some things I wish I did when I had the chance.

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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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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.

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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.

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Conquering the Cold Call

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

I’ve only been in law school for a few weeks, and I’ve already been confronted with my biggest fear: the cold call. It’s unlikely that I’m alone in this. Like many of us, my initial visions of law school came from that scene in Legally Blonde where Elle was publicly shamed by the professor and kicked out of the classroom, with even the overachieving readers of Aristotle riddled with fear. 

The film’s exaggerations aside, I still felt daunted by the idea of entering a law school class. I won’t deny the panic I felt seeing the dreaded phrase on nearly every syllabus. “Why can’t I just answer when I feel like answering?” I could already picture it in my head: doing all the readings, knowing the cases front to back, and still freezing up the moment I get called on. It seemed like beyond all preparation, my mortification was inevitable. 

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How Law Students Can Use ChatGPT (Ethically)

/ Fiona Maguire / Leave a comment

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, has garnered much attention since its launch in November 2022. The program has the capability to generate text that closely mimics human writing in response to a given prompt, and its application has spanned across a range of fields from customer support to legal research. 

In an academic context, the conversation often revolves around how students are using the program to write their essays, final exams, and other assignments (Take a look at our recent Impact post In Re: ChatGPT). As a result, many educational institutions have established specific prohibitions on using the chatbot, with Best Colleges even publishing a list of bans. However, I think there is real value in ChatGPT for law students–as long as you use it appropriately.

“Used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool […], not something to be feared.”

– Adam Stevens, History Teacher
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Law School Core Classes as Tatte Desserts

/ Reilly Doak / Leave a comment

Tatte Bakery & Cafe is a Boston staple– with a location less than one mile from the Law School, it’s one of my favorite places to catch up with friends, splurge on a fancy coffee, treat myself to a baked pick-me-up, or do a little bit of reading with a change of scenery.

To give prospective law students an idea of what classes are like and current law students a sweet reprieve from their post-Spring Break deluge of work, I have assigned each legal core class a Tatte pastry that I feel most represents it. If your favorite class didn’t make the list, feel free to add it in the comments!

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In Re ChatGPT

/ Thomas R. Blakely / 1 Comment

Much like kids on a long drive playing “I spy” with passing cars, the modern news cycle is often ephemeral in its nervous fixations. Cases in point: a week spent earlier this year in a national discord over the topic of banning gas stoves; the tizzy over Chinese spy balloons; classified documents in a garage with Joe Biden’s Corvette; or any of the other made-for-breaking-news idée fixes that pass in and out of the national consciousness with mind-numbing regularity.

But ChatGPT–the new “generative AI” technology that can use artificial intelligence to produce strikingly well-written prose on the topic–has stuck around. Much like last year’s fanfare over generative art AI like “DALL-E” (which does a similar thing but with visual images), people seem both curious and fascinated by exploring this amusing new tool.

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