With the last set of exams of my law school career approaching, I recall overhearing a conversation by two students stating that they wish they were geniuses. I completely agree. It would be nice to have a mind that reads a fact pattern once and spots every issue instantly while simultaneously drafting a well written IRAC (preferably IRAHNC) argument. Who wouldn’t want to join the Order of Coif without breaking a sweat? If this thought has creeped into your mind while you are outlining at 2 AM, don’t worry. I’ve done the research into becoming a genius and put it into practice for both of us. The answer lies in a three-step process that requires isolation, introspection, and creation.
Continue readingmental health
The AI Arms Race: A Modern Prisoner’s Dilemma
This week was “AI” week in LP.
Westlaw introduced CoCounsel. Lexis rolled out Protégé.
And my professor made a comment that felt bigger than she probably intended: It makes her depressed that as soon as we learn something about AI, ten minutes later AI has already evolved.
Continue readingBoston’s Best Running Routes
When it comes to running cities, Boston is one of the best you’ll find in the United States. Most people know it for the Boston Marathon, which attracts thousands of celebrated marathoners from around the world every April, but what makes the city a regular runner’s dream is the fact that it has so many varied and lengthy running routes for everyone to enjoy, from the weekend warriors to the elite-level athletes. Over the past 18 months, I have tried to explore as many of these routes as the weather and my body’s limitations would allow. Having gained all that experience, I want to share my five favorites for any BC Law student—or anyone else who stumbles upon this post—to use as a guide for their own running adventures.
Continue readingFeeling Unproductive? Try Catching a Breath of Fresh Air!
During my 1L spring semester, an email advertising Academic Success Program Director Nina Farber’s Productivity Labs caught my attention. Thinking to myself, “who wouldn’t want to be more productive,” I filled out the sheet and awaited the results. Thankfully, I was accepted, and over the course of the next few weeks, I met once a week with Nina, alongside several other students, learning strategies catered towards studying, meditating, and test taking. One lesson of the program that has remained in my arsenal of tactics against unproductivity is breathing, particularly breathwork.
Continue readingSeven Miles, Four Left Turns, and One Very Bad Idea
Over Fall Break this past October, I went for my first outdoor run in Randolph.
It was also the first time in my life that I ended up on crutches.
Continue readingThe Opportunity Cost of Early BigLaw Recruiting
It’s your first semester of law school at BC Law. It’s been just a few weeks since orientation, and you’re trying to get your footing. Torts makes sense, because slapping someone is obviously a battery. Contracts feels manageable too; you think about your apartment lease, or your brother’s offer to buy you McDonald’s, to think through offer and acceptance. Law Practice is a bit frustrating because you’re expected to learn the Bluebook on the fly. And Civ Pro? You have no idea what’s going on there—but that’s a problem for later.
Meanwhile, you’re figuring out how to be a law student. Do you take notes like you did in undergrad, buy color-coded notebooks to handwrite in class, or type a near-transcript of everything your professor says? When do you start outlining—and what even is an outline? Will you sound stupid if you go to office hours to ask about Twombly? And then there’s the club fair. Should you apply to that 1L Representative position for the Law Student Association? Or for the Business Law Society? Both would look great on your resume. But not too many commitments so soon—you still need time to read your cases, pour hours into over-detailed briefs, and prepare for class. Maybe one club application and casual involvement in the others will be enough for now.
Continue readingFour Tips for Navigating Grade Disappointment
Once again I am directly addressing the 1L class, and also airing out my dirty laundry. Everything I write below—like all my Impact posts—is what I wish someone could have told me before coming to school. As always, all opinions and experiences are my own, as I can only speak to what I endured during my 1L year.
“Endure” will be the theme here. It’s a strong word I typically find only in my romantasy books. Merriam-Webster tells us it means “to remain firm under suffering or misfortune without yielding.” Very dramatic. But to say a student endures his or her 1L year does not fail to satisfy Merriam-Webster’s definition. Some of you may feel like you’re hanging by a thread, trying to go through the motions of law school one day at a time. You are enduring.
Continue readingRealistic Resolutions for a 1L (That I Might Actually Keep)
By January of 1L year, the idea of a “New Year’s resolution” feels ambitious at best and slightly delusional at worst. After surviving fall finals and learning, the hard way, what doesn’t work, I’m setting a few resolutions for second semester. Nothing revolutionary, just realistic enough that I might actually end up doing them.
Continue readingEscaping the 2L Doldrums (A Tortured Sailing Metaphor)
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion:
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1834)
Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, I remember learning about the so-called ‘age of exploration’, probably an aged moniker today, but hey, this was *gasp* the late-90s. One thing that stuck with me from all those lessons about Christopher Columbus’s supposed ‘discovery’ of the new world, Ferdinand Magellan’s unceremonious demise in Southeast Asia, and Henry Hudson’s ill-fated attempt(s) to uncover a waterway that linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and so on, is a rather minor aspect of wind-based sea travel: getting stuck in the doldrums.
Continue readingThe Hardest Part of 1L (It’s Not the Readings)
Arriving at BC Law this past August brought a rush of excitement. I’d known I wanted to be a lawyer all of my life, and had been building toward this step for just as long. After growing up on crime- and law-themed TV shows like Law & Order, I completed two legal internships in college, wrote my senior honors thesis on a legal topic, and worked at a personal injury law firm for two years after graduation. So when I was admitted to the so-called “Disneyland of Law Schools,” it was an answered prayer—like a dream come true.
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BC Law: Impact 