If you haven’t heard the three-part saying by now, I trust you will relate through experience. 2L they work you to death and 3L they bore you to death, but 1L is the year they scare you to death. We were all warned how important those first semester grades are. Through a long series of interconnected events, the grade you get in first-semester Civil Procedure will determine which law firm you work for after you graduate or whether you will be unemployed after graduation — allegedly. Accordingly, 1Ls are given some truly aspirational advice in their first days of law school. “Never let yourself get behind on reading,” “start outlining the first month of school,” “study for finals a few hours every week, all semester.” With straight faces, faculty, alumni, upperclassmen — even r/lawschool — all appear to be in on it. That’s how culture works, and part of the culture of our profession is hazing 1Ls with an all-consuming focus on GPA and mythologizing the role of 1L year in the career of a lawyer.
The pressure for grades is immense. Meanwhile, the rest of a 1L’s life shrinks. Incoming GW Law students — who previously ran clubs, fraternities, cafeterias, D&D games, and various side hustles — are warned against allowing any “distractions” from studying. This isolation is not just cultural, but systemic, too. The skills board paradigm prevents 1Ls from participating in most competitions. 1Ls are also restricted, in most instances, to the superficial role of “1L Representative” in most student organizations (Nota Bene and the Student Bar Association being notable exceptions). We usually cannot run for meaningful leadership or administrative roles in student organizations, and nearly all opportunities for experiential learning are reserved for upperclassmen.
The result? 1Ls obsess over grades because they are all we have. We have few opportunities to engage with our specific legal interests. We connect less with our current community. We connect less with our families and friends back home, as well as whatever community or cause may have sent us here. We lack sufficient opportunity to gain work experience or demonstrate leadership. All we have to show for the year are those grades, which forces their importance, and so the prophecy is fulfilled.
The consequences of this cultural paradigm are not small. When we disconnect from our reason for being here — when we disconnect from our values — we are susceptible to adopting someone else’s. Traditionally, the legal profession values money and elitism. When we disconnect from what we came here for and wonder why we are working so hard for those digits after the decimal point, we become vulnerable. This is the moment the legal industry waves fantastical-sounding (but heavily taxed) salaries and promises of eternal social validation.
The system, like most long-lived systems, is designed to fulfill its own needs. It certainly appears to work. I was surrounded by lawyers while I was applying to law school, and I talked to several of them about my interests and ambitions; not one was encouraging. Instead, they told me about how their initial passion was crushed and how it “worked out” that the first job they were offered led to an acceptable career anyway. Were their passions unobtainable? I doubt it. More likely, they fell victim to this system. They lost their way, and the industry offered them a default based on market need. It’s convenient. After all, how many environmental law hopefuls walk in these doors? How many M&A lawyers does Kirkland need? By undermining each 1L’s personal values and sense of self, the legal profession ensures a pliable workforce that will bend to fit industry needs.
Some of us got here with 4.0s, others with a knock-out LSAT, and still others through their professional experience. Our roads into 1L year were many, so why have we been told there is only one road through? The obsession with first-year grades is based on Big Law’s ingrained hiring practices. What if we decided how we wanted to market ourselves to employers? No one can control whether they get one of the few possible As in each class, but we could each design a semester for ourselves that supports our own definition of success.
I reject the belief that there is only one way to succeed in 1L year. At age twenty-seven, I came in with five years of experience as a paralegal — and the unavoidable attitude problem that entails. I have proudly neglected assigned reading to read something more relevant to my interests. I studied for the midterm, but not until three days prior. My Cardozo schedule creates lots of pockets during the week which allow for study time. I use those times to attend every catered event on campus and chat up my classmates. What has this approach done for me? While reading for Contracts may help me feel prepared for (and also take the thrill out of) my morning lecture, reading a journal article on privacy law or attending a panel with public interest lawyers connects me to the reason I came here. That is so much more valuable to me because my definition of success in my 1L year includes remaining true to my purpose.
1Ls would benefit from more opportunities to differentiate ourselves, and our school would benefit by utilizing us better. A third of our student body could be brought out of relative obscurity and instead empowered to make our mark on this school and on our city. What if 1Ls could choose what mattered to us? What if 1Ls were invited into student organization leadership teams? What if we respected a student’s decision to skip class to attend a lecture that was more relevant to their goals? What if we created 1L positions in clinics that could replace a semester of selected students’ Fundamentals of Lawyering (FL) class? What if 1Ls who wanted to prioritize real-world experience could take up a research-based externship instead of FL? What if aspiring litigators could dive into mock trial in the first semester (how many of you did this in undergrad, anyway)?
Not every 1L knows what kind of law they want to practice, but every 1L has a reason for being here. Maybe they need to prove something to themselves, or to their parents, or to whomever didn’t seem adequately impressed with them. Maybe they want to protect, serve, save somebody, or everybody, or anybody at all. There is nothing to be gained in sorting the “good” motivations from the “bad.” Don’t judge your classmates who came here for validation or vengeance. That is literally the whole premise of “Legally Blonde” (Cardozo 1Ls’ favorite legal picture, according to an informal poll of our Torts class).
Whatever your reason for being here, that reason is connected to your success and satisfaction. You deserve a school and faculty who support you, whatever your reason. Even if your reasons are likely to change, you deserve the opportunity to reexamine and rediscover your motivation in a natural and healthy manner, not as a result of a contrived, homogenizing first–year experience.
We can’t blame GW Law for the limitations 1Ls encounter here — at least not entirely. It’s not the school; it’s the culture. It’s the whole legal ecosystem. That doesn’t mean we can’t ask them to do better. We can, and should, push our school and legal community to give 1Ls more choice, more respect, and more trust.
