<p>I am getting advice left and right to not work at a ll my first year of law school. Does anyone have any experience with this? I want/need to do some part time work in order to simply live. I'm looking into financial aid, but I still will need some help.</p>
<p>If you need to work in order to live, then it doesn’t sound like you have a choice.</p>
<p>A friend of mine worked PT all through law school, and she did fine. She did stock at a local warehouse store for a while, and I forget what else. I was lucky, we (hubby and I) got free housing because we were live-in aides at a vet clinic. But that was still 10-15 hrs./wk. of animal chores, and I was top 10% (barely, but still…) at Cornell. I also worked PT at a law office 2d year, and did some work for a prof 3d year. If you have good time management skills, you can certainly do it. Oh, and don’t do law review, it eats your life.</p>
<p>My dad’s a lawyer… and as I understood it, hardly anyone works their first year of law school, because you don’t have time. All you do is study. I don’t have personal experience with it, but I’ve never actually heard of anyone doing full time law school and working in the first year. (Until @Sweetbeet of course. Good for you!)</p>
<p>Maybe you should do a part-time law school program? Or take an extra year before actually starting to save up as much money as you can?</p>
<p>Frequently people will work after first year. At my law school it was “prohibited” first year. </p>
<p>Law school is much easier if you treat it as a job. I have heard many people say this, and it was true for me. Most people who have worked a real, 40-hr. per week job before law school have no trouble managing the workload. You get up early even if you don’t have an early class. You go to your classes, and in between you study (with a reasonable break for lunch). Since you will only have 2-3 classes each day, you will have maybe 3 hours of classes and 5 hours to read or study. Don’t over-stress, that should be plenty of time to prepare for the next day’s classes.</p>
<p>Then you can have an evening or weekend job. Or work 2-3 hours during the day and read/study at night. The only problem comes if you spend too much time socializing, or in a “study group” that is really a waste of time, or making stupid multi-color outlines and ridiculous flash cards. Learn how to quickly brief a case and you can do it in the margin of your textbook (unless they are all electronic these days!). Take good notes in class (you will not believe this but it’s true, I was actually the very FIRST person to ever take notes on a laptop computer at Cornell Law School, it was 1989, my first year, and I had a Toshiba T1200 - look it up, talk about a relic), and there will be no need to retype them - just review briefly to make sure they’re clear and move on. I didn’t even make outlines for most classes.</p>
<p>Working PT just keeps you disciplined, and that’s a good thing. Also, thinking about something else keeps you from getting burned out. </p>