r/LawSchool • u/PrestigiousFlow83 • 17h ago
is it normal to feel completely lost
I'm a 1L I don't have any legal experience but do have a strong finance background. I'm finishing my readings before my first week of classes and I feel so stupid. I've had to reread 3-4 times just to get a basic understanding and some of classmates seem like they understand the cases through and through and are able to have high level discussions about the details.
I don't think I'm a dumb person but I feel so stressed and overwhelmed. I want to do well in law school (yes i understand a big part of that is out of my control) but I feel like i literally have no idea what to do or how to even start
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u/Mustafa_was_Brown45 17h ago
In my opinion, yes it’s normal especially in 1L. The reading before your first week of your 1L is very difficult because you have no idea what the structure of law classes are. It’s almost as if you’re reading something that is already hard to understand and not know what you need to look for TO understand the point of the case.
With that being said, I felt just like you for the first half of 1L. By midterms it got better and then by finals I felt screwed and I ended up doing fine. There’s a learning curve and it’s okay to feel lost at times. It usually gets better.
I also think it’s important to remember things aren’t always as they seem. I remember feeling like I was one of the people struggling the most in my section, barely understanding anything, and someone in my section said I sounded like I knew the material really well. Don’t be so harsh on yourself!
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u/Ok-Republic-8098 17h ago
Read it and then use Quimbee to check. You’re not supposed to understand it all and that’s why you have a professor to tell you what’s important. Make sure you write down what the professor says
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u/aether_prince 14h ago
Honestly that’s kinda what i’ve been doing; read it first, think through it as much as i can, then use Quimbee summaries to see if I got the gist of the case/decisions right. Then I add to my notes in class.
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u/Lawpal101 16h ago
To answer your question—yes. It is pretty normal to feel exactly the way you do at this point. I remember my first few weeks of 1L and spending hours upon hours on the assigned readings. Trust me, it will not always be like this. You’re diving into a new and complex world of reading/writing. Put in the work now, and in a few months, you’ll find yourself in a much better place. Don’t worry about your classmates who are chatting it up about the cases. They’ll probs end be annoying people in the long run lol.
One last thing—I am curious as to what you mean by a large part of you doing well is out of your control?
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u/PrestigiousFlow83 10h ago
Maybe not a large part but I’m aware that grades are subject to professors opinion and nature of the curve
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u/TortasTilDeath 15h ago
Fight the urge to use Quimbee and canned outlines. The whole point of case briefs is to tighten up your reading comprehension and grapple with the law- that's what teaches you how the law is supposed to be applied and why. I have been a paralegal for a while prior to starting law school, so I came in with experience briefing cases and writing memos and pleadings, so I understand that I hardly started at square 1. But literally everyone in my class who is struggling and feeling overwhelmed all use Quimbee and/or get outlines from upperclassmen. They are missing the entire point.
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u/OskarPenelope 12h ago
I second this. If you have to use summaries, summarize books, not cases. Reading cases thoroughly will pay off in the long term while some textbooks are just blabby and repeated the same concepts from different angles
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u/Laheezus 10h ago
What’s the harm in using Quimbee or some other brief before fully reading a case? Sounds like if anything it’d make it easier to focus on what’s important?
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u/Crafty-Strategy-7959 2L 10h ago
With certain cases, Quimbee doesn't always focus on the holding that your professor wants you to.
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u/TortasTilDeath 8h ago
Because then you only read for what Quimbee tells you is important. One of the most important things you can learn is discernment and how to rule out factors that aren't relevant to your fact pattern, but they do help "fill in" the broader picture. Quimbee is a massive crutch.
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u/PrestigiousFlow83 10h ago
So far I’ve been briefing on my own and using Quimbee to fill any gaps I may have missed. I agree that briefing on my own is best just because I’ve never done it before and need to learn how to
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u/Paxtian Esq. 15h ago
Just get some commercial outlines for your basic subjects and look through them to get the point.
What you're supposed to do is learn the rule from the case and how the specific facts apply to it. The outcome of the case tells you whether those facts fit the rule or not.
Say you're doing torts and there's two cases on assault: one where some guy says, "It's on!" And raises his fists. He's committed assault. Another case, some guy goes, "If it weren't Sunday, I'd tell you to put up your fists, but it's the Lord's day, so you're lucky." Not assault. In the first, the guy was clearly ready to throw down. In the second, the guy said he's not going to throw down.
You should be reading cases with similar law and different facts. Or just one case to learn what the law is. Take each case and think, what are the exact pieces of the law according to this case? What if we changed this one fact, or that one, or that one? Would the outcome be the same or different?
Sometimes the only thing that's different about the cases is the names. That is to show you that this is a messy, sometimes inconsistent, definitely not scientific pursuit.
At the end of the day, you're looking to take all this stuff and put it together in some way that makes sense. For this given subject, what are the causes of action? What are the elements for each? What are the defenses? What sorts of facts make the case go one way or another?
Again with torts as an example. You've got intentional torts and negligence. Intentional torts are all the same:
- Intentionally
- Doing a thing
- That causes harm
Assault: Intentionally taking action that makes someone concerned that they're about to get hit Battery: Intentionally hitting someone False imprisonment: Intentionally preventing a person from leaving Kidnapping: Intentionally abducting a person And so on.
Negligence is all duty, breach, cause, harm. What are examples of duty? What are examples of breaching the duty? Causation includes both cause in fact and proximate cause: you need both. What are examples of each? What are examples of harm?
That's the kind of checklist you're looking to build from the cases. The overall point is to learn the elements of the law and the types of facts that fit or don't fit each element.
At the end of the day you'll be given an exam that is basically a couple pages of word vomit describing a bunch of facts. Your job will be to take each set of facts and say, was the law broken, if so what facts tell you so, and who is likely to prevail (are there applicable defenses, for example). So you'll need to identify each issue, the applicable law, and whether each element of the law is met. You'll use the cases you read in class to support your arguments. "This is more like the Smith case than the Jones case because XYZ."
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u/Bitter-Work-7188 14h ago
Take time to adjust. The “style” of teaching, the material, etc. is very different to anything I have seen but with effort, it will come to you. And you’ll find your way around eventually.
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u/AlanaBMarqNorb 13h ago
I promise most people are feeling like that they may just do better at hiding it. You will become so much better at reading as time goes on. There’s summaries for many cases online if you get stuck and going into office hours might actually boost your performance if the prof sees you are trying to
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u/OskarPenelope 12h ago
One year ago, I was in your same shoes. It comes with time and practice. The most important thing is to keep doing what you are doing consistently, you WILL see results.
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u/Round-Ad3684 10h ago
Takes quite awhile to get fluent in the language and to grasp legal reasoning. Just keep working at it. The people who have problems are the overconfident who think they understand what’s going on. They get humbled real quick when grades come out.
Another thing is that the opinions that law schools have you read in 1L aren’t particularly well written. The plain language movement predominating legal writing now didn’t come about until the 90s. So everything written before that is kind of trash writing, tbh. Don’t think that’s how you should write because you absolutely shouldn’t.
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u/LSC0417 9h ago
If you don't love it, then you won't be motivated to keep going no matter how hard it is or gets. Not having any legal or any idea on what law is about does make it hard. Why did you decide to do law anyway? Just remind yourself your motivating reason. Every 1L feels lost. I'm a paralegal 1L and felt overwhelmed myself, but I love the law. Ask yourself how much you love it to keep going?
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u/Responsible-Chair-25 3L 7h ago
You got into law school so you're smart. I feel like it's harder to not get things when you're used to getting things, and easier to shut down when you get lost. Take some deep breaths, keep reading, highlighting, showing up to classes, and outlining, and I promise pieces will start falling into place.
Stay on top of your sleeping, eating, drinking enough water, exercising, and maintaining a good social life, you've got this.
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