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| Sometimes... I like highlighting things excessively. Maybe a little highlighter happy |
Law school is typically a 3 year long program so you can earn your Juris Doctorate. I attend San Joaquin College of Law in Clovis and there they do offer a couple of longer programs that enables the students to spread out the degree over 4 or even 5 years so they can take night classes and still work. I'm enrolled in the 3 year, Day Division program.
I started my second official year back in August. I had originally been law school way back in 2012 at Michigan State before going on the journey that would lead to me heading off to Sweden for a year and a half, but I decided to give law school another try (as opposed to switching to some other Master's Program). And thus, I enrolled at San Joaquin.
Schedule
My typical weekly schedule this semester looked something like this:
Where green is time at work, blue is class, yellow is time studying/reading for class, red is church, and purple is sleep time. Everything blank would be the little bit of free time I had. Sometimes I would switch things up a bit, for instance where I would skype Rikki after work on Fridays and wouldn't do my homework until that evening (we would squeeze skype sessions in the most random times sometimes).
So in short... very very busy!!
Things changed throughout the semester because both of my two-credit classes ended at the end of October. But to help balance that out, I'm a candidate for the law review journal, where I am writing an article that will hopefully receive approval for publication at the end of December. I'll be writing more about Law Review in another blog entry in the future.
Homework/Reading
Now what is class/homework/reading like?
My homework sessions tend to look like the following:
Screenshot of the basic outline of my notes... also note that for this particular class, how many pages are actually present. 
These are just notes for this particular class. I have separate files for each of the 5 classes of the semester. This was by far the most intensive class and I will indeed have over 150 before the end of the semester.
I also spend a decent amount of time in the library... lots of books! Though.... you rarely ever use any of those. Only in certain research projects and the majority of resources are accessible online. I have some (cough) bored (cough) selfies from my time there. Just looked at that excitement.
Honestly though... the work is time consuming and intensive, but it's certainly not the end of the world and sometimes there are some rather interesting topics.
But sometimes.... highlighters and pens decide to be difficult.
Not one, but two pens broke on me within 5 minutes haha... thankfully I avoided getting ink on my white bed haha.
And it is always a sad day when a highlighter dies:
My oral notes ended up looking like the following in the end:
We would argue before a panel of three judges. I ended up arguing in front of six practicing lawyers, but some rooms argued in front of actual judges. We would stand at the podium and begin our case and then be prepared to answer any question the judges felt like asking us. We would use facts from the case and relevant case law to try to persuade the judges that our side should win. The courtroom like settings ended up looking like this:
I ended up passing the class no problem! But I would constantly get the advice to speak louder.... I need to project a bit more XD But they always liked my argument and use of facts/case law.
And sometimes you can even find little gems in reading a case, Notice a little three word sentence in the following case:
Classes
A normal class consists of the professor questioning the students in the Socratic method. Very rarely is a class a "lecture"--- most often it is the students that end up teaching the class with the professor covering any gaps. The student presents the facts of the case and the rule given. The professor asks questions concerning the details of that rule and application... how the rule applies to the facts of the case and in other hypothetical situations. The student would then go through how the court analyzed the case. The emphasis is on the analysis process. And frankly, it can be rather daunting being on the hot seat... sometimes you really don't know how to answer the questions that the professor asks.
Other classes are even more hands-on. This semester I took my Moot Court class, where we prepared to argue a criminal case before the supreme court (Cases have to go through several levels before the supreme court - trial court, court of appeals and then the supreme court). We had to write a brief representing our client and then we argued before judges twice-- A 15 minute argument based upon the brief we wrote and then a 15 minute argument from the other side. So I argued first for the People and then for the man accused of the crime.
My oral notes ended up looking like the following in the end:
We would argue before a panel of three judges. I ended up arguing in front of six practicing lawyers, but some rooms argued in front of actual judges. We would stand at the podium and begin our case and then be prepared to answer any question the judges felt like asking us. We would use facts from the case and relevant case law to try to persuade the judges that our side should win. The courtroom like settings ended up looking like this:
I ended up passing the class no problem! But I would constantly get the advice to speak louder.... I need to project a bit more XD But they always liked my argument and use of facts/case law.
And sometimes you can even find little gems in reading a case, Notice a little three word sentence in the following case:
