Congratulations on making it to NUS Law (or commiserations, if you actually wanted to go elsewhere but had to settle). Your time here will be much easier if you don’t do what I did. My hard-won lessons, below:

Law Camp/Orientation

I didn’t go, and neither did any of my friends, but that’s because we’re old and weary and we also had to serve our notice periods at work. Go, make friends, and you will at least not have to sit in lectures alone. If you don’t go, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, you’re going to be seeing these people nearly every day in school, and there are extracurricular groups to join.

Pre-reading

There are some books that are recommended for incoming law students, because law school is so different from whatever came before. These are more like friendly guides – a Lonely Planet guidebook for law school, if you will. For a US-centric view, try “Getting to Maybe”, and for a UK classic, “Learning the Law” by Glanville Williams. I only recently got my hands on “Learning the Law” and I regret not reading it earlier (I learned about it at the end of year 1). Also, to get you used to reading cases: The Singapore Law Watch and Supreme Court websites, so you can read judgments and get a feel for things.

Textbooks

Buy one for each subject. Just one. You won’t have time to read more than one. Get the entire set from seniors at an eye-watering price, or hold on to find out which ones your profs recommend. Also an alternative: Book Depository, for textbooks from UK writers, and Carousell or other used-book databases. This will also give you a good gauge of the secondhand prices.

Also, it’s not compulsory to buy textbooks. I had no choice but to buy my Criminal Law textbooks because the profs referred to it all the time, but this was not really the case for Torts and Contract. Textbooks can be heavy-going when you’re a freshman, and a friendly writing style can be more important than the eminence of the author. In the end, what matters is that you get value out of the book, and there’s no value in a book you never open.

Note-taking

Some people swear by taking notes in longhand with a fountain pen, others type furiously to capture every nuance of the prof’s words. I’ve tried both, and frankly it doesn’t matter as long as you read them after the lesson, read them again before doing the tutorial assignments, and then one more time to distill them down into your exam cheatsheets.

Outlines/muggers

The main advantage of being close to your orientation group is that your generous seniors will have compiled muggers for you – basically their notes from the year before, condensed and exam-ready. Some people take a hard line against muggers, seeing them as the equivalent of baby food, while others become connoisseurs of which set is the best for which prof’s class. I prefer to make my own notes because I use the Cornell method, but muggers can get you out of a tight spot if you’re not prepared. A caveat though – if you don’t update the muggers you get, you may recite an error or mention a case that isn’t on your syllabus any more, at which point the prof will know that you’re cribbing. The profs know about muggers and they try to discourage us, but like movie piracy, it’s something (nearly) everyone is doing.

Workload

You have 15 contact hours a week. That means 15 hours of instruction, whether in a lecture, seminar or tutorial group. To put things in perspective, that’s 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Seems light, until you remember that the faculty’s rule of thumb is 3 hours of preparation for every hour of instruction. That’s 45 hours of prep on top of your 15 contact hours, for a total of 60 hours of work a week.

That’s not terrible, by the way. Working adults routinely clock 50-hour weeks, and lawyers definitely clock more than 60 hours a week during crunch time. Might as well get used to the grind now.

I never did 60 hours a week, actually. But you don’t want to be me, so pick your favourite table at the library and settle in.

Tutorials

Show up prepared. Read the cases (or at least the headnotes). Think through the questions. Coming from a liberal arts background where you could just improvise your answer, I found tutorials frightening at first. But you, unlike me, are a hardworking, conscientious student and you will prepare for tutorials, because this is where most of the value of law school lies – understanding that there may be many ways to look at a problem, and sussing out which approach your prof prefers. After all, we have exams to pass.

Exams

Ah, exams. They come in many forms in law school. You can write essays, type furiously with the clock ticking away, do a take-home exam that gives you 6 hours to churn out an essay or two, or do a research paper. Okay, so the last one is an assessment and not an exam, but when it counts for more than 50% of your final grade, it’s just as important and scary.

E-exams took some getting used to. In my undergrad days, I spent significant time drafting my answers to get the flow of ideas just right, because we had to write by hand and waiting for correction fluid to dry was a drain on precious time. With e-exams, that goes straight out the window. Points can be rearranged or edited instantly, so meticulous drafting is replaced by terse bullet points just so I’m sure I didn’t miss out details. I took my last handwritten exam in April 2016. I don’t miss them.

For some modules, like LARC (Legal Analysis and Communication) and Trial Advocacy, there is a final “practical exam” in the form of a moot, or a mock trial. Basically, this is your chance to play lawyer and make submissions to a “court”, usually made up of your profs. It is nerve-wracking, time-consuming, and some people actually enjoy this so much that they do moots as an extracurricular. You get all types in law school.

Moots

Mooters are the rock stars of law school. Being a mooter means standing up in front of a crowd, making arguments, and impressing the socks off everyone. Not everyone is cut out to be a mooter – some of us really don’t like public speaking (not all lawyers are chatterboxes). And it’s common knowledge that while law school skews towards churning out litigators (hence the focus on moots), legal practice needs all types. Just find your niche and make the most of it.

Well-being

When I was an undergrad, discussion of mental health issues was practically nonexistent. Maybe we were just more relaxed back then, I can’t tell. But now, mental health is a big issue on campus and we are always reminded that there’s a counsellor available if we need help. Law school is probably an especially tough place for mental health, because the stress is higher and it can be hard to tell if you just need some time to get used to the pace, or if something is really wrong. Also, everyone else will tell you how stressed they are, which normalizes something that might be a symptom. You know yourself best – if you’re manifesting symptoms of anxiety or depression, seek help.

Law school is filled with Type-A sorts who let off steam by crushing each other at foosball or table tennis. As a more aesthetic type, I prefer walks in the gardens around the campus, or calligraphy. Your studies are important, but your hobbies will keep you sane and allow you to decompress so you can study better.

Remember, law school is tough but you’re tougher. All the best!