The Ultimate Guide to being a First Year
Tips and Tricks
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Second-Hand Textbooks
The first tip to surviving Law School is to:
Save money on those expensive textbooks by jumping on to Facebook marketplace!
By alleviating the 2023 first years of their textbooks, you can make significant savings for an unnoticeable drop in quality.
Time Management
The same two words that I have no doubt you heard way to much during High School. However, you will realise very quickly that assessments, classes and life commitments such as work and friends have a not-so-funny running joke of clashing every time you prayed they wouldn’t. Some call it preparation and some call it damage limitation, either way:
You need to take care of “future you” by being proactive and not reactive.
Study Groups
This segment needs to be prefaced with the importance of plagiarism and the detriment it can cause to someone in the legal profession. Aside from that, study groups are excellent at promoting higher focus levels, having effective study breaks and promoting a healthy level of accountability. It is also an extremely efficient way to learn and understand content as it can sometimes become overwhelming and difficult to follow.
Scary Subjects?
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Foundations of Law
It may be slightly less interesting than other law subjects but this- as the name suggests- is the foundation of your law degree. The basics of researching and referencing will become the bane of your existence if you neglect these easier tasks early on in your degree. Top Tip: Spend considerable time UNDERSTANDING how to reference properly and efficiently.
Contracts 1
Cases, cases and more cases. Unfortunately this course comes with its fair share of readings but the content itself is extremely engaging and provides basic knowledge that translates to tons of other law subjects. Top Tip: Buy the Contracts Textbook as you can take it into your in-person exam!
What can you do now?
The most important thing in life and law school is making connections. Whether it be friends, lecturers, or study-buddies, having people to check-in with and bounce ideas off is paramount to being successful in first year. A quote that is especially relatable for law students is:
It’s not about what you know but who you know.
But how can you meet other law students? GULS offers many events like the First Year’s Trivia Night happening this Friday. Alongside this, there are countless other events GULS holds like networking nights with other students and law professionals. These occur all throughout the year so stay tuned on our socials!
Bad advice from jeremy
We’ve looked at what you should be doing but lets look at the literal 3 worst things you could do to start your law school journey off.
Let ChatGPT write your assessment
Not only can ChatGPT not access recent information, it also sucks at finding or understanding the law and has an exceptionally bad habit of just straight up lying about laws that don’t even exist. How did I find this out… next question please.
Not working out where your classes are beforehand
That awkward moment where you don’t know where you are, you ask someone and they’re also not sure because they’ve only just started university too, so you muster up the self confidence and assume it’s your classroom. 30 minutes into a speech about planes you start to wonder hmm…. this is an odd way to explain contracts. You stand up to leave, “oh we were just about to do the class credit questions, what was your name”. Sheepishly you explain you are in the wrong class as everyone wonders why you sat through 30 minutes before realising. Yes, after writing this I might have caused some stress, so hey download the campus app to use the map or view it online here.
Not making friends with the mature-aged students
This is the most critical error most judgmental teens make, mature-aged students are absolute academic weapons and are the nicest people to walk the earth.
Let us know any questions you have about starting Law at Griffith University below: