Written by Holly Hoy, Lucy Payne & Alice Spencer
In this post, we will cover the things we wish we'd have known before beginning our law degree: lectures, coursework, seminars, revision resources, the jump from A level to degree, involvement and pressure.
Lectures
When it comes to lectures, I know myself and many of my friends struggled sometimes with keeping our focus, especially at the early 9ams or the last in a full day of lectures and seminars. One thing I would highly recommend that I found significantly improved my concentration is reading the pages relating to your lecture before the lecture takes place. While it is helpful to read the textbook at any time, I found that by reading the content the night before I felt more engaged in the lectures as I had a basic idea of what the lecturer was talking about. Sometimes when lecture content is confusing I find it can often deter you from giving your full focus, and so being aware of the basics of your lecture can be very beneficial.
As I take notes on my laptop, I also found copying across slide content into a document from the lecturer’s PowerPoint before the lecture was very helpful . This means that rather than worrying about copying and pasting content during the lectures and not paying attention to what the lecturer is saying, you can concentrate on just adding small notes to the notes you have previosuly pasted across. I cannot reccomend doing this enough for making the most of your time in lectures.
Finally, I plan on doing a more in depth post about this app in future but 'Forest' is an amazing app for helping with concentration, especially in lectures. The basic premise is you plant a tree for how ever long you wish. If you click off the app at any time to check your phone, the tree dies. Everytime you grow a tree, you get coins and you can use these coins to plant a tree in the real world. This is a great incentive to stay off your phone and is an app I use very regulary in lectures and elsewhere to stay focused.
Coursework
Written coursework is a commonplace element of any undergraduate degree in law. In order to avoid unnecessary stress and gain extra marks, there are a number of strategies I have picked up over the academic year that I wish I would have been told much earlier.
Firstly, familiarising yourself with legal databases and research tools is a key shortcut in crafting a good plan for your coursework. For example, completing a Basic Certification Test for Westlaw UK helped advance my ability to find sources for my coursework, especially those more obscure or older law reports and articles that are trickier to find. Whilst it is important to read the whole of a source to gain a greater understanding of a topic, downloading your sources as PDFs and searching for key words (usually by pressing ctrl+F) can help streamline your reading of longer sources and pick out the best quotes to support your line of argument.
In my opinion, the biggest piece of advice relating to written coursework is to plan, plan, plan. It can be particularly daunting to stare at a blank screen and wondering how to fill it with 2000 words relating to your given topic, but having a very detailed outline of your essay will help your writing flow. Sometimes, creating a very brief plan, followed by a more detailed one, can help the transition from research to writing; for one piece of written coursework I completed, in which I achieved a first, it took three different plans before I could begin writing, ranging in detail from very basic to almost word-for-word what I intended to write in my essay.
Seminars
As smaller group teachings, seminars are a golden opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of a topic beyond lectures. However, one important concept I missed at the start of my degree is that the preparation for your seminar is just as important as the seminar itself.
Although seminars may be different across different universities, for our seminars we would be given a prescribed reading list followed by a series of questions that would put the knowledge gained from the reading to use. Usually, the largest chunk of the reading consisted of the textbook, but it must be stressed that other sources (for example, law reports, statutes and articles), which were typically much shorter, are often of much more use than the textbook. Familiarising yourself with key primary sources can reflect a better and more precise understanding of a topic both in a seminar and in an exam, whereas textbook reading aims to give a more general overview of a topic and usually cannot be referenced in an exam situation.
The debate-style questions that commonly featured in our first-year seminars provided an insight into how to develop a strong line of argument, which can be put into practice in both an exam and coursework situation. When it came to our online exams, which took place just a few weeks ago, many of the questions resembled those we had discussed in seminars. Therefore, putting adequate planning into these questions, as well as listening to the ideas of those in your seminar group, can certainly help when it comes to revision.
Revision resources
Whilst sports, societies and nightlife may take up the wealth of your time outside of learning during your first year, taking an hour or two per week to compile your knowledge into useful revision resources is something I wish I had scheduled from the beginning. At A-level, regular assessments nudged me into preparing the tools that I would later use in my final exams, contrasting with the structure of the university year, which only had a single set of mock exams as a trial for the final exams.
A major, and certainly daunting, element of a Law degree is memorisation of numerous cases, statutes and academics. Therefore, giving yourself an hour each week to put these into flashcard form – whether on paper or digitally, such as on Quizlet – and occasionally testing yourself using active recall will remove a lot of pressure and give you a head-start in your revision when it comes to exam season.
This recall method can also be put into use more generally with your notes on any topic. This video by Liam Porritt highlights how testing your knowledge against a condensed set of revision notes can help develop your understanding of a topic, ready for an exam situation. I personally found in preparation for my exams that streamlining complex topics into short, bullet-pointed notes can make understanding a detailed concept much more simple.
A levels vs University
Most students will likely be told to expect a very different environment at university compared to a levels, whether that be from teachers, parents or older siblings or friends who are already at university. Despite being told this however, and believing it for the most part, I didn’t anticipate the significance of the difference until getting there and starting lectures myself. Lectures provide you the basics which you then go away and read further on to develop your own notes on the topic compared to teachers who effectively told you what you needed to know and set you homework to consolidate your knowledge. This is difficult at the start particularly when the content is confusing and you don’t really know what to do with what you’re told in lectures. Eventually however you will work out what is best for you, which is different for everyone, and how to consolidate what you’re told and extend your knowledge, which seminars can be very beneficial for.
The content jump is also quite significant however that may vary for everyone based on what you studied at A level. I studied biology, psychology and English so I was very unprepared for legal terminology and documents compared to others who had done law or politics, however even for those who had studied relevant A levels it was difficult. The most challenging part is that things that get taught in lectures may be completely new to you so it can be difficult to follow along and sometimes you will feel utterly lost compared to at a level where you’re likely to have covered at least some of it previously, for instance at GCSE. Although this is difficult, you will get the hang of it, particularly as you progress through first year and learn basic legal terms so although it seems like a massive jump at first, it does get easier.
Involvement
As many people will tell you, university is a time in which you’re given lots of opportunities to get involved in a variety of things with societies for almost any interests and regular events held on campus or in the law school. Sometimes however the sheer number of things to do can be daunting to try and choose what interests you and what you have time for, which is difficult when you first move to university and don’t know what to expect. Its likely you will have more time than you think, particularly as a law student as contact hours are low, so provided you plan your time well you’re likely to have plenty of time to take part in extra-curriculars. For example, we all go to the gym or play sport regularly, went to many talks held by the law school and competed in client negotiation while studying and socialising. Despite all this, there were some things we didn’t take part in that ultimately we regret looking back on first year as we were focused on our degree modules rather than the practical skills which extra-curriculars can provide that can set you apart from any other law student. First year is ultimately about settling into university and degree level study which can be difficult to get your head around, particularly if you’re studying something like law which most people don’t do at a-level, so focusing on your degree itself is important, however if you can fit it in, I would recommend getting involved in as many extra-curriculars or talks as possible.
Pressure
The most important thing to remember when first starting university, I personally believe, is not to put too much pressure on yourself when you first start. University life is completely different to the life you lived during A-levels both academically and socially. Generally you move into halls with people you’ve never met before, you might be studying something you never have before and there are new responsibilities placed on you. All this change, likely coupled with nerves, means you’re likely to have a lot going on mentally so putting extra pressure on yourself to do well in your course, meet lots of friends or fulfil certain goals you might set yourself could be very unhealthy. University will probably not be what you expected, as I found, so it is important to learn as you go along and find what works for you without comparing yourself to others.
This is particularly important in law school as there are a variety of different people, all from different backgrounds who have studied different A levels so some people will already be stronger in certain modules based on what they studied before. University is already a daunting experience for most so comparing yourself to others and putting pressure on yourself as a result can make it so much harder, you will catch up to those who studied law if you didn’t, or those who studied politics if you didn’t and understand topics as they do, it doesn’t matter if it takes slightly longer. First year is designed to bring everyone to the same level of understanding by the end of it so don’t put lots of pressure yourself to know things just because other people do.
Similarly don’t pressure yourself into doing something just because other people do or it’s ‘uni culture’, for example drinking and clubbing. There are so many things that happen on campus and in the city centre there is bound to be something you will enjoy, particularly in freshers week, so don’t feel pressured to follow the crowd. Make sure that when you go to university you stay true to yourself and don’t feel pressured to do things just because other people are.
Comments