A Legal Avalanche

I am not entirely sure how relevant is the point of view of a freshman who has only spent six weeks in the British capital for highschoolers waiting excitedly for information about living and studying in London. I would hate to mix up impressions with a mere fact and it is impressions of which I gained more than enough in the past weeks of being at LSE. So, for both mine and the readers' peace, I shall let all of those impressions cool down a bit and focus on the more practical side of being a law student; I promise to come back to life in London in my next blog.

As soon as the second week of the term, I realized that LSE law students are perceived as a separate, self-destructive group of people. I expected the same rivalry that exists between English (and especially London) universities to also be there when it comes to individual departments; after all, there must be a reason why LSE is considered to be one of the most competitive universities in Great Britain. However, it seems that the Law department is an exception. It is common to find students in the middle of an argument about who has more reading to go through or more essays to write; but in the moment of revelation of what you study, you can expect to hear something along these lines: “Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I didn't know you were a law student!” Said plainly – the student body collectively acknowledges Law students have it the worst and they sympathize with us. This is why I would like to focus on two defining aspects of my life as a student:

1. Studying Law
2. Studying Law at LSE

1. Studying Law is actually a lot like studying a new language. In short – you have absolutely no idea what expectation does the staff have, what you are supposed to do or what is the author of that nine-hundred-pages-long textbook trying to tell you. And of course, you don't really understand anything at first. How to make notes? How to go about the assigned reading? Why does everyone else look like they know what they are doing? Why – and then you realize all of this is normal.

Learning about a completely new subject and starting at level zero is a very difficult task. Unlike students of other subjects – be it international relations, economics or mathematics – you have no or close to none knowledge that you could use and work with. Furthermore, even the sources are new. Before reading your first statute or your first case, you have to attend a seminar and go through loads of exercises to understand all of those resources and oddly presented information. At this point, you have to learn to read these effectively; you can't really afford reading all seventy pages of one case if you have another two waiting and a few academic articles that very afternoon.

It is therefore not surprising that Sociology or History students are out there exploring London and you are sitting in your room, reading, and feeling like you can never manage to get used to this lifestyle. Your professors and senior students telling you it only gets harder doesn't really help. But what you always have to remember is that while the amount of reading increases, your legal abilities grow as well and after a while, a few hundred pages a week is not such an obstacle. Just like with any other aspect of living in a new country – and in case of starting a university, in a new world – your goal is to get used to your new life and blend in.

2. Studying Law at LSE might be the reason why the previous part seems so scary. The fact that LSE doesn't appear in the top ranks of university leagues and tables is quite misleading; there is only one faculty at LSE – the faculty of social sciences – which means we have less of everything than other universities with a whole variety of departments. When it comes to individual programmes, the university confidently stands out as one of the best social science institutions in the world. This is probably one of the reasons why students are expected to perform as best as possible; we are forced to do so by the specific style of teaching and the responsibility students are asked to bear for their performance. Unlike in many other law schools, there are no options available in the first year. We only get modules. These are the most important and the most practical areas of law; it is impossible to qualify as a lawyer without them and they are usually spread across the three years of the undergraduate programme. Here at LSE, most of the modules are covered in the first year which implies the difficulty we are faced with in the very first months of our legal lives. What's more, we are graded only once and that is during the final exams at the end of the year, consisting of several papers in five subjects. For sure, we hand in at least one essay per term per subject but those are only formative which means they are not officially graded. Reading the material assigned in lectures for classes or writing the essays is therefore only the matter of our conscience and sense of obligation. We have the choice to relax all year long; it is up to us not to make that choice. The huge responsibility is what distinguishes a highschooler used to regular tests and homework from a university student.

The difficulty of studying Law at LSE carries one big negative with it. I often read about people learning new languages, helping charities or engaging in a new sport from the blogs of other KFF grantees. My leisure time is heavily limited by the amount of work I have to do everyday and I was forced to lower my expectations from extracurricular activities. For example, I am literally forbidden from taking on a new language! Still, I am happy I can at least attend the choir practices, literature club sessions, occasional events organized by the Law Society or volunteering opportunities such as transcribing World War I diaries. At this point I am trying to get used to my new student life but hopefully, I'll be able to reflect on much more leisure time activities in the future than I am now.

Still, the university makes up for this through the unique advantages it offers. In terms of the diversity of the student body, there are more than 140 nationalities here, which makes LSE the number one in the world in this particular aspect. It is therefore not uncommon to set up a lunch with your classmates from Ukraine and Azerbaijan and your Korean neighbor before going to a lecture presented by your Italian professor. Since all LSE students study humanities and social sciences, there is always a common topic to be found. Furthermore, LSE is the number one in legal research in Great Britain; my professors are not only experts in their fields, but often legal celebrities! What more could a Law student ask for?

And with that I say goodbye as a student overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work and the energetic and interesing city that is London. But wait to hear about that until the next time.