Three Important Lessons My Second Year of Law School Taught Me

I just finished my second year of law school and it was even better than my first year!

Where my 1L was about establishing myself in the legal community, my second year was about developing my expertise, engaging in leadership, encouraging others and giving back to the community. Basically, I took first year to discover what it is I wanted to do and then spent my second year driving it home. Not only did I capitalize on the success that my choices in first year allowed me to have, I was also able to pass my knowledge on to colleagues and contribute to the community through my involvement. Perhaps most importantly though, my second year laid the foundation for what will be the rest of my career. I got accepted to some opportunities I never thought I would have and I began building my future practice’s clientele before I was even two-thirds of the way through my Juris Doctor.

I even managed to learn some important lessons along the way. My goal today is to share them with anyone who is considering a career in law in the hopes that they may gain some insight from my experiences. As I mentioned in my article “An Open Letter to the Law Community from a 1L Who Just Finished Finals”, which was posted this time last year, every individual’s journey will differ. I am simply offering one small piece to the puzzle of an infinite world of possibilities. Perhaps you are starting your studies in law this September and you have lots of questions. Maybe you are just making the decision to apply. Either way, I am happy to get in touch with you if you’d like to chat!

In the meantime, here are the top three lessons my 2L taught me.

Lesson one: Good things come to those who wait

Though it demands a lot of time and focus, setting your tone and finding/defining your niche in your first year of law school is worth it. My path to the world of criminal defence couldn’t have been clearer. From the day I first stepped foot into a criminal law class in my undergrad, I knew it was love at first sight, but it was my sheer determination that got me to where I am today. If you combine your passion, drive and focus with some innovation, networking and marketing right from first year, there will be nothing stopping you either!

This is the way I see it: Imagine that you are charged with a serious crime. You have no criminal record and you have never been in trouble with the law. You do not know anything about your rights outside of whatever basics you may have learned in school and you haven’t the slightest idea how to navigate the criminal justice system. If this happened to you, today, who would you contact? It came as a shock initially, but over the past year, for many people, this person was me. Everything from employment issues to inquiries about environmental law, and even some family law matters. You name it, I was and still am getting calls and messages for it! As a law student, I always make it very clear that I cannot give legal advice. Still, I’m thrilled that I have been able to establish myself in my legal career to the point that I can, through my education and my employment at Conron Law, set people I know up with the legal expertise they need to seek justice (or at least point them in the right direction to someone who can!). It is an overwhelmingly feeling every time someone does this and I consider it a true honour and a privilege to have earned peoples’ trust to this level so early in my career.

This recognition did not happen overnight though. I did not always have the 500+ connections or “Expert Profile” status on LinkedIn. I was not always seemingly referred to as a “warrior woman” everywhere I went and cheered on by amazing groups of people near and far in my life. It still surprises me when I introduce myself to lawyers or law students at events, only to have them respond “yes, I recognize you from…” or “everyone knows who you are.” Patience and consistency are key. Now, as I look back on my first year, the best thing that I did for myself was to start getting involved right away and to share the impact my involvement had on my studies with others.

This has by far been the busiest year for me thanks to the opportunities that being public about my passions afforded me. I have been told more than once by recruiters and different key actors in legal organizations that they would make exceptions for me because they saw my online accounts and felt confident that I could do what it is that they needed me to do. A perfect example of this was when the Canadian Bar Association, New Brunswick Division offered me the possibility to sit on Council, an opportunity only two students in New Brunswick get every year. Also, despite not being a lawyer yet, the first thing I will be doing this summer is judging and filling in as a participant in a mock trial competition for the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN) and the Ontario Bar Association (OBA). I even had students I do not even know or am only faintly acquainted with contact me regularly inquiring about law school. It was almost a weekly occurrence at times. I would excitedly tell them about how amazing the experience was and what they could do moving forward. I made myself available via call and text so that we could maintain contact and I could facilitate navigating the lengthy process of being admitted to law school. I was able to share their excitement when the messages that they received their offers of admission started coming in. Basically, I did what any proud student would do and I promoted my faculty, having recruited multiple people in the past two years to come and attend.

Seriously, do it all if you can! Your education is what you make of it, and you want to have the best experience possible. I have completed two full years of law school and barely broke a sweat academically speaking. This is because I am doing it my way. I chose to take all the criminal classes at my disposal during my second year so that I could advance myself even further in my area of expertise during my second summer. I took criminal infractions, criminal procedure and applications of criminal prosecution this year. The latter was a competitive class offered by New Brunswick’s Office of the Attourney General (OAG) and it allowed me the chance to shadow one of the OAG’s Regional Director in court every week. I also had the pleasure of arguing an appeal for the Crown on a sexual assault case in my appeal advocacy class that a colleague in London argued at the Ontario Court of Appeals in the past (our appeal was granted!). I even got to be a witness during my faculty’s trial advocacy course and the clerk for the McKelvey Cup, the regional moot competition leading to the Sopinka Cup in Ottawa!

I admit that my first semester was much more difficult than the second given that it was literally non-stop; I had no weekends due to Saturday morning classes and no consecutive days off to recharge, get organized or even do my laundry. Also, four out of five of my classes were mandatory classes. In contrast, only two out of five of my classes were mandatory this semester. Still though, I maintained my competitive average and the scholarships that go along with it, got accepted to a ton of amazing opportunities, including an internship with the New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission, and continued to establish myself within the Criminal Lawyers’ Association and the defence bar in Ontario in general. I am also continuing my research in law. Not only will I be presenting on access to justice for the francophone minority in Canada at a conference in Morocco in a few weeks, my faculty just officially accepted my topic for my third-year major writing assignment, which will allow me to produce a text from all the research I have been doing on sexual assault. I plan to do my Masters of Law (LL.M.) in sexual crimes, so this is fantastic news. My supervisor is very interested in my topic and I know that he will be able to contribute significantly to my findings. Finally, and this is perhaps my proudest moment in law school so far, I have been selected to work with the judges of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in Halifax for a six-week placement as an equivalent of a third year class in my program. It’s no wonder that I was asked by my alma mater to be featured in Laurentian University Viewbook as an exemplary alumna and that my faculty is putting me in theirs as well; I love promoting my programs of study because they have provided me with so many opportunities that I would not have otherwise had access to.

If you are not able to find your niche in first year, do not worry. I have found that life has a natural course that will lead you in the right direction if you let it. Do not fight against what seems to work for you just because a different idea seems better on paper or in theory. There is no fool-proof plan for law school: you have to do it your way. Also, be open-minded that you can always change your mind. It is just as important to avoid tunnel-vision in first year so that you do not limit yourself opportunities that may be in a different area than the one you may have envisioned. For instance, I would not have had the experience of being the Family Law Project Coordinator for Pro Bono Students Canada on my campus if I excluded any possibilities outside of criminal law. You will never know if you like an area of law of not until you try it! I may be 100% set on doing criminal law for the rest of my life, but the possibilities in law are truly endless.

Life in law is full of surprises. I think the biggest one for me this year was my civil procedure class. It was the first class I did not enjoy going to because it did not make sense to me right away. I could not see the bigger picture despite following (or at least trying to follow) the lectures intently. It was not until after I wrote the final exam that I realized how all the lectures fit together. I was reading a news article on a big and rather tragic civil lawsuit in the news when I was finally able to understand why the class was so essential to the study of law. In the same way that our clients in criminal law must face the immense institution that is the State once they are accused of a crime, the ordinary individual can seem powerless without a lawyer to advocate that they have been wronged by a large corporation. Perhaps then, the civil and criminal realities I will get to discover from the perspective of the NSSC bench (family matters are heard in a separate division in Nova Scotia) have more in common than I thought. Going to prison isn't the only grave injustice that can affect one's life and liberty after all. I am now thankful, in hindsight, that civil procedure was a mandatory class, because I would have never taken it otherwise and I honestly feel that it would been at my detriment as a lawyer. So remember, if something seems pointless, just be patient. It likely isn’t. You may be surprised one day when you see a very practical application of the knowledge you will have acquired in any given class that you initially disliked in law school.

To summarize, this first key piece of advice I am proposing is merely about getting to know what you like and making a plan for yourself right from the start of your first year instead of wondering what you are doing and ending up in third year with no articles or hating the area you are in. Trust me, the years fly by and you'll want to keep your end goals in mind the whole way through. 

Lesson two: Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind

They say you are the five people you spend the most time with. I have come to find that this statement is very true and it has drastically changed the way that I view my relationships since even one year ago. Keeping the right company is everything to me now. This is the second lesson I would like to share. I make it a point to maintain a great relationship with my family and nurture mutually beneficial friendships with people who love me and support my aspirations and life goals. I have fallen out of regular touch with some people because of how focused I am on my career now, but I do not see it as a bad thing. I still put plenty of time aside to have fun, but I have to plan in advance. This reality, in many ways, is an active choice that I have to make for myself when I am managing my time. A friendship is a two-way street and requires effective coordination, especially when distance is a factor. I still consider many people my friends, I will just not always be able to fit everything into my schedule. I find that this approach has actually made my personal life much more rewarding overall, because those who really want to keep in contact, no matter the distance, understand and we make it work.

I also choose to maintain great professional relationships. I keep up to date on files and spend time with my employer when I am back in Ontario. It’s not always easy to keep a personal touch with a busy crowd of people when you study 2000 km away. It requires a particular attention to detail and staying in the loop. I do this primarily by supporting colleagues in their personal and professional initiatives. I share good news with my partner in crime and senior counsel who encourage me to pursue opportunities that I might not have considered for myself. I thank my professors and other members of my faculty when they share information I find helpful. I reach out to lawyers and other people I find interesting and we meet and maintain contact. This is immensely helpful in my career, but also in my growth as a person. Imagine having a wide network of people you admire in a variety of fields that you could turn to if you needed personal or professional help. Lawyers have very high ethical responsibilities and the lines are not always clear; there are often conflicting interests involved in complicated decisions we must make. A self-regulated profession like that of a lawyer’s requires a critical sense of self-analysis, and sometimes, the occasional check-in with a more experienced colleagues when you aren’t quite sure what to do about a particular issue and feel that you need a second opinion.

Evidently, family, friends and network all matter, but another point I’d like to briefly touch on are the individuals who do not warrant your time or energy. Before law school, I was much more preoccupied with what other people thought of me. I am happy that this is no longer the case. This may come as a surprise to some, but I have faced a lot of adversity during my studies in law school. Many of my peers have consistently unkind things to say behind my back (even people I thought were my friends). People have gotten up and left and leave while I am talking, responded rudely when I have tried to make personal conversation, ignored my attempts to bridge gaps or be polite, gossiped about the questions I ask in class and ridiculed me, how I express myself and even the quality of my work. Some have even gone as far as to question the merits of my accomplishments, saying I am not deserving of the recognition and the awards I have received to date, spreading rumours about me and actively wishing that they could see me fail.

This used to get me down for a while, but I moved on rather quickly when I realized that my self-worth and confidence has never depended on other people. I have felt unstoppable since this helpful reminder and my performance has spoken for itself since. The people who support me without judgment are the ones who matter in my books. I have had nothing but positive interactions with the clear majority of people I have met in my life, including former boyfriends and friends I am no longer close with and I do not have any enemies. Thus, the type of bullying I am experiencing in law school is a rather isolated experience, and it teaches me a valuable lesson in focus and energy. Perspective and attitude are everything. Instead of focusing on hate, I choose happiness. I have been praised by my faculty, by lawyers and by other professionals and have never had an issue getting along with those who matter. In the end, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that I’m met with some lash-back in a place where competitiveness unfortunately seems to dominate over collegiality. Some of the most successful people I admire in the legal profession that I have confided in regarding this reality told me they experienced similar events while they were in law school. This was very reassuring for me because I know that I will only keep excelling more and more if I keep the same positive attitude. In any case, I have never held anyone’s hostility towards me against them. I think it speaks more to their character than mine, and I genuinely wish them the best in their pursuits.

For those of you who may be struggling with similar experiences, my advice to you is not to worry. Many haters will always hate no matter what you do. Always remember that forgiveness feels better than resent and that people deserve your respect even if you don’t know them. Just be yourself and let life sort out who and what truly matters for you. You’re worth the very best company, after all! 

Lesson three: It’s about the bigger picture

The final lesson my second year of law school is a brief one, but it is the most important. If my 2L taught me anything, it was that real success is about empowering others. Any good leader knows that, but it did not become clear in a practical sense for me until more recently. It’s not a forced effort in my case either. Those who know me know that the only thing I like to celebrate more than my own success is the success of others. It just feels good to empower others! Besides, there is a principal that states that you cannot consider yourself successful until you have mentored a leader and that they have successfully mentored another leader. Basically, everything becomes about the bigger picture. This lesson has also changed my perspective on how I set out to do the work that I do. I want my future colleagues to do better than me. I want the future students I will mentor to become a better lawyer than me. I want my younger siblings to have an easier time than I did as they grow up. This is key in improving access to justice and what it’s all about for me now… The end goal, the bigger picture. Many noticed the above and beyond effort I put into my transition for the incoming Pro Bono Students Canada Coordinators. As I was happy to announce at our end of the year appreciation event on April 19th, 2017, for the first time since its creation, we were successful in securing extra financing for the Family Law Program this year so that my successor could start his work for the 2017-2018 term in May instead of August. This is key for the continued success and amelioration of the program and I am thrilled to see what it will produce!

So, there you have the three major lessons I learned during the whirlwind that was my second year of law school! For those of you who do not have time to read my lengthy personal essays (TL;DR!), here is a very brief recap on each:

1. Establish a clear and concrete plan for your future and work every day to achieve it, but don’t forget to be patient as you try to figure out what it is about you that will stand out and contribute to your success. Also, never lose sight of your goals! Good things come to those who wait.
2. Haters are going to hate. Don’t pay attention to people who try to bring you down. Focus instead on the positive aspects of your life. Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
3. You can’t become a true leader until you can really invest in empowering others. The more success you can help others achieve, the better you will feel and the more our society will improve. It’s about the bigger picture.

That’s all for now! Just landed in Toronto and I can’t wait for my third and final year of law school now that I have finished the second! I am officially two-thirds done my Juris Doctor! As of next month, it will be the final sprint to the end game for this warrior woman. The final year to prepare for my articling, future practice and graduate studies. I’ll be focusing on myself, my studies and my research while preparing for my admission to the Upper Law Society of Canada and for my career in criminal defence!

Next up, a mock trial competition and a busy two weeks at Conron Law, a trip to Morocco to present my research and my placement with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax immediately afterwards! Don’t forget to come visit! 

Until then,

A very excited 2L who just finished her semester and who is in for the best summer of her life!