My Favorite Law School Blogs and Law School Bloggers

In my search for other law school blogs, most seemed to be either written by schools or people who had turned their blogs into professional ones but hadn't been in law school for a while. However, I did find some that were worth my time to read through and see some different perspectives on law school. I thought I'd share these because I always want like 8 different opinions on something before I make up my mind about it. 

If you're getting ready to go to law school or are already here, I encourage you to start your own law school blog! It's super easy, not very time consuming, and a good way to reflect and immortalize your experience here. I really believe in passing down these experiences to new generations of law students so they can see how vastly different it is from TVs and movies and how much easier it is than the rumors.

Related: Law School Vlog Roundup

*update 8/18
blogs listed in gray have been inactive for at least 6 months
but still have good info*

A Guide to Law School

Blondegalese

Caffeine and Case Briefs
check out her guest post here 
and my guest post on her blog here

Caribbean Millennial

Cerebellum Chef

Curls and Constitutions

Curls in Court

Desi Legal Diaries

Fairy in the City

Fit Future Attorney

Future J.D. Diary

Girl in Limine

Hello Melli

It's Breanna Nicole

Jaylin-ing

J.D. & Me

Justifiably Blonde
check out her guest post here 

La Petite Avocate

Lady Lawyer

Lattes and Gavels

Law and Lattes

Law and Lattes
(different blog, same name)

Law Bitches

Law School Brief

LawGirl

Law School and Me
(this blogger is in her 30s for any non-traditional students)

Law School Outlines Blog
check out my guest feature here

Law School Roundup

Law School Ruined Me

Latinas Uprising

LawToya Talks

Lawyerella

Legally Asian

Legally Blonde & Broke
check out her guest post here

Legally Brunette

Legally Bound

Legally Challenged

Legally Complicated

Legally Foreign

Legally Katie

Legally Lani

Legally Southern

Legally Speaking

Legally Texan

Life in Law and Coffee

Lily Like

Lipsticks and Lattes

Live, Laugh, Law School

Lively in the Law

Kayla Moran Blog

Journey to J.D.

Juris Blonde

Moore Awaits

Pearl Esq.

Petite Thoughts
check out her guest post here

Politics and Pearls

Road to JD

Some Reasonable Doubt

Taking On Law School

TBI Labyrinth

Tea Studies Law

Telling Twenty

The 1L/2L/3L Life

The Girl's Guide to Law School

(this is a professional blog but still very resourceful) 

The Law Girls

The Law Lifestyle

The Shrewd Millennial

The Fairy Princess Diaries
(has been rebranded to Whimsy in Her Wardrobe)

The Healthy Law Student

The Musings of Mara

The Navy Legalman

The Statute Snob

Training Kemp
(PS guys, this is a male blogger)

Velocity

What I Wish I Would Have Known

Whitley's Law And Order

Writ of Tess

If you have a blog, comment below or email me (brazenandbrunette@gmail.com) with a link and I promise I'll check it out! Also, feel free to comment or email with any suggestions to any law school blogs that you've found to be helpful :) I've also created a Pinterest board for law school blogging so make sure you email me so you can be added to that! 

SaveSave
SaveSave

SaveSaveSaveSave

let's be friends!

bloglovin' | instagram | facebook | twitter | pinterest

SaveSave

A Day in the Life of a Law Student

As a follow up to my post about how law school really isn't that bad, I thought I'd give a sample of what a typical day is like for me. Here's what I did this past week!

Weekdays

On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to class from 10:30-3 and on Tuesdays and Thursdays it's a little longer form 8-2. Both days I have a long lunch and I get Fridays off :) Here's my day for today: 

7

Get ready

7:30

Drive to class

8-10

Civ Pro

I get a 10 minute break at the hour so I pack breakfast to eat then

10-11:15

Property

11:30-12:30

Lunch

Always while I eat, I read The Skimm which is a daily email about what's going on in the world but simplified 

This is also where on TR I do any reading and notes for my legal research and writing class because those are usually easy readings

During MW this is where I finish my readings for Torts and brief my cases because my lunch is from 11:30-1:30

1-2

Legal Research and Writing 

2:30

I try to do a small workout as soon as I get home to give me a break from law

Related: How to Stay Fit in Law School

3-5

Read pages 140-154 for Contracts tomorrow 

5-6:30

Make, eat, clean up supper

6:30-8:30

Read pages 157-178 for Torts tomorrow

8:30-9

Shower

9-10

Relax/watch TV

11

Bed

My readings take me so long to do so little because I read 10 pages and then watch 10 minutes of Netflix, and I also get bored and take phone breaks. I also space it out where I try to do my briefs right before class so that the information is fresh on my mind by the time I get there. You'll see that I actually have a lot of free time compared to how much reading I have to do.

Related: How to study 9-5 in law school

Weekend

My weekends are mostly for chores— take out the trash and recycling, sweep and swiffer my entire apartment, dishes, and laundry. Again, I like to space out my readings because I can get burnt out when I try to marathon them. Right now my readings aren't too much so I take off almost all of Saturday to watch college football and drink. You gotta enjoy yourself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This was my last weekend:

Friday

Ready pages 123-140 for Monday's Contracts

Read pages 137-157 for Monday's Torts

Saturday

Read pages 191-206 for Tuesday's Civ Pro

Do briefs for what I read yesterday 

🏈 and 🍻

Sunday

Read pages 144-164 for Tuesday's Property

Update outline for Contracts and add highlights from book to notes

Same for Torts - because I've already read for my Tuesday classes, I save updating those notes for Monday evening

Time management

Law school has really made me mature in terms of managing my time. It's a lot easier to do a little every day instead of piling it all onto one day. I think part of what helped this is the necessity of having to read every single day. It also helps having a three-day weekend so that I really have a lot of time to get myself organized. Honestly if it weren't for my planner I'd have a hard time staying on top of this.

Related: Time balancing in law school

SaveSaveSaveSave

First Law School Legal Research Assignment

The Assignment

This was part one of an assignment for my legal research and writing class. Our assignment was that we were given a client who had called off an engagement after her fiancé wasn't loyal, and she wanted to know if she could keep her ring. We had questions that we had to turn in such as identifying the legally relevant facts, identifying what it is that our client wants us to do, and where we could look. The first part of the assignment was strictly books only—no WestLaw or Lexis. This was a real pain because I started to do this assignment one night after I got done reading, but I realized I would have to go to the library to do this so it got postponed another day.

The Research

Even more problematic, was that my entire class all needed the exact same books so once I got to the library I sat around waiting in line for books which wasted a lot of time. The research part was frustrating since we had to do it old school. First I had to find the Descriptive Word Index of the Texas Digest. This is basically just an index for all of the cases for Texas; it's so big that it's separated alphabetically into books like an encyclopedia. So first you have to find your book, then your word, then look for any cases. It's very time consuming. 

Texas Digest

I looked up conversion, broken contract, broken engagement, engagement ring, reclamation of a gift, and finally while I was in gift I found conditional gifts and in that section I found engagement rings. Then I found a Texas case about engagement rings and had to go find that case summary in the Southwest Reporter. This is a similar system of multiple books alphabetically but you get the exact book and page number from the DCI so it's much simpler.

Shepardizing

But since this is an assignment over research, I then had to go online to Lexis and Shepardize it. This is basically where you check to make sure that this ruling hasn't been overturned by a more recent case. So then I had to use the Green Book, which is a book over how to cite Texas-specific cases, to cite the case I found and then the Blue Book, which is a general citation book, to cite two cases that had mentioned this case when they went against the ruling because these cases weren't from Texas. Originally I had thought I could get by without these books to save money, but there really was no way I could not buy them.  

ALR

Lastly I had to look up annotations in the American Law Review. This was the same research process all over again, just with a different species of books. Instead of dealing with real cases, ALRs deal with scholarly writing over cases. This was time consuming because the pages on just engagement rings went on and on with different rules and their cases and exceptions to those rules and their cases. Again I had to cite this using my Blue Book, but I'm not quite sure I did this correctly so I guess I'll see when I get my paper back to do the corrections. 

Final Thoughts

This seemed the closest to what I've been used to doing in undergrad and high school. It can feel like busywork but I understand that it's practice because this is what I'll be doing in the real world as a lawyer. Just faster because I'll have WestLaw or Lexis. My next assignment is to write up a memo using the information I've found. I'm pretty confident about this because in undergrad I ended up taking two writing classes, Professional Report Writing and Technical Writing, that were basically just how-to-write-a-memo classes. These were required as part of my legal studies minor, and I'd definitely take them if you can because they're super helpful for almost any career. 

Law school outfits

Basically what I've been wearing has been more on the casual side of business casual. My classmates wear everything ranging from jean shorts and a T shirt to sundresses to slacks with a blazer. I think the worst that I saw was a girl wearing yoga pants that she was trying to pull off as dress pants along with way too much blue eyeshadow and a pinstriped vest that didn't match at all. 

It's tough because on one hand it's just class so why should I dress up just to sit and take notes all day, but on the other hand last week I got an email in the middle of my first class saying that our first Women's Law Association meeting was during lunch that day and there was going to be a local lawyer speaking. 

Overall, it's best to err on the side of looking nice. Dresses, rompers, and skinny jeans are my favorite because they're simple yet don't look too sloppy. But I am working to slowly build up my collection of blouses that would look professional with a suit so that I'll be prepared for my future without having to spend a lot of money all at once.

PS - here's a post with more about what to wear to during law school

How to Manage Your Time as a Law Student

Law school isn't as hard as you think it will be

Today I again ran into my friend from studying abroad and her friend. We got to talking about how as soon as anyone hears that you're in law school they'll start asking how incredibly difficult it is or mention that their cousin or someone goes to law school and they know how hard it is. This might change, but my overall opinion is that law school isn't that hard. Really. Your professors will say read these 10-20 pages, and write summaries about what you've read. That is not hard at all and anyone who could went to high school knows the skills of how to do this. 

And the part how people always comment that you have no social life and are always studying and blah blah... yeah how is that so bad? Forget all of the wonders of higher education, I went to college to have a damn good time and get a degree that I may or may not one day use to get a job. I came to law school to study and learn law. That's it. I never anticipated law school to be full of going out to the bars every night and partying by the pool every summer. Law school is just school. Probably the hardest part is learning how to analyze thoughts, and anyone can do that if they work on it. 

It does take up a lot of time because you can only read so fast

If anyone out there is scared of going to law school, absolutely don't be. I'd describe law school just like I'd describe joining a sorority: it's a big time commitment and you get out of it what you put in it. Does that seem so impossible to you? 

I'm not saying you won't be busy. During my lunch break my sister called to give me a run down of the wedding dress that she had just picked out, but I had to tell her I couldn't talk because I had to write up the briefs for my next class since I didn't have time to the night before. And I had to talk to her on my drive home because I knew that as soon as I got home I'd have to work on my research assignment and readings and briefs for tomorrow. 

Manage your time, and it's no big deal

Modern family is having it's season premiere tonight and I literally put it in my schedule so that I could be able to watch the new episode and still make sure I got everything done. I'm actually typing this during a commercial break because now I'm pretty much a master at utilizing and maximizing my time. 

Related: A Day in the Life of a 1L

The biggest hurdle to law school is learning damn good time management, and I suggest that everyone buy a thorough life planner before they come. I schedule my readings to take twice as long as they should because I account for the time that I know that I will distract myself lining up my highlighters first by rainbow order, then by preference order, then by pairs... 

Related: The Best Planner for Law School and The Best Highlighters for Law School

Law school requires effort, but not your soul

My point here is just anticipate that you will actually have to work for your classes, and law school isn't bad at all. "The first year they work you to death" is crap because they don't give you a crazy amount of work, but they do expect you to do your work. I'm done with classes by either 2 or 3 every day. I usually have 20-40 pages to read for both of my classes combined, every day. I usually try to go to bed around 11, so thats 8 whole hours to get every thing done. Plenty of time! 

Plus I have the weekends where I can get a head start on my readings so usually I read a little less than 20 pages a day, every day. If you think of this as just a regular fiction book that you're reading, that's actually a really slow pace. And while the finals seem daunting, it's nice that I'm not having 3 midterms all pile up or being stuck with a paper, quiz, assignment, whatever all due for different classes but on the same day like in undergrad. 

What to Expect During the First Month of Law School

Student organizations

Well this week we had our student org fair and when I was on my way there it started down pouring so I turned around and ended up missing it. I've added a lot of organizations on Facebook so hopefully I can still get involved with them. And Phi Alpha Delta sent me a form to transfer from pre-law to law which is pretty nice because I paid $100 national dues to join in undergrad and this was only $65. They also sent me letters for my car which I love because I never got any in undergrad. I'm hoping to run for some positions in these organizations pretty soon so that I can start building my resumé since I only have 3 years here.

Month milestone

Well I've been here a month and only questioned my life choices about three times so I'm feeling pretty good right now. I still haven't been cold called in any of my classes, so that's nice. Just like with my responses from law school, each one of my professors has a different way of handling that. One professor literally puts all of our names two times in a had and will draw at random who he'll call on to discuss cases. Another professor used an outline random number selector and will let us know one class in advance that we'll be called on. Another professor simply looks down at the class roll and will call someone from there to be up that day. And yet another professor doesn't call on anyone at all. I can't decide if I''m happy to not be called yet because this gives me time to get really good at briefing before I'm called, or if I'd rather have been called already because the cases seem to be getting harder as we go.

Working on my outlines

Now that I have a month worth of notes for my classes, I've started making my overall outlines for each class. It hasn't gone unnoticed to me that if I would been preparing for my finals this early during undergrad then I probably would've had a 4.0. My method is to follow the themes for each chapter and then to give the rules that we've learned so far and their cases and then also the exceptions to the rules. So far I have about a page and a half worth of outlines for each class, but I think that's because of the spacing. Here's a real rough draft of page one from what I have so far.

Related: How to Turn Your Notes into an Outline

Final thoughts

I've realized that probably the reason why I'm enjoying my classes and working so hard for them is that law school is the first higher education I've really gotten so far. To me, college was really just the most expensive party I ever went to. College was learning a little about a lot due to all of the random classes I took to get my major like History of Jazz and Walking. And law school is learning a lot about a little. Already a lot of my classes are overlapping themes! I like this a lot better and really feel like I'm not wasting my time on bullshit classes. Except for CivPro. I really dislike that class because I can read the book and cases watch the Quimbee videos, pay attention in class, and I still get easily confused on topics so idk what I'll end up doing about that :/ 

Also, this declaration for the Texas board of law examiners takes forever. With $190 application fees you'd think they'd have a website that doesn't look like its from 2002. Oh and you have to have SIX character references that can't be relatives or past employers and I really kinda am struggling past 3, so keep that in mind before you get here. They also require you to send in your official birth certificate or an official copy, so if you're still keeping that kind of important paperwork with your parents, make sure you pack it with you so you don't have to last minute call your mom and make her overnight it to you like I had to. Lastly, I'd suggest buy a used book because it's cheaper and chances are the last person highlighted everything you need.

Related: The Declaration of Intent to Study Law

What Life is Like in Law School

Twenty-three during week 3

This was actually the first time since I've came to college that I didn't blow off class for my birthday. I did have a glass of champagne during lunch to celebrate, though. I also skimmed through my readings that night faster than usual so that I could have some time to myself, because in law school it's almost guaranteed that you'll have reading every single night of every single day of you life. 

Test prep

In my contracts class, my professor sent us home with an old test question with three short essay answers and then we went over it in the next class. I'm glad he did this because I would have missed almost half of the available points on the test if it was the real deal. I made the apparently common mistake of diving into the answer without giving any explanation. 

My professor said the way to score the highest on the test is to answer an essay question like you're explaining it to your mom by giving the rule and its elements, tying the facts to the rule by stating how they're relevant, and then giving the final answer. Another mistake my professor said that is common is that students will bring in irrelevant rules just to show what they've learned, and he said this kills people because they're wasting their time and end up skimming on the end questions since they spent so much time overelaborating and more importantly that people can get too caught up in all of this extra fluff and end up not even answering the question. 

Questions for questions

One thing that I have noticed is that law professors prefer for you to answer your own question, and they do this by asking your question back to you. I can see how this is helpful because they're making you critically think but it can be frustrated when you're confused and then become even more confused when you don't get a straight answer. Usually though they'll eventually let you know why you're wrong. This happened to me when I asked a question this week and at first I was kind of flustered being put on the spot, then I was okay with it and I was glad for the little practice at the socratic method before I'm finally called on in one of my classes.

Mental obsession

At this point, I've actually learned a lot about the law. This is probably because I usually have between 3-8 cases per class, per day and each of those cases might have about the same amount of cases mentioned that I look into. So now the law is all I can think about. I've noticed that I will now slip cases and rules into every day conversations like how you do when you really like a new guy. Before I came here I got my windshield replaced and in this hot Texas heat the glue holding my rearview mirror melted and it fell down. Habitually, I began to analyze whether I could hypothetically sue for a good or a service and whether this would fall under common law or the UCC. 

Final Thoughts

I came into law school not dead set on what kind of law that I wanted to practice, but I was considering intellectual property. After getting my toes wet during just a broad overview of IP in my property class, I'm pretty much over that already because it's a very muddled area of the law right. I also am not a big fan of torts (personal injury and personal property damage) because in a way it doesn't make sense to me. Battery doesn't require someone actually being harmed and assault doesn't even require someone to even touch you. For some stupid reason, contracts really appeals to me because it just makes sense and so it's easy for me. Who knows, maybe I'll end up doing a lot of contracts in my future.