After Admission, A Day in the Life of an Osgoode Student
Most of my adult life was spent focusing on how to get into law school. Once I finally got the acceptance it dawned on me that now I’d actually have to be a law student, not just an applicant and that was both exciting and harrowing. Luckily, I got through my first year safe and sound and with relative success, but looking back I learned that succeeding in 1L requires more than simply being a law student. It requires hard work, engaging actively with the material, completing the readings and finding time to maintain a life outside law school.
Before coming to Osgoode, I worked in government, politics and the corporate sector. I was accustomed to demanding schedules, competing priorities and producing work under tight deadlines. Even with that experience, I found 1L challenging. Law school requires you to learn a new way of reading, writing and thinking. Admittedly, this adjustment is challenging for all of us.
To illustrate what that adjustment looks like, let’s talk about four core Osgoode classes: Contracts, Torts, Public and Constitutional Law (Pubcon) and Criminal Law.
Before my first class, I would review the assigned readings and any materials the professor had posted. I found it helpful to arrive prepared with at least a basic understanding of the cases and the issues they raised. That did not mean understanding everything before class. In fact, one of the most important lessons I learned was that feeling confused by a difficult case is completely normal.
In Contracts, I tried to follow not only the legal rules but also the commercial relationships behind them. Given my background and interest in business law, Contracts was one of the courses in which I could most clearly see how legal principles shape real decisions. After class, I would review my notes and identify anything I still did not understand. Rather than allowing those questions to accumulate, I tried to address them through further reading, conversations with classmates or questions to the professor. Once all of that was done, I’d note it all down and, most importantly, summarize it in a digestible fashion for later.
Torts required a somewhat different approach. The course was heavily focused on case law, and the distinctions between cases were often just as important as the general rules. The most important lesson I have from Torts is to remember your guiding cases! While some professors will give you lots of readings, only a couple of those cases will be the guiding ones and the ones they are looking for on a final. Be sure to follow closely and take note of which cases the profs say are guiding.
Once you’ve identified the guiding case you need to write a case brief. A useful case brief does not need to repeat every fact or paragraph of a judgment. It should identify the legally significant facts, the issue, the decision, the precedence that led to the decision and what (if any) test it establishes. I find there is no one size fits all, some people like a very structured case brief outline that they teach you in ILS some people like exclusively writing about the main tests and working it all in. Just find what works best for you.
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Between classes, I tried to step away from the material for at least a short period. It can be tempting to treat every break as another opportunity to work, especially when readings and deadlines are piling up. In my experience, however, working continuously without a genuine pause usually made me less productive. Eating lunch, walking around campus, speaking with classmates or simply taking time away from a screen helped me return to the material with more focus.
Criminal Law, like Torts, involved a significant amount of case reading. Preparing in advance was important because class discussions often depended on close attention to the facts, the elements of an offence and the court’s reasoning. The volume of reading could be difficult to manage, but falling several classes behind made catching up much harder.
The final, and most reading heavy class for me, was Pubcon. For me Pubcon was an exciting, albeit early at 8:30am, course. Pubcon was also the only class I had in fall 1L that had people being on call, so you really had to know your stuff. It would not be abnormal to have over 100 pages of reading a week in this course of dense, difficult to understand case law. The best advice I can give to incoming students about this course is learn how to skim and, just like Torts, find the guiding cases, or in Pubcon’s case the cases that establish the most recent tests. Do not waste your time reading through all of the precedence, just read and very accurately summarize the most recent version of the test.
Once classes ended, I would take a short break before beginning the next day’s readings or working on an assignment. I found it helpful to complete summaries on weekends. That reduced the pressure during the week and gave me room to deal with unexpected responsibilities.
Time management was particularly important to me because I wanted my experience at Osgoode to extend beyond the classroom. During 1L, I became involved with the Osgoode Mergers & Acquisitions Law Society and the Osgoode Society for Corporate Governance. Those activities complemented my interest in corporate and commercial law while allowing me to meet upper-year students and practitioners. Law school offers many worthwhile opportunities, but it is important to choose commitments deliberately rather than joining everything available.
My professional background also shaped how I approached 1L. Work in the Ontario government and Parliament had taught me to synthesize complex information, write concisely and remain composed under pressure. Those skills helped, but law school still required a different form of precision. It was not enough to reach a sensible conclusion; I had to explain how the relevant authorities supported it, address competing arguments and communicate the analysis clearly.
The most important lesson I learned was that law school cannot sustainably occupy every hour of the day. It is easy to feel that there is always another case to read, note to revise or concept to review. There usually is. Nevertheless, maintaining relationships, exercising, pursuing outside interests and allowing yourself to rest are not distractions from success. They are part of what makes sustained success possible.
My advice to incoming students is straightforward: attend class, complete the important readings, participate even when you are uncertain and summarize. At the same time, do not measure your progress constantly against everyone around you. Students enter law school with different experiences, goals and approaches to learning.
First year was demanding, and there were moments when the workload felt overwhelming. It was also intellectually rewarding and gave me a much clearer understanding of the kind of legal work I hope to pursue. Staying organized, engaging actively with the material and preserving time for life outside school made the experience manageable and ultimately something that I will favorably look back on.
