Classes were cancelled on my first day of law school at Tulane due to the feared imminent arrival of Hurricane Andrew.  I had fled New Orleans the previous day in response to a plea from the city’s mayor, having seen the destruction that Andrew left behind in South Florida.  Since I hail from Wisconsin, land of sometimes tornadoes and many times blizzards — storms that could certainly be serious but had never required flight — initially I wasn’t sure how to respond to the mayor’s plea.  I knew the phone number of one person in New Orleans, a classmate I had met during orientation.  Her father found the closest hotel vacancy: a room in a B&B in Meridian, Mississippi.  So I shoved my Macintosh Plus desktop computer into a closet (we didn’t use laptops yet), grabbed my cat, and got in the car.  My cat, my new friend, and I watched a TV screen in a Meridian tavern as the Hurricane first strengthened, then moved farther west than the original projections had shown until it weakened and made landfall again far enough west of New Orleans to cause relatively minor damage there.  The city of New Orleans was spared (that time).

I arrived late to my first Civil Procedure class a day and a half later, after driving into the city through heavy welcome home traffic.  Civil procedure was as strange as the hurricane, with all of its foreign terminology, rules, and standards that seemed to have no place to sit in my prior learning of English and French literature, fiction writing, or environmental science.  I had made it back to New Orleans, but now I was really lost. 

I arrived late to law school. Not late in the figurative sense, as in “late in life,” but literally late. I had skipped orientation in favor of squeezing out the very last vestiges of swelter that passed for summer in Washington, D.C. I was overconfident — and I was late. These two particular traits plagued me for some time to come, and they proved antithetical to the practice of law. Why something so obvious was not obvious to me I do not know, but I repeat the story here as an incentive for current students to cultivate from the start much better habits.

Law school is not an easy endeavor. It requires rigorous attention to detail, thorough preparation, and psychological grit. Although I picked up on these themes, I entered the cocoon of a small and close-knit study group to do so. This can be an effective adaptive strategy, but there are many other methods of study and coping that are equally if not more useful. Find a method that works for you. And don’t shy away from challenging courses, or those you think you will never utilize. I very much doubted the career utility of many of the “business-oriented” classes, but I took them anyway and they proved to be among the most helpful in practice, since I ended up focusing on consumer law.

Gradually I also came to realize that there was life outside of law school and that it was I who was excluding it. 

I remember the first moments of law school as if they happened yesterday. Gerry Frug walked into Contracts, looked out us, and said nine words “Mister Golden, state the case in Hawkins v. McGee.” One hundred thirty nine 1Ls went weak with relief. Poor Mr. Golden began to read from the case. “Defendant’s motions for a nonsuit and for a directed verdict on the count in assumpsit were denied, and the defendant excepted . . . .”

Professor Frug stopped him. “Mr. Golden, can – you – speak – English?” Mr. Golden managed to get out a “yes” and Frug’s face lit up like a Christmas Tree. “Wonderful. So can I! Why don’t you start?”

Well, I did know to speak English. I had no choice. But here are five things that I wish I had known.