It would be wrong to say law students are always an easy going group of people, but there are a few things that are guaranteed to tip even the most happy and relaxed law student over the edge…
Pen emergencies
Your pencil case in stuffed full of pens: all sorts of pens, wonderful expensive pens. When you really need one, they are all empty, dried up or those horrible cheap ones that are just as likely to tear the page as they are to write. The producers of cheap pens have a lot to answer for!
Your laptop running out of power with your tute work notes on it
You were on the ball, in the library before the tute writing ‘the best answer’ to the tute questions. Being an eco-conscious, planet saving law student, you decide not to print the answers off. After walking into the tute feeling confident about your great answers, you open the laptop and it promptly shuts down. Just because it was plugged into the wall in the library does not mean it was turned on. All that work for nothing!
Gunners
You worked hard to understand the law and how it applies to that week’s tutorial scenario, however that ‘gunner’ has answered all the questions you even put up your hand. This is made worse when the tutor calls on you to answer the one question that left you stumped. The Gunner is sure to be sitting in the front row, so you spend the next hour dreaming about the whipping they would get from your laptop cords. BAD GUNNER! BAD!
Lecturers who don’t believe in structure
It’s baffling how some of the lecturers seem to draw connections between two unconnected areas of law or seem to be unable to follow a logical order to the process. Some topics are a brain drain to begin with, but it’s worse with an eccentric academic who seems to presume this is all basic stuff you already understand, and who believes they are just there to elaborate on the finer points. With subjects later in the degree this is fine, but when it is Contracts A or Torts it can leave you disgruntled and in a foul mood.
English decisions: aka judgment from the House of Lords in 1902
You’re finally sitting down with your laptop at somewhere far, far away from the law library, and you’re ploughing through the case law (that you have found yourself) from the databases. And then it happens, an ER from 1902. The ratio of this case will tie all of that week’s reading together, or worse yet, will be the pinnacle of your essay. And it is not on any database anywhere. It’s like a divine sign to give up, and go watch Boston Legal.
When he’s not writing for Survive Law, Obiter Ovum is musing about law school and such in his own corner of the Internet. Click here to check out OO’s blog.
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