CRASHING INTO FIRST CLASS: LAW SCHOOL EDITION (PART 1)

 

THE BASICS

Last year, I wrote a blog post (link here) about how I attained a first class at the university and emerged as the Best Graduating Student of my faculty with a CGPA of 4.84. By the time I made this post, I was already at the Nigerian Law School, even though we had not officially started lectures, and I was already feeling a lot of pressure because I felt like I needed to defend my result. I also knew that whatever I did in the university would have to be aggressively amped up for me to achieve a first class in law school. I was scared, but I posted it anyway. I did this despite knowing that publishing that post (which, by the way, has since become my most popular blog post with over 11,000 views) would lead people to see me as some sort of academic authority and raise whatever expectations they already had of me.

Anyways, I come with good news. I did ‘defend’ my grades at the Nigerian Law School (NLS). I not only graduated with a first class at NLS, I was also the 2^nd Best Graduating Student in Corporate Law Practice, as well as the Best Female Student in Corporate Law Practice.

Now, I am going to be very honest with you. I did aim for a first class right off the bat, but I would be lying if I said I always felt assured that I would be get a first class. Oh, no no no. I battled doubts, inferiority complex, imposter syndrome and the general feeling of academic humbling (with a sprinkle of academic humiliation) when I was in the Nigerian Law School. It wasn’t an easy feat. I worked harder than I have ever worked, did things crazier than I ever did in the university (and if you have read my previous post, you will know that I did some pretty intense things to attain my first class in the university), and yet, all through, I never felt like I was doing enough. In fact, there were several times that I felt dumb. I felt like an idiot, an olodo. There were times that I felt like I didn’t even deserve the first class I got in the university and that by the time that results were released, the bubble would burst and everyone would know that I was an academic crook.

Luckily, on that, I am not alone. There are just so many things to read in the Nigerian Law School and so much information to retain. Even if you read through the syllabus seven times, it’s almost impossible to feel like you’ve truly, actually done enough. Especially if you are aiming for a first class at the Nigerian Law School.

Okay, enough ramblings, let’s get into the details. Now, I should warn you: this is part one of a series of very long and detailed posts on everything I can remember about how I excelled at the Nigerian Law School. But I assure you, if you are in the Nigerian Law School, or you are about to enter the Nigerian Law School and you desire to attain a first class, these write-ups are for you. There are a lot of things that I am going to share that I wish I knew off the bat, things that took a lot of trial and error to learn but here I am freely dispensing this information.

So, buckle up, sit tight, and let’s get into it, shall we?

 

PREPPING FOR THE BATTLE AHEAD

For those yet to resume NLS, I’m assuming that you would think that I would begin by advising you to begin reading months before law school. Well, I cannot dish out that advice, because I do not believe in it. You see, right from when I was in the university, I never read during holidays. I believe in doing things at the right time. So I didn’t seriously bother about reading before law school.

Now, before I entered law school, I was already hearing a lot about how intense and crazy it was, and at a point, fear drove me to attempt looking at Cundy Smith’s materials. But I could not understand what I was reading, and I didn’t even know what I was reading so I gave up shortly after.

But does that mean that I advise you go into law school blind? Absolutely not. Most students have no idea how law school works until they are already in it and I don’t think that it is advisable. The Nigerian Law School is a fast-paced environment that can get terribly overwhelming if you are unprepared. I believe it is imperative that you get a little bit of understanding as to what lies ahead. That means:

a.     Watching videos and reading blog posts (or books if available) about the law school experience: Now, this includes general information, like what you are to bring to commence the law school, what is prohibited, what you should expect, how your campus is, the room and other facilities, the law school structure, how to read in law school, how to take care of your health in law school, how to structure your time table and so on. Before I knew the campus I was going to, I watched videos of all different campuses, and when I figured out mine, I narrowed my videos to the Yenagoa experience. I also watched a lot of videos and read posts on how classes ran and on the reading structure of top-performing students. Before law school, I already had a fair idea of how the system ran, so it didn’t strike me by surprise.

 

b.     Setting Goals: I believe that everyone should go to law school knowing exactly what they want. Now, some people just want to pass, but if you are reading this, I believe that you want to get a first class. A beautiful goal. A very attainable goal, regardless of what you got in the university. I also wanted a first class, and I knew that it was what everyone expected of me. So, I spent the weeks before law school watching videos on VIP TV and other interviews with first-class students. Their stories not only prepared me for what I needed to do before venturing into law school, they also made me believe that it was possible. I mean, if a person who made a 2.1 and even 2.2 in the university could go on to make a first class at the Nigerian Law School, why couldn’t I?

 

c.      Prayers: The phrase, “law school is highly spiritual” is a truism that can never be overstated. So many things can go wrong within those nine months that may not even be academic, but could mess you up mentally in an already academically aggressive environment.

 

I prayed about a lot of things before resuming law school, down to the roommates that I would have. In fact, I do not believe that praying about roommates is a mundane prayer before law school, especially if you’re not planning to stay in an executive hostel or to stay outside the facilities. Law school is already way too stressful for you to be wasting your precious time and energy arguing and keeping malice and beef with roommates. I didn’t pray for close friends as roommates, but I did pray for peace. And I’m happy to say that I did have peace in my room in NLS.

 

Pray for everything, down to your family life during NLS, your health, your finances, your mind, your heart… you get what I mean; just pray all round and as much as you can.

 

VENTURING INTO LAW SCHOOL

The first week of resumption in NLS is strictly for registrations and no academic activities take place until the third week. Now, I know some people, even first-class students, who didn’t begin reading that week but waited till week 3, when lectures started, to start their reading. However, I came to NLS with a plan of some sort, which required immediate action from the very first day. My plan was to commence by reading some of the relevant authorities related to law school.

So from the very first week, I delved into studying the ACJA, ACJL Lagos and ACJL Kano as well as the RPC. Now, there was not much pressure, and I was still adjusting, so I wasn’t quick, but I did start on time. I also began reading a few of the drafts for the first week of lectures.

I don’t have much to say regarding this period really. You may make your first friends during that week, and I would advise you to be very careful regarding those that you associate with. Meet and make friends with the right people, positive people that will encourage you rather than dampen your spirits or inflict you with their spirit of nonchalance. You might think it is not important, but if you’re already coming with fear, run away from negative people that will fuel the fear and make it worse. You might also meet people that will make you wish you had started reading earlier, all those who had been reading weeks before law school resumption. But again, take this from me: don’t let them pressure you. If you work hard enough, you can meet up with and even surpass them. Besides, they could have been reading off point, you know.

 

THE NLS CLASSES

I definitely do not have the best attention span. In the university, I could barely tolerate boring lectures. However, coming into law school, I realised that I had to improve in some way or the other because, based on the research I had done, all the first-class students claimed to have attended at least 95% of classes and paid rapt attention in class (besides, you need at least 70% attendance to be qualified to take the exams).

And I did improve in my focus and attention, but not completely, especially because I slept for roughly five hours daily throughout law school. I took extensive notes in class, and the notes got more detailed once I switched from writing to typing my notes in class. I also recorded classes, especially when the lecturers were talking too quickly to meet up with them in my notes (and for the times when I would doze off in class). For a lot of classes, I would record, write as much as I could, then use the recordings to complete my notes.

As you can see, I believe that classes are very important and your class notes and slides should form the basis of your notes. Also, especially after externship, you should pay rapt attention to pick out some hints that lecturers will drop about possible questions that might come out in exams. If possible, and this is one thing that I regret not doing, when it is close to exams, around revision week, try to ask colleagues in as many campuses as you can about the exam hints that their lecturers dropped.

 

NLS PRE-CLASS TASKS AND OUTCOMES

In case you are not already aware, your study MUST be in line with the NLS curriculum and the outcomes provided before each class. Nothing more, nothing less. If the material that you are using or the textbook that you are using differs, switch to one that aligns with the curriculum. In the end, there are a plethora of materials and textbooks to use, and I would  not be the one to say which is better than the other (I used Badmus, Agbata and textbooks), but the important thing is the curriculum because that is what the lecturers will be using to set their exam questions.

Now, regarding pre-class tasks and group meetings, I was unfortunately in a group where some members took pride in wasting the time of the other members, quarrelling about topics that they had little to no information about and trying to prove themselves to be more intelligent than the others. As a result, group meetings that could efficiently last for just about 30 minutes to an hour at most were lasting for as long as two hours. That was completely unsustainable in my opinion, so I began distancing myself from physical meetings, attending only a few times a week (mostly on weekends). However, I did do my due diligence in assisting with tasks when required.

I must admit, right off the bat, I placed a higher priority on past questions than pre-class tasks because I noticed that there were several types of questions being asked in the tasks that just never featured in exam questions. On the other hand, the questions might be different and NLS lecturers do have their way of springing surprises in exams, but there are consistent, repetitive patterns of asking questions that the Nigerian Law School has maintained over the years. Hence, I never went through all of the questions asked in the pre-class tasks but went through several years of past questions, right from 2009 past questions. However, if you wish to rely on pre-class tasks for active recall, I would say that it is a good strategy, but it should not replace past questions.

 

DAILY AND WEEKLY TARGETS

As I mentioned earlier, you should come to law school with a vision, which I believe should be to make a first class and to become a red scroller. But to achieve this ultimate goal, you need to set out daily and weekly targets. I created these targets right from the first week of lectures because I spent the first two weeks of registration and orientation deciding which materials to use and how to read.

So my daily targets were to read what was taught for class, make typed notes and read a rule of RPC. I didn’t perfectly stick to completing my notes every evening, especially as topics became quite voluminous, but I did try my best. And then, every weekend, my goal was to solve MCQs of all topics taught that week with strict timing, drafts, learning of cases and sections for the week, and to participate in Law School Paddi weekly quizzes. Again, I did suffer a few lapses from time to time, but that was generally how I structured my days and weeks when we first resumed.

I believe so much in having weekly, daily, even hourly targets if that is what is going to get you to sit up and do the work. You see, these artificial deadlines are important because the goal of a first class becomes, especially when you’re in the middle of law school, like something far away and abstract. In fact, I can say that at a point, my motivation for reading and pushing myself as hard as I could, reading past exhaustion and waking up every day ready to spend the entire day buried in my books was no longer to attain a first class per se, but to meet up with the very ambitious targets I set for myself. 

 

A ROUTINE AND A CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENT, NOT WILLPOWER

I don’t believe that you can excel in law school by relying only on willpower. Willpower is like a muscle and it weakens the more you rely on it throughout the day until it gets completely depleted and you begin to procrastinate, give in to temptations and make impulsive decisions that will harm your performance in law school.

In fact, I can tell you for free that I did not excel in law school because I had the strongest willpower of all. I know that I have spoken and written a lot about discipline and personal growth, but put me in the right environment, and you would see me transform into the laziest bum of all. For instance, imagine if I started an amazing fantasy book series with nine books of 800 pages each right in the middle of law school. You think I’d be able to stop or restrict myself to only 10 pages a day to maintain, you know, balance? Absolutely not. I don’t have that level of discipline. I would be a lost soul for the number of days or weeks it takes me to finish the book series before I finally came to my senses.

So yes, you can guess, I didn’t even let myself come within a hair’s breadth of a single book, or a single movie series (I did watch about two movies when I arrived home for my externship, though), or TikTok (and barely ever visited Instagram) all through law school. In fact, I had to convert a phone of mine into a study phone and made it contain only my materials and music, so that I could put my ‘distraction phone’ away in a different place while studying. This was simply because I knew who I was. I wanted to minimise anything that would make me waste away precious time, so I removed temptations before they became a problem. In that way, I conditioned my environment so that I needed less willpower to perform at the optimum level.

Additionally, I had a strict, somewhat regimented routine in law school. I conditioned myself in a way that I didn’t need to make the decision to read. I read on autopilot. I set several alarms to wake up by 3 or at most, 4 every morning, read till 7 or 8, prepared for lectures, then went for lectures. After lectures, I went straight to buy food, spent an hour eating and resting by either pressing my phone or gisting, depending on when lectures ended, and went to continue reading by 3 or 4pm. I then continued the reading till 9pm, had the Red Scrollers daily meeting from 9 to 10, prayed from 10 to 11 or more, then slept off, ready to start the day doing the exact same thing all over again. This was my daily routine except for Wednesdays and Fridays, because of mid-week church service, Clasfon meetings and academic tutorials.

As for the weekend, I would wake up by the same time (or 5 if I slept late on Friday), read till 7, and go for sanctuary cleaning of the church till 8. After sanctuary cleaning, I would buy food, eat, go to the reading room where I would spend the remaining day reading or head out to Pedros, where I could usually charge my laptop if there was no light all through the day. I would then go for group meeting by 4 or 5, come back by 6, participate in Battle of Wigs by Law School Paddi, then continue reading till we had the daily meetings. On Sundays, I did chores after church service before continuing my reading.

Of course, there were days when things came up that meant that I had to fluctuate my patterns, but generally I formed this habit and had dedicated times for things so that I did not necessarily need conscious self-control to decide to read. I built habits, routines, systems and conditioned my environment so that reading became my default mode in law school right off the bat before exam pressure set in. Also, with the targets that I set for myself, I was not just reading at a relaxed pace or taking my precious time. No. I had goals that kept me on my feet and ensured that I spent my reading time actively pushing myself to grasp things faster and be more efficient and effective in my reading.

 

TIME EFFICIENCY

When I was in 100 and 200 level, I used to mostly monitor my reading progress by how many hours I spent reading. This was because I was trying to develop my mental stamina, sustained attention and capacity for deep work. However, once I developed that to a satisfactory extent, I stopped measuring my reading by the hours spent but by the work accomplished in those hours.

You see, everyone knows that you have to spend long hours reading in law school if you want to do well, especially if you want to attain a first class. But what most people don’t talk about is how not all reading hours are the same. Let me give you an example. Person A spends eight hours reading a day straight from the textbook like it’s a novel, or perhaps taking notes along the way. Person B reads for the same eight hours, but instead, spends it in active reading, pausing from time to time to ensure that he or she has not only understood what he or she is reading, but can actually remember it. In the end, the two of them have spent many hours grinding. But I assure you that Person B is the person with results, the person that will actually remember a substantial part of what he or she read.

Now, I will discuss this more later on, but the point is, do not deceive yourself by tracking your reading by how many hours you spend sitting at the table with a book in front of you. Nobody cares. If you can’t remember what you read, you’re not going to get parallel A’s by telling the examiner that you read for 10 hours daily. Monitor by ensuring that the time you spend is being used effectively, and the only way that you can do this is to ensure that you are reading effectively. From time to time, review your reading method to ensure that whatever you’re doing is actually working and is time efficient. If it is not, ask the right questions to the people who seem to be getting ahead and change whatever you’re doing.

 

BATTLING ACADEMIC DIFFICULTIES

You are very likely going to encounter a lot of difficulties in law school. If you are fortunate, these difficulties will be only academic difficulties. But still, they can be quite demoralising.

As I said earlier, law school made me feel like a dullard at first, especially during the early days when I was still getting introduced to a horde of information on a daily basis and somehow delusionally expected my brain to retain substantial information once I had made my notes. And when it didn’t, it hit like a punch in the guts.

There were times, early on, when I would stay up all night making notes for a particular topic then the next day, someone would ask me a question on what I had just read and it would seem to me, like I had never even come across that topic. I mean, I knew right from the start that making notes was not real reading but still, I was a bit delusional about my abilities, so it would hurt a little. But that was not my greatest academic hurdle, because I did expect it.

My actual greatest academic hurdle was making the surprising discovery that my attention to detail was, for lack of a better word, trash, in the mud, almost non-existent. I knew that I used to be a careless scatterbrain as a child but it really was something that I assumed I had overcome until I came to law school.

And oh boy, you CANNOT make a good grade in law school without an almost perfect attention to detail. You can’t. In fact, not only are you expected to have excellent attention to detail, but you are expected to display the attention to detail under EXAM CIRCUMSTANCES, which, for me, was with anxiety, barely enough sleep to function and barely enough calories in my stomach for the human body to ordinarily function (but that was just me, please try to sleep and eat well during exams).

But I cracked it. I managed to develop enough attention to detail to end up as a prize-winning first-class student. And I’m going to tell you why.

The simple reason is that once I identified this problem, or any other problem while in law school, I… I was about to type that I refused to let it dampen my spirits, but that’s not true. It did dampen my spirits. I would get very demoralised when we started solving pre-class tasks, and I was missing important information because I was not careful enough. Also, when I started solving MCQs and kept getting floored by the trick questions because I was not reading the questions carefully, my spirits were dampened.

I remember times in class when I would fail a pre-class task I attempted, because I missed out on something, and everyone around me would get it. I remember that during times I would just get so silent in class, really doubting my brilliance and feeling very stupid because how could I have missed out on something that everyone else managed to see?

I also remember sitting on the floor in my room, very close to tears because I had attempted MCQs and failed a lot of the questions, not because I wouldn’t have known the answers if I had not read them carefully, but because I did not have the good judgment to actually read them carefully. I remember asking myself if this was how I was going to get this first class that I was looking for at the Nigerian Law School.

But I quickly made a comeback. For MCQs, the first thing I did was to actually take my time to study how to answer MCQs, how to anticipate the tricks laid out in them and how to evade the common pitfalls (I’ll discuss this further when talking on answering MCQs). I did the same thing for past questions and more than that, I answered more and more past questions until I became the one amongst my peers spotting tiny details that they were missing and until I started getting perfect scores in MCQs.

I also faced other challenges. The topics were just too many. Some of the topics were easy to read, but many were a challenge to fully grasp. There were so many cases, sections, principles and other things that I had to keep in my head, and I made notes, which made things a bit slower for me than for others. Also, at many points, I felt behind my peers and as though I was the dumbest amongst them. But whenever I identified a problem, I never let it demoralize me for too long. I always found a way to bounce back.

The moral of this? You may face challenges in your studies at the Nigerian Law School. You may forget a lot, you may have difficulty understanding some topics, you may, at a point, even be behind your peers. But if you are ever in that spot, I wouldn’t say that you should just keep pushing, even though you should. First, identify the exact challenge you are facing, then find a solution for it. Then you can keep pushing.

 

COMPARISON

When it comes to comparing yourself with your mates, I have a bit of a divided opinion on it. Some people will say that you should never compare yourself with your mates, but should you really never do that? I mean, if the people that you’re writing the same exam with and started at the exact same time as you are in Point N and you’re still in Point C, should you really close your mind to that and, you know, focus on yourself and your pace? Isn’t that a possible indicator that there’s something you might not be getting right just yet and that your pace needs to be adjusted?

I do think that comparison can be important when it’s done right and in a healthy manner. But comparison can also be a damper that can cause you to begin spiralling and get depressed, and that is all just really unnecessary.

I really think it’s all about your mind-set. How do you approach the information that there are people who are understanding things faster and reading more efficiently than you are? Do you take it as a cue to learn from them, adjust and grow? Or do you just decide that because you’re not meeting up to their pace, you must be stupid and that you just don’t have what it takes academically to get a first class? Personally, I think that the second mind-set is just stupid. How do you get the opportunity to see that you could do better and decide to use the information to make conclusive negative opinions about yourself?

If you’re in that state, and seeing that other people are doing better makes you even more pessimistic about the bar finals, I think you need to pray to God to change your mind-set. I do not think that the right approach is to decide to box yourself in and never interact with people so that the only level of progress you’re observing is your own, to, you know, maintain your peace.

When I was in the Nigerian Law School, I participated almost every week in different activities that gave me opportunities to gauge my performance in comparison with my mates. I participated in nightly past questions review with my peers and mentors. Whenever I gave a wrong answer and another person answered it right, or I gave a right answer but someone else gave a better answer that was commended by the mentors, I didn’t think…oh, that means I’m stupid. I just realised that I needed to improve my answers and, if needed, reach out to the person for help.

I also participated in the Saturday Battle of Wigs (BOW) sessions by Law School Paddi. At first, I didn’t ever appear on the leader board (top 10), but the more I saw my mates getting high scores, the more motivation I got to practice more of my MCQs so that I could also appear on the leader board. And after some time, I began to be featured there. I never quite got to first place, but I did get 3^rd several times. And one thing I can tell you is that I would not have practised my MCQs as hard as I did in law school if I wasn’t driven by the desire to appear on the leader board weekly.

What’s the healthy way of comparison? Well, I’d say joining groups with people that you’ve noticed are actually making good progress in law school, having friendly competitions with them and being able to identify whether you’re maintaining the same pace as your peers, or whether you need to do more.

Now, the primary gauge of your progress should be your goals and your ability to hit your artificial deadlines. But a little bit of comparison of how you’re faring academically as compared to your friends is also very useful from time to time. 

These are a few basic things that you should have in mind as you venture into the Nigerian Law School. Next up, we shall be looking into Studying for the Bar Finals.

 

Good luck!