First year of law school is in the books

Previously: Fall 2025, Spring 2026

It's official, I've now finished my first year of law school. As a part-time student, we were required to take torts and another lawyering seminar over the summer to wrap up the 1L curriculum.

Tort law allows people to pursue claims against others for causing harm in a civil manner. We only covered a few select torts: battery, assault, false imprisonment, and then neglience.

My professor's specialty/focus is claims where kids are harmed, so she primarily focused on examples involving kids. In our very first torts class, she showed us body cam footage of cops brutally arresting elementary school students (false imprisonment!); it was incredibly effective at sharing an understanding of how real people are harmed in the real world as opposed to an abstract, educational topic.

I'm not sharing a graphical study guide like I've done previously because I didn't end up creating one this semester. Both of our exams were open book, so I just used my notes and the resources our professor gave us.

Lawyering seminar was a continuation of last semester's simulation of child neglect, except this time the mother was being accused of also neglecting the younger sibling. We learned about educational neglect, failure to protect, and Family Court Act § 1028, which is the procedure to demand return of a child after Children's Services removes them.

In New York, every child gets their own attorney during family court procedings (siblings might share an attorney if appropriate). Close to two decades ago, the court system moved from a "law guardian" role, in which you're an agent of the court, to "attorney for child", in which you are really the child's lawyer, representing them as a client.

But we ended up serving as an attorney for a child who didn't want to go home (yet)! Between that and torts, it was a pretty intense semester; my friend dubbed it "the summer of child abuse".

We got Wednesdays off, which was nice! Unfortunately between the Knicks, the World Cup, and some bad weather, we had a number of remote classes, which I can't stand.

Next semester will be Civil Procedure, Evidence (Fourth Amendment), and drumroll Critical Race Theory. Also I'll be a Staff Editor on the CUNY Law Review.

Reflection#

I thought I'd take the opportunity to reflect on finishing one year by...interviewing myself. But really, these tend to be the questions everyone asks me (I don't mind!), so you can think of it as a FAQ.

What do you want to do with your law degree?

No idea. Definitely not anything family court related (see above regarding the summer of child abuse).

Really?

Really. I think I'd be interested in doing a number of things, like First Amendment free speech/expression/press, or Fourth Amendment anti-surveillance and privacy, or something tech-adjacent.

Lately something around drafting or reviewing legislation seems interesting. But I don't think I've found just exactly what I want to do yet.

Also, as you might have heard, the rule of law in the U.S. is uhhh, going through some struggle lately. So we'll see what the law is even like by the time I graduate.

Is law school hard?

It's certainly harder than any other class I've taken before, but I suppose that's to be expected for a graduate program. I find the hardest part to be balancing my time.

Normally I sign off work at 5pm sharp, eat a quick meal, start class at 6:15, and then we go until 9 or 10. Then after I get home, a bit more food and prep for the next day. Weekends are for reading for the upcoming week and whatever other homework we have.

Hanging out with friends is limited to whenever there's a holiday or by some miracle, a light reading week.

It definitely requires having a good support system; I couldn't have done it without my family and girlfriend helping me out. Whether they wanted to or not, they too learned some law school stuff when I regurgitated it to them as part of my exam prep.

Do you enjoy it?

Except for when it's exam time, absolutely. I've been interested in the law for a while, so actually learning the subtle details feels very enriching because you realize how little you knew beforehand!

Plus I just like learning. To that end, this is probably the most I've ever read in my life.

Best part is definitely the friends I've made. I think our study group is the best one (I'm being 100% objective here), and it was because we mostly happened to sit in the same row during the first week.

What's the most interesting thing you've learned so far?

I think criminal law has been the most fascinating to me, just because we all have some basic understanding of what crimes are and what's illegal, but getting to know the legal framework that underpins it all really taught me that I actually had a very poor understanding of what a crime was! To some extent this is largely academic, at the end of the day what really matters is whether the jury votes to convict.

We also learned a number of defenses to crimes, which is probably a good thing to know! My favorite is the Cheek defense, which can be used if you intentionally screw up your taxes, as long as you had a "good-faith belief" that you were doing the right thing.

However, now that you've learned about the Cheek defense, you can't plan to use it since it would no longer be a good-faith belief. You're welcome.

Where do you get boba from?

I will do a proper review eventually, but Teazzi is right across the street from the CUNY Law campus, it's quite good. The only downside is that the boba often clumps together, which means that you need to suck real hard to get the boba out, which isn't something you can quietly do in class!

During our first-ever study group session, I took the group to Teazzi and we all got boba and they said they enjoyed it. The next day before class I walk in to see my now-best friend is, entirely of her own volition, sitting there drinking boba. One of my proudest moments.