Kenya Law Student Advice

The links below contain articles that will guide you as a student in Law school.
1.Nine Ways to Shine in Kenya Law Exams  
2.Five tips for new Kenya law students 
3. 5 Top Tips for Passing Your Kenya Law Exams 
4.  20 Tips for Success in Kenya Law School 
5.First Year Law Student  
6. Help! I’m Miserable and Hate Law School!** 
7. How to Survive Your First Year of Law School

We will keep adding new articles.
You can also contact us with any questions you may have as a law student.

First Year Law Students

Being a first year student at university can be a load of but very daunting at the same time.  You quickly start to realise the difference between being a university student and studying atschool and college!As a law student, you will be embarking on a journey that admittedly won’t be easy, but will be very rewarding when you graduate; having acquired the necessary skills beneficial to any career path you take.So, what can you expect in your first year as a law student?Well, you should already know that in your first year, you will start to learn five of the nine core modules that are required for the ‘qualifying ‘part of the law degree for England and Wales. These include:
*.Constitutional and Administrative law*.Criminal law
*.Contract law
*.Legal Methods
*.English Legal System
Law firms and other businesses also want to know that students are well prepared for a career in the legal profession, and possesssome business acumen. Therefore, The City Law School has introduced an additional module, known asEmployability and the graduate market, to help prepare students for the working world, and ensure they are well prepped for completing application forms, and for interviews, etc., enabling you to gain a head start when thinking about your career.Aside from the core modules, there are other things that you should strongly consider participating in during the course of your first year as a law student,to give you a head start in a very competitive industry:

*Attend events– The City Law School works closely with it careers department, to organise events specifically for law students. These include career-specific events with people currently working in various roles within the legal profession, alumni events giving you the opportunity to talk to former law students about their experiences studying law and their current careers. They also organise the University’s Law Fair – a must forlaw students to attend, and an opportunity to meet with a range of law firms and organisations providing alternative law-focused jobs, and to find out how to progress your legal studies.

*.Get involved with mooting and debating– Mooting helpsyou to master important legal skills, such as research and analysis, while also gaining experience in public speaking and presenting arguments. Mooting forms a large part of legal studies and students from The City Law School have won numerous national and international mooting competitions. You won’t do as much mooting in your first year, but if the opportunity arises, take advantage of it – the more experience you gain,the better mooter you become, and you could be thenext to win some of those mooting competitions!

*.Read as much as you can– Okay, we’re not talking about reading every waking momentyou have – after all, you are still a first year university student and we want you to experience all that university life has to offer you. That said, don’t just read what lecturers may hand out to you. Read around the subject – we have an extensive collection of law books in our library and online journals, etc. for you to utilise. Keep upto date with current affairs, the latest legal cases and news – this will all help you tounderstand further what you learn in lectures and tutorials, etc., as well as spark your interest further for the subjectof law, which can be complex at the best of times.

*.Be organised– Let’s keep it real – this degree does have its challenges. Being organised will enable you to gain the best possible outcome. Attend lectures, read the material you are provided with and more, take advantage of group work/study and you will be amazed how much you can learn from your peers. (Often things you may have forgotten to note down in a lecture.) Organise your workload so that you can complete assignments on time, do the reading you need to and still have time to have fun. You will enjoy your time feeling guilt free, especially if you know you have done what is necessary.*.Apply for work experience– this is an important part of your journey into a law career. You will have the competitive edge over other law students if you have donesome form of work experience that relates to the legal profession. Contact local and even larger law firms outside of where you reside, even if it’s just for a day. Every little bit of time spent as part of this kind of experience counts and you will gain the experience and understanding of working in alaw firm. Even volunteering at local community law organisations, or Citizens Advice Bureau offices, can help you to put into perspective what you are learning, and perhaps re-affirm your ambitions to work as a legal professional. You may even find it rewarding.Take advantage of the opportunities you may be presented with in your first year of studying law, to give you a good grounding and good preparation for years two and three. Enjoy induction week, fresher’s fairs and everything elsethat comes with being a first year university student – just remember to work hard also and keep your eyes on the end goal.

Help! I’m Miserable and Hate Law School!**

Happiness
just is.  It isn’t
something you have to
earn, look for, or wait to
receive—it’s always there.  To
find it, simply stop looking and become it.

Law school can be a source of great anxiety and stress for many students – especially during the all-important first year.  The more you can keep your perspective, the more you can appreciate your circumstances and allow the stress to fade away.
Here’s something I tell my students before final exams (the time students are most disillusioned): At its most fundamental level, life always boils down to two perspectives – “Get To” or “Have To.”  Everything you do can be compartmentalized into these two categories.  The more you choose to place your perspective in the “get to” column, the better your attitude will be, and having an “attitude of gratitude” will carry you a long way on your path to law school success.
Remind yourself that you don’t “have to” study – you “get to” study because you are afforded the opportunity to see, to read, to understand, and to have this law school experience.  Those who didn’t get into law school (or those who have flunked out or withdrawn) would likely say you “get to” study (while they do not).  Law school is a privilege – one which you had to trudge through many years of education to earn. The more you appreciate this fact, the more balanced, focused, and disciplined you will be – all keys to maximizing your mental health and law school success.  Smile – I’m sure you have a lot to be thankful for.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile;
but sometimes your smile is the source of your joy.
- Thick Nhat Hahn

Although you may not currently enjoy law school, you can take great solace in this fact: other than your legal writing class, law school is nothing at all like the practice of law.  After all, it’s a law school, not a lawyer school.  Most likely, your ultimate legal job will in no way resemble most of what you go through in law school, so don’t think that you will be unhappy in the legal profession just because you are unhappy in law school.
Moreover, most students find that the second and third years of law school are much better than the first year.  After your first year, you get to pick your classes and your schedule, so most students find the subject matter much more engaging.  As an added benefit, most upper level classes aren’t as heavy on the Socratic method, so the classroom experience is usually much less stressful.  If you can get through the first year, your level of happiness will almost assuredly improve.

Happiness is
a how, not a what;
a talent, not an object.
- Hermann Hesse

Below I have pinpointed some of the specific reasons why negative moments might creep in, and I offer advice (couched in Zen philosophy) as to how to maintain your balance and move forward on your path to law school success.

Negative Feeling: Fear of failure/doing poorly

Fear debilitates.
When we’re scared,
we stand like a deer caught
in the headlights: not able to move
away from the very thing that frightens us.
To escape fear, all we have to do is keep moving.

Fear of failing in law school (whether failing means literally failing out of school or failing to achieve your goals) is a common thought that is bound to creep into your vibration at some point.  Acknowledge the fear, accept it as natural, and move on.  Don’t become paralyzed by the fear and feed its appetite; keep moving along your path.  If the fear of failure becomes particularly intense, I suggest moving along with a subject you like and know well.  Return to studying one of your best known subjects and get a little of your confidence back.  Remember – all you have to do is keep moving along the path.

Negative Feeling: I don’t “get” a particular subject

Be
thankful
for anyone in
your life who’s a
problem. They’re your
teachers, for they show
you where you truly stand.
A great saint once said to a disciple
who came to him complaining about someone
else: “He is your greatest blessing. In fact, if he were
not here, it
would behoove
us to go out and
find one like him.”

Be thankful for the subjects that you “don’t get” or “can’t stand.”  Everyone has at least one of these subjects – and oftentimes more than one.  These are the subjects that will push you, challenge you, and give you the opportunity to evolve and know your true self.  Remember: the harder you push against something, the harder it will push back.  And this piece of advice goes double if it is a particular professor that you “don’t get” or “can’t stand.”

Hard practice that evades the unknown
makes for a weak commitment. So an
ancient once said, “Help hard practice
by befriending every demon.”

As a matter of practical advice, if you have a particularly difficult subject, start with the basics.  Figure out what are the most commonly tested issues from past exams.  Use that as your starting point.  Next, try a study aid.  Hornbooks are great for immersing yourself in a subject and getting a feel for how concepts are interrelated.  Of course, you can also ask your peers or law school professors for recommendations on specific sources.  Sometimes, talking through it with someone who has a good grasp on the subject can make things click, too.
Two other pieces of advice: first, don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on a subject you “don’t get.”  Don’t neglect the subjects you know well.  All of your grades go into figuring your GPA/class rank, and you don’t want to spend considerably more time trying to “get” one subject to the detriment of other subjects.  As Nietzsche so famously said, “If you look too deeply into the abyss, the abyss will look into you.”  Instead, try the opposite….

Become
as a little child,
seeing all things for the first time.

Stop telling yourself that you “don’t get” property (or other subject) because this simply reinforces your belief (and will make it more difficult to overcome).  Instead, try to approach the subject as if you are experiencing it for the first time.  Oftentimes, students will tell me they have a hang up about a subject because of a professor whom they don’t like or “don’t get.”  If this is the case, try another way to learn the material (hornbook or study group) and try to view the subject as if a little child – see it for the first time through enthusiastic eyes.
If the clean slate approach doesn’t work for you, and you still find yourself “lost” or feeling negativity about a particular subject, change your thoughts about it.  Instead of saying you “don’t get property,” say “I’m glad property is challenging because I’ll feel that much better when I do get it.”  Or say, “Property is challenging me right now, but I will get it.”  Remember Daniel Levin’s poignant question I mentioned earlier: why do we think that it’s only the things we do that matter and not the things we think?  Your thoughts matter; they are the only thing you can control – so be aware of them and choose them wisely.

Negative Feeling: Other people are studying way more than I am

If you
see the Buddha
on the road, kill him.

The quote above is a famous Buddhist quote that has been interpreted in many ways over the years.  To me, the quote has always meant that one should not have a preconceived notion of what it means to be an enlightened being. “Enlightenment” is different for everyone – and so is the path.  You are your own Buddha, and everyone must take their own path to find his or her nirvana.  Trying to emulate someone else will never bring you your own enlightenment.
Accordingly, as it pertains to law school success, don’t try to emulate the study habits of someone you think is “on the right path” to doing well.  Be your own Buddha.  Someone else’s study habits may not be right for you.  Don’t concern yourself if Joey Joe-Joe is studying twenty hours a day and has five different outlines for each subject.  (And, trust me, there will be at least one person in your law school class who will spend twelve or more hours a day in the library every day of the week.)

When we
forget what we
should be, we find what we are.

Do what works for you and don’t focus on how much others are studying.  Besides, it truly is about quality over quantity.  What does it mean to have “quality” study sessions?  A “quality” study session is one where you are completely present, completely mindful of what you are doing.  We are all different learners and have different avenues for studying most effectively.  Follow your own path, and do not be influenced by what others are doing.  You are your own Buddha!

The
river flows,
the mountain
remains motionless.
The river can’t remain
still, nor can the mountain flow.
Is one right or wrong? Our dharma (duty)
is to do what’s ours to do, not to be like others.

How to Survive Your First Year of Law School(Kenya)

1. Do all of your own outlines. Reading outlines that other students prepared may convey information, and some of it may even be accurate. However, the act of doing the outline yourself helps you to understand the material as you write it and to remember what you read and why you wrote summarizing points. If you have questions or don't understand something, by all means take advantage of your professor's office hours. If your course is taught from a casebook, consider looking at a good treatise in the library; treatises present the information in a logical order, building from basic principles to specifics. Consider commercial outlines, like Emmanuel or Gilbert, as hints that may help you, but can be too terse on the one hand or too cluttered with detail on the other. Avoid outlines by other students; they probably didn't get it any better than you do. Also, if you write your exam answers based on mistakes in another student's outline and a few of your classmates write the same mistakes, your professor will not be amused by your following one another blindly.
   
   
   • If you have classes that allow the use of outlines, write your outlines in the same format that you would write an answer to an essay question. When an issue arises on the test, you would basically transcribe your outline, while analyzing the specific facts needed to answer the essay question. For maximum efficiency, your outlines should be color coded, tabbed, and in a 3 ring-binder.
   • In classes that do not allow using outlines during exams, concentrate on perfecting your outline and making it more concise, to help you internalize and understand more, so that you have less to memorize.
   • "Make your own outline" doesn't mean that you should never look at an outline made by someone else. By all means look at others' outlines before making your own. They can be useful as samples to see how others have done it. There are many of them posted on the internet.Listen, don't let anyone fool you, law school is hard. It will make college feel like nursery school. You actually have to study for exams, and cramming the night before WILL NOT work. However, the best advice I ever got was from an upperclassman. He suggested I bring outlines from previous semesters to class and work off them in case I missed anyone the professor discussed. Most professors don't change their lesson plans! Sometimes they're teaching almost word for word from previous semesters.
   • The most important thing you can provide yourself is an understanding of how you learn most efficiently. For instance, many students make outlines, because it's a fairly efficient way to learn. However, if you are capable of memorizing quickly, you may end up spending too much time perfecting an outline, and not enough time understanding and memorizing the material.
   • Learn to summarize cases efficiently. Most of "learning the law" isn't memorizing statutes. It's more analogous to learning to apply "stupid fines": someone behaved badly and hurt someone else, and the court has to (1) figure out what happened, (2) look at similar situations that the court dealt with in the past, and (3) use those past similar situations to decide how much money will fix the hurt. You should learn to read a court case, figure out what happened (the facts), and how the past law in similar cases (precedent) was applied to fix things. Learn to spot how slightly different situations (fact patterns) result in slightly different applications of the law, and slightly different results. What they're trying to teach you in law school is how to analyze new factual situations and use what was decided in previous court cases to figure out how to deal with the new situation. THIS IS WHAT YOU'LL BE TESTED ON, both in law school and on the bar exam (and in real life).
2. Pace yourself. Rome wasn't built in a day and you can't expect to understand the law in a day or a week or a month. So you try to understand some crucial points in the development of the reasoning in each course of study, and to try to interrelate various concepts as they historically and currently are viewed.
3. Try to discover the big picture. The law is more a process than a set of rules. A panoramic view is about seeing broad social policies, principles that allow society to function, and a means of peacefully resolving disputes. Don't let all the specific rules and cases you are required to learn, important though they are, obscure what the law is really about. Some law schools (or law professors) stress learning the so-called black letter rules, while others focus more on the underlying principles. Even in "black letter schools," understanding the bigger picture helps you to answer exam questions when you don't remember a specific rule.
4. Use the library to fill in gaps. It isn't just a study hall. The library has books that can help you understand material that is not clear from assigned reading or lectures. Ask the librarian. Law school librarians are an excellent resource, and most enjoy helping students more than re-shelving books. Of course, don't overwhelm your brain or take on so much extra reading that it interferes with your required study. Using the library is more economical than buying extra books, especially before you know what books belong in your own collection.
5. Speak up in class. Participating actively in class is the best way both to "get it" and to evaluate for yourself how you are doing. If you aren't doing so well, it's better to find out when you still have time to improve than to be disappointed when you get your grade. Also, if you speak up on the days you are well prepared, the professor will be less likely to call on you on the occasional day when you have not mastered the material. But, be careful not to overstep the line and become a drag on the class. Don't be afraid to ask questions, but some discussions are better reserved for office hours.
6. Get to class early so you get a good seat. Closest to the professor is best, both for staying engaged and hearing well. The more rows you have in front of you, the more you will be distracted by students playing games, looking at sports stats, or watching YouTube. If you feel the need to hide out in back, you won't be alone, but you are asking to fail.
7. Have a tacit agreement with your small group members to "back each other up". If someone from your small group is struggling during the Socratic torture, another member of the group should chime in.
8. Don't expect the grade inflation you enjoyed in undergrad. Many schools enforce a B- curve. Some professors do not give A's. Some smart students go three years and never get an A. This can be a shock.
9. Realize that everyone will crash and burn sometime. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or whether you study 20 hours a day, you will eventually crash and burn in class. The next day, the sun will rise and you will say, "That was not so bad". It gets easier after your first flame out.
10. Look to your right, look to your left. If you see that you are answering the questions as well as your classmates, the confidence you gain will help you. On the other hand, if you are not, study harder and re-evaluate your study methods; don't wait until exams to discover what you need to do to succeed.

Warnings

• Do not expect law school to teach you to be a lawyer. It will teach you how to think like a lawyer, the rest is up to you.
• Experiment with study groups to see if working with other people helps you. If you get the right chemistry in a study group they can be very helpful. If you get the wrong chemistry, they can be a waste of valuable time. If you just want to socialize, go to the clubs instead. If you are going to share outlines, demand drafts by mid term in order to ensure everyone is sharing the load. Some people thrive in study groups and others find they are better off choosing one study partner for each class. Take turns teaching each other important principles.
• Law can be an easy subject to fall behind on if you don't keep up. There is just too much information to try and wing it late in the term; that is why outlining is important.
• If you need to take some time away from your course (family emergency, major illness), speak to your professor and/or someone in student services or dean of students. Explain the situation. They should be able to tell you the work you are likely to miss out on which will allow you to catch up when you can.