The first step towards becoming a successful law student

It is important to know the reason why you are taking a course. The quality of your reason determines the amount of focus and effort you will put in. What I’m talking about here is not necessarily your ultimate purpose in life. That in itself is a separate and tricky process. So, you don’t need to be overly dramatic at this stage. Just have a strong reason why you decided to take the course. The objective of this rule is to build a strong foundation, a starting point on which to focus your energy. Ideally, this would be a short to medium term goal. Below are examples that you can use or modify to your liking:

1. Get into a reputable law firm after completing law degree in 2024;
2. Become the most outstanding student in the last year of medical school;
3. Have an overall weighted average of 80% at the completion of the accounting degree;
4. Become the recipient of a prestigious scholarship in the second year of university;
5. Become a volunteer lawyer at Legal Aid after admission and help those who cannot afford legal representation.

Notice that these are not overly dramatic goals like inventing a new hybrid or electric car or inventing a drug to cure cancer. Avoid setting broad goals like to be a good student. Those goals will not get you anywhere because you cannot measure them. Therefore, it would be difficult or impossible to keep track. Pick goals that are medium-term to start with and are specific enough to act on and make progress towards. The first example of getting into a reputable firm can be achieved by getting good marks and getting in contact with law firms. Getting good marks may require you to decrease social life and increase study time and implementing effective study techniques. Getting in contact with the reputable firms may require getting the contact information of the Human Resources Manager to send through your proposition for a graduate position because of your exceptional marks. You can see that just by setting a goal from the beginning sets things into motion. It gets you to act. It’s the first step to achieving something.