FAQ: Is law school difficult? 

YES.

A resounding yes.

A simple yes will never suffice the difficulty law students face everyday in law school. It is unlike any undergraduate course. It consumes much of your time.

Well, if we apply the way we study at law school when we were taking our pre-law degrees, we would have graduated summa cum laude.

Yes. My dear, it is that intense. There is never a day that your reading is exhaustive enough. There is never a day that you can tell yourself that you are fully prepared – you may be adequately prepared, but never fully prepared. There is never a day of confidence in law school. If you graduated during your pre-law course with a huge ego, prepare, for that ego will be crushed soon.

Cases exceed a hundred pages. A professor may cover as much as a hundred codal provisions a day – most of which you need to memorize. Annotations of law authors easily top a hundred pages. That’s the load per subject, per night. Even the best person in time management would cry.

The chaos in law school is unstoppable. It does not end with the volume of readings. In fact, it just begins with the classroom environment. You enter the class unprepared. It is either the entire class is prepared except for you – and you are the black sheep, the shame, the vulnerable of all – or the entire class, like you, is unprepared – and all of you are sitting ducks waiting for the rifle to hit you.

Then there is the professor – unparalleled on the level of terror we have experienced on our prelaw days. With a huge sense of entitlement and supremacy inside the classroom, the professor can tarnish your reputation, belittle your cognition, and crush your emotions simultaneously with a string of the harshest English words you have ever received. This is laced with profanity and invectives, adding more salt to the already bleeding and hurting wound.

Oh. There’s the exams – the essay exams. Most exams in law schools are in essays because the Bar Exam is an essay-type exam. There’s no limit to the number of essay questions a professor can give. Sometimes, it is already impossible to construct a sound compound sentence with the time constraint, and you get bashed for it when the professor writes his comments.

Then the grades – the ever magical, the ever mysterious, perhaps whimsical, I surely don’t know. The grades are surely terrifying. They come in delayed and in surprise – sometimes, a positive, and oftentimes, a negative surprise.

A bit exaggerated? Yes.

Here’s the thing:

Difficulty is relative.

What might be difficult for you may not be difficult for others, and each of us have different references of difficulty based on our past experiences. For someone who’s accustomed to doing tough tasks, his threshold to say that an activity is difficult may be higher than the threshold of those people who are easy-go-lucky.

Law school, however, is almost by universal opinion, difficult. Most points of comparison are with previous educational experiences—it is nothing like high school or your pre-law days. Perhaps law is the most academically challenging – grades are more unpredictable, for grading essays are highly subjective.

However, there are a few, very few, who find law school easy. Personally, I can say that law school is hard, but I cannot guarantee that it will be hard for you, too.

It may be difficult, but it is worth it.

You are hesitating because you have heard it is difficult. You are hesitating because you think you cannot handle the difficulty. Well, for one thing, you must try. You’ll never know you can if you’ll never try. Give law school a shot.

Always remind yourself that nothing worth it comes easy. Everything is more fulfilling when you have worked hard for it. Success is more celebratory and triumphant if you know what you have been through just to get to where you are now or where you will be.

To stop yourself when you think the road is difficult is not proper. You should take the risk if you really want what’s ahead.

Difficulty is not tantamount to impossibility

It is not “mahirap, hindi ko kaya”, it is “mahirap pero kakayanin”. Difficulty is not tantamount to impossibility. Just because it is difficult, it does not mean you cannot do it. You can. It is not impossible. It is possible.

If law school is impossible, what happened to the thousands of now lawyers? If law school is impossible, why do law students graduate? It is a mixture of grit, ambition, and determination. It is intellect fortified by industriousness; it is diskarte coupled with discipline.

After all, it is just your mindset. Difficulty is a state of mind. It is relative. It is subjective. If one makes the necessary preparations, if one observes the proper diligence, perhaps he can.

FINAL WORD: True enough, law school can be considered as difficult, but this should not stop you from pursuing your passion for the law. Even though it is difficult, you can. Even though it takes time, you will make it through.