Tips for 1L Finals

Taylor Yocom: Hi, and welcome to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. I’m Taylor Yocom, an admissions specialist at WashU Law and producer of this season of the podcast. Today, I’m so excited to speak with two of our current students and admissions ambassadors, Tommie Taylor and Eric Kubo. We’ll be talking about finals as a law student. Tommie and Eric, welcome. Can you introduce yourself and say your year and where you’re from? 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah, I’m Tommie Taylor. I’m a 2L. I am originally from here in St. Louis, but I have lived in Orlando, Florida for the past 15 years. So I call both places home. 

Eric Kubo: Yeah, I’m Eric Kubo. I’m originally from San Jose, California, Bay Area. I went to school on the East Coast for about 10 years or so, then back to California, and I’m hoping to go back to California after law school. But for now, I’m in wonderful St. Louis. 

Taylor Yocom: Amazing. Thank you. And first of all, what were your majors? And did you find that your undergrad experience differed from law school? 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah, so I was a business management major, and I definitely would say my undergraduate experience differed a lot from law school. Just everything about it. I worked during undergrad. And so I was definitely very busy. I thought I had a hard work ethic then, but law school tested me and took me to the next level. So yeah, very different experiences. 

Eric Kubo: Yeah, I was a… I double majored in linguistics and theater, and then I got a master’s in theater after that. And yeah, no, law school, very different, very different way of thinking. You really have to. I mean, I think I got the critical thinking down, but the reading I was not prepared for. 

Tommie Taylor: Agreed. So be prepared. Be prepared to read. 

Taylor Yocom: Yes. And what were your impressions of law school finals going into 1L and how did the expectations compare to reality? 

Tommie Taylor: So both my parents are lawyers and both my parents actually went to WashU for law school. 

Taylor Yocom: Oh my gosh. 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah. And so I remember when I was little, my mom telling me, Oh yeah, in law school, your entire grade is one final. And I was like, that’s weird. And I, but I totally like put that out of my head, didn’t remember it. And then I got to law school and I was like, Oh my God. Yep, my entire grade is one final. So I was definitely very scared. With that being said, my parents being lawyers, they don’t really talk about law school very often. And so I really had no expectations coming into law school other than knowing that my grade was one final. And so my expectations definitely have a scared, didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. And yeah. 

Eric Kubo: Yeah, I kind of had no expectations. I don’t come from a family of lawyers. I don’t think anybody anywhere near my immediate family is a lawyer. So I came into this kind of blind, maybe a bit naive, but no, I don’t know. I mean, yeah, law school finals are this terrible, like end boss you have to deal with at the end of the semester. And nothing quite prepares you for it. They’re not as terrible as people make them out to be. They’re worse. No, they’re they’re they’re just, they’re what they are, you know, and, and you just kind of have to take them as they are because there’s no other way around it. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t dodge them. So you just gotta, you just gotta accept the fact that you’re gonna be taking a final that will determine your grade for the class, but there are a lot of resources available. 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah, I’d say with that, during finals, whenever I was like, I can’t do this anymore, I would just tell myself, well, what’s your other option? Are you just gonna drop out of law school because there’s no way out but through? You can’t get out of doing finals. It just is what it is. You either take them or you don’t become a lawyer, so. 

Taylor Yocom: And at WashU Law, we have open book and closed book finals. Have you taken both types? And if so, can you talk about the difference? 

Tommie Taylor: I’ve only taken open book, but there is open book and open software, which are two different things as well. And so in open software, you can use your entire computer. 

Eric Kubo: Not the internet. 

Tommie Taylor: Not the internet. That’s what I, you can’t use the internet, but the only difference really is that you can have your outline on your computer so you can search your outline, which is very efficient, but other professors will do open book, closed software, to where you have to print your outline and you have your books, but you just, you have all your materials, but they’re all hard copy. 

Eric Cubo: Yeah, I had a real mixed bag of finals. I had a closed book final. It was my contracts final. It was closed book, multiple choice only. It was an experience, I’ll tell you that. There were other, I had other finals. I had open software. I had, you know, the just open book and ranging from multiple choice, a combination of like multiple choice and issue spotters. And then also some that were just issue spotters. Issue spotters are where like, to give you a fact pattern, a scenario, right? And then they tell you, like, you know, bring all claims you can or, you know. 

Tommie Taylor: And you just pull it apart and bring out any legal concepts that you can think of. 

Eric Cubo: Yeah. 

Taylor Yocom: Yeah, and can you talk about the vibe of the building of the school during finals? 

Eric Cubo: Tense. It’s definitely tense. That was like, I was kind of vibing for the most part during 1L year, except during finals, it got a little bit, you know, but I will say, we tend to, we closed the law school off to non-law school people, at least we try. so that definitely helps. 

Tommie Taylor: Definitely tense. First semester, I would go in there, put my head down, find a corner of the library to be in, because it’s definitely stressful hearing other people talk about different things. Just because, I don’t know, it’s easy to get in your head during finals and be like, I don’t know this, or they’re talking about it in a different way than I understand it. And so the school’s definitely tense. Second semester, I tried to avoid coming to the law school just for my own mental health. I went to coffee shops, open to close, and then that was kind of my thing second semester, just because of, like, the… 

Eric Kubo: Yeah, second semester, I ended up, because there’s some great supplemental materials out there, especially for like, con law and civ pro. And so I would listen to those. I would walk through Forest Park and just listen to those and it helped my mental health so much. 

Tommie Taylor: Did you do the Civ Pro Barbary, Richard Freer? 

Richard Freer, yeah, totally, yeah. He was my Civ Pro god. I would, like, shout out to Richard Freer for my Civ Pro grade. 

Eric Cubo: Yeah, so there’s a, you know, um, but yeah, it’s kind of, but you kind of sometimes you have to be at the law school because you, if you’re studying with other people, you know, if you’re doing practice exams with other people, sometimes you got to be there. And at the end of the day, there is a recognition that everybody is doing this. You are not suffering alone, which is, which is nice. 

Misery loves company. 

Yeah, I think for me it really depended on the class. I had some classes that really, it really helped to have people come together and we kind of, we didn’t really outline together, but we kind of outlined together and that we would each take chunks of the material and then kind of present them to other people and people would have questions or we would, um, and so you really kind of give me a subject matter expert on those certain things, which helped me out a lot in comm law, I will say. Um, but yeah, it really is finding, finding the right approach for each class because each class is very different. Some classes, I think, lend themselves to group understanding and group discussion, and other ones are kind of like, nope, I need to buckle down and learn this black letter law. 

Tommie Taylor: I’d say definitely find the people that you can study well with. There’s definitely types of groups of people that you might not be able to study with or you guys, uh, the way you study just doesn’t match up. Um, you know, there’s experiences that I’ve had with groups of people where we all try to study together and we’re more just butting heads and we’re not very productive and we don’t get anywhere where there’s other types of people that you can really get along with and find a way that you can study productively together.

Taylor Yocom: And what is your preferred method of study, speaking of that, and what do you like to do for study snacks or study breaks or just like breaking up the routine? 

Tommie Taylor: So I prefer to study alone, but in company, if that makes sense. So like I was saying earlier, I had a friend that we would just go to coffee shops together, do our own thing, and but then talk about things. So what I like to do, the way that I outlined and studied, I would take my book and I’d have all the page numbers that we read throughout the semester. And I’d go through each case that we read, kind of review it, type any extra notes that came up during reviewing. And then I would grab a supplement, definitely very helpful. And I would just read through those for a better understanding of kind of the concept, what I was supposed to get out of it, and put that all together into an outline. And so that was kind of my preferred way of studying because it really made my brain work, made my brain think about things more and helped me digest the information. But I would definitely say that I have a lot of friends that that didn’t work for, that that wasn’t their way to study. And so that’s what I did. To take breaks, usually it ended up being a location switch or a meal. And so we would go to coffee shops until they closed. The latest one was 6 p.m. And so then at 6, we would… Get food and go to a brewery nearby and we would study at the brewery until like 10 or 11. And so that was kind of our flow of things. So our breaks would be location switches, walks around the block, stuff like that. 

Eric Kubo: Oh, you were so much more disciplined than I am. I don’t know, I just kind of, I, I hate to say it, but I just kind of like walked through all of, I mean, I just kind of like wandered through finals prep. I mean, I did, I did a lot of practice exams. I found those very, very helpful, um, do them on my own and then come together, um, with my friends, and then we would talk to professors. Oh, definitely talk to professors. Like, one big thing is that you are taking the exam written by this professor and graded by this professor in a class taught by this professor. So as much as Richard Freer might help you out with a lot of this kind of stuff, at the end of the day, what your professor says goes. And so, um, being able to do practice exams and um talking with the professor about them, um, was very, very helpful. Cause you got insights into what they were looking for and what they thought. 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah, I don’t think I did enough of that, and I wish I um did a little more of that. Unfortunately, I am a huge procrastinator. Uh, so I didn’t give myself enough time to do that, but I wish I would. And that’s definitely something that I’m going to be working on for 2L is tapping into the resource of having your professors. A lot of them have open office hours during finals, and they encourage you to come in. Um, I know first semester I went to uh my property professor’s office hours, and there was a bunch of us in there, and just hearing other people ask questions was definitely helpful. It can be a little scary because you’re like, oh my God, they’re already on this part, and I’m still studying this part. So it can definitely be overwhelming, but it’s also good because there was things that she said during those office hours that were on the exam, and I was able to write about. And I was like, I am so glad that I went to that. I’m so glad I picked your brain and asked questions. Um, same with my CivPro professor had a review session where we did a practice test, um, and then she went through it, and I’m so glad that I went and listened to it. Uh, she recorded it, so I was able to, you know, go back helpful and all those same concepts were on the exam. So it was really nice to have that, like Eric is saying. 

Taylor Yocom: Yeah, and so you both mentioned a lot of tips for studying. Do you have any tips for self-care during finals for incoming law students? 

Eric Kubo: Be a person. Like, don’t forget, like, don’t sacrifice your mental health. Like, yeah, it’s only like two weeks of finals and all this kind of stuff, but you know, at the end of the day, like, you need to get sleep. Do not sacrifice sleep. Make sure you eat. Make sure you drink water. I mean, these are all basic things, but when finals are looming and it’s stressful, it’s really easy to forget how important everything is. 

Tommie Taylor: Definitely surround yourself with people that make you feel like a good person, that just make you feel good, that encourage you, that want the best for you, because it’s, like we’ve kind of been saying throughout the episode, is it gets really competitive during finals. So definitely surround yourself with people that make you feel good and then take care of yourself by taking breaks. I joined a rec soccer league last year, and it’s outside of the school, but I play every week. And so during finals, like making sure that I was still going and playing soccer, taking the time to do just small things that helped me take a break and relax. Definitely, I would recommend the day of your final, take your final and give yourself the rest of the day off. Do something you enjoy. My friends and I went to go see movies on the day of our finals or during the winter finals, we went, so I’m from a small town called Eureka here in St. Louis, and they have Christmas lights at this place called Santa’s Magical Kingdom. If you haven’t been, plug for that because it’s like my favorite thing about Christmas. And so after our finals, we all drove down to Eureka, it’s about 30 minutes away, and we looked at the Christmas lights and played Christmas music, and it was just so good for our like mental health and taking care of ourselves. So that’s a really fun thing to do. 

Taylor Yocom: Awesome, thank you. And again, we love to end our episode with recommendations about St. Louis. What is your favorite place to visit or attraction in St. Louis? 

Tommie Taylor: Well, Santa’s Magical Kingdom. Yeah, during the wintertime, Santa’s Magical Kingdom, if you haven’t been, check it out. It’s in Eureka. It’s just a big drive-through light show thing, and they have a radio station that you tune into that has stories and Christmas music. And so I love doing that during the Christmas winter season. During the summer, Six Flags, that’s also in Eureka. Huge Eureka fan. And so definitely go check out Six Flags if you haven’t been there. 

Eric Cubo: Yeah, I mean, I work in like board game and comic book stores the past like 10 years of my life, so I kind of, I feel at home in those kind of environments. So definitely a bunch of wonderful tabletop gaming stores around here. There’s Wizard’s Wagon, which is like right, like, I don’t know, three blocks away from the school, and there are a whole bunch within, you know, a 20, 30 minute drive, Collector Store, Forge and Fire, Game Night. Fortuna Games, a whole bunch of wonderful places, and it’s, again, like Tommie was saying, it’s nice to get out of the law school and feel like, I don’t know, yourself for a minute. So I make time to go and hang out and play games and run events, that kind of thing. 

Tommie Taylor: Yeah, another thing that I love to do, I love art, but I’m not, like, a super technical artist, I guess. And so what I do is I go to a pottery painting place. And I try to go, like, every couple weeks. One of my friends, Jocelyn, she now goes with me too, and we have, like, our little thing. We paint and we play pickleball, and that’s our self-care during law school. And so we go to a place called Pottery Hollow, and we paint every couple weeks, and that’s been, like, a huge good mental health thing for me. 

Taylor Yocom: Amazing, well, thank you so much, Tommie and Eric. Again, this is Applying Yourself, a Law School Admissions podcast. You can learn more and engage with us on our website or email us at applylaw@wustl.edu. Thank you.