The Only Way Out, is Through

January 18, 2021

On Saturday, I had a meeting with my mentor Mr. Neal Parekh. We had been toying around with the idea of holding a simulation of what it's like to be a first year law student, and we finally followed through on it last week. I was given 24 hours to read the material and prepare to engage in a Socratic seminar style discussion.

However, the reading was much longer than I had anticipated on our topic for the session which was the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). Mr. Parekh sent me two past Supreme Court cases (Bell Atlantic Corp. v Twombly and Ashford v Iqbal) as well as three of the rules from the FRCP that are relevant to the cases. All in all, it was about forty pages of reading to complete which typically wouldn't be an issue. I'm actually an avid reader so I wasn't concerned, at first. However, the cases and the rules contained so much legal terminology that I had to read through each twice: once to define all the terms I was unfamiliar with and a second time to actually absorb as much information as I could.

It took me all night (I only got to sleep at around four in the morning), but I learned a lot. More than just the words on the page, the readings (and the discussion that followed) taught me a lot about the thought process of law students. Understanding the content is important, but critical thinking and determination are even more important. At the end of our discussion, Mr. Parekh asked me how I felt about our simulation. I told him that it was overwhelming at first, but I didn't see the point of complaining so I just started instead. Mr. Parekh told me that one of the law students he worked with in the past had a similar mentality, he lived by the saying "the only way out is through."