Law Students

Task Triage

By Casebook Sherpa

How do you prioritize tasks? For many 1Ls I suspect you’re still working this out, particularly with respect to outlining and exam prep. At the risk of being too simplistic, here’s how I have prioritize tasks in law school.

I’ve found that the longer I let the issue of prioritizing my to do list, the less I actually get done. Since college, I’ve realized this is because if I don’t do that the idea of just doing it all is so overwhelming that I don’t do anything… or procrastinate to an embarrassing extent. We’re at the point in the semester (4-6 weeks in) where most law students are starting to feel up against it. Exams are starting appear on the distant horizon. Research and writing assignments are hanging out there. Class reading is relentless. Journal, Moot Court, Clinic, Internship, and Job responsibilities crowd the list too.

This order of priority has helped me keep things, if not manageable, at least largely doable. In order of priority at this point in the semester, I work on law school stuff in the following order:

• Class Reading
• Other class assignments
• Journal
• Other activities
• Review/Study/Outlining
• Career planning

I jealously guard class reading at the top of that list as that material is the reason I’m in law school, though it doesn’t always mean it’s the first thing I focus on.

This week, my tasks are broken down, in order of priority, like this:

• Crim Pro Reading (Monday)
• PR Reading (Monday)
• Corps Reading (Tues)
• Crim Pro Reading (Wed)
• PR Reading (Wed)
• Corps Reading (Thurs)
• Callback Prep (Wed)
• Thank You Notes (Thurs)
  
• Bluesheet review – complete by Friday
• Prep for Sat class – Friday
• Review article topics for Sat class
• Post-pull article review (author 1) – complete by Saturday
• Case law review for journal comment (up through Casey)
• Outline PR to date (Sunday)
• Post-pull article review (author 2) – first 5 pages

Reading for the week is typically done over the weekend prior while other tasks are saved for the week. Sometimes this means late nights during the week doing things unrelated to class the next day, but I think that’s the only way you can really do it if you’re working full-time during the day. It works similarly as it does to work, but

So, when you sit down and look at the volume of law school work before, how do you decide what to do and how to spend your time? Is the process different than how you have done task triage for work? How do you balance, if at all, family and other personal priorities against law school demands?

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on September 23, 2009 (boomark / email).