Joshua Moskovitz, 3L

Editor-in-Chief

Dear Reader,

By now, you have bought your books, found (and hopefully decoded) your lockers, and are sitting nervously in your first classes, praying not to be called on. Amidst this timeless orientation process, no doubt countless resources for guaranteed success in law school were—and will continue to be—thrust before you. Bookstores will offer you aisles of treatises and supplements with the lure of “the answer,” websites will tempt you with canned class scripts, 2Ls and 3Ls will dangle their notes and outlines in front of you, and study courses will promise you better grades for every dollar you spend. All of these things may help alleviate the normal fears of the first year of law school, but they are really only a crutch. Your best resource—the only one guaranteed to help you before class and be there to hear about a particularly embarrassing Socratic moment—is your fellow student.

Grade curves and myths of ultra competitive law students tearing pages from library books may cast an ominous cloud over budding friendships. But the successful students put those apprehensions to rest and quickly embrace all that their colleagues have to offer. Truly, there is no better source for tackling confounding material than through casual discussions with your classmates, who are all struggling to understand one concept or another; and there is no better way to cope with the stresses of 1L year than through convivial gatherings among friends who can relate to the strange and unique experience you are going through.

Not only will your fellow students lend you academic and emotional support, but they will soon become part of another, highly elusive and coveted prize: a personal and professional network. If it is not already, the word, “network,” will soon become ubiquitous to the point of absurdity. (Indeed, I cannot help but preface every use of the word with sarcastic remarks.) However, in this one isolated use, I am comfortable to say that among your Cardozo cohorts, whether you intend to or not, you will develop a powerful and mutually beneficial network.

These are not just the hollow words of a been-there-done-that 3L. More than enough anecdotes attest to their truthfulness (which, perhaps, is more than can be said about some of the daily, so-called “networking” events held around school). By way of example, I found my first law school summer internship through a new Cardozo friend. Shortly after meeting in the library toiling over configuring our MacBooks to connect to the school’s Wi-Fi, my new compatriot had forwarded my resume to colleagues at the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project with whom she had worked in her pre-law school career. Voilà, I had secured my post-1L summer internship before the end of the fall semester.

Standing bare before the awesome force of the omniscient law school professor, breathing unanswerable question upon question of such staggering intellect that students are left speechless, we all appear as if we haven’t a clue about the world. Too often we forget that many of our fellow students have had successful careers long before they misunderstood that craving to do something more as the impetus to go to law school. Many of these colleagues of ours come to Cardozo with a well-developed network of professional contacts. Couple that with the notion that many students are interested in practicing law in non-traditional ways and the field of helpful and useful people connected to our student community alone is suddenly vast and expansive.

Time speeds up during law school in a way that I had never experienced before. The energy and effort needed to keep up with the daily demands alone are taxing enough without the added pressures of planning for an internship, a clerkship, or a career. Utilize your fellow students, discover their talents, share with them your own. Doing this will not only lay the foundation for a professional network you will utilize for the rest of your lives, but will also enrich your law school experience. Understanding that fellow students are more asset than adversary will make law school manageable, perhaps even enjoyable. Enduring together is infinitely easier than struggling alone, and you will be surprised, again and again, at how much you will all benefit from the connections you will forge here.