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The first year at Michigan Law School was fairly simple to describe, though not simple to complete: You do your reading, you go to class, you panic occasionally, you take high-stakes exams, you get your grades.

Now, one month into my second year of law school, I've been struggling to find the proper words to describe 2L without resorting to already well-known adages (first year they scare you to death, second year they work you to death, etc.).

The best I've got is that 2L is weird.

The weirdness began—maybe peaked, frankly—even before first day of classes. Droves of recruiting attorneys descended on Ann Arbor (and many other law school campuses) at the end of July to conduct the first round of interviews for 2020 summer associate positions at Big Law firms nationwide. This routine has become standard operating procedure in the legal profession, but my efforts to explain the process to non-law school friends remind me that it's not exactly normal.

At Michigan, these screener interviews were held in the "Lawyers' Club," which is the dormitory next to the law school where many first-year law students live. While the beds had (mercifully) been moved out of the rooms, the setting was still strange. During one of my interviews, a pedal trolley manned by frat boys drinking beer trundled slowly along the street just outside the window, directly over the shoulder of the interviewer. I managed to repress my amusement and continued talking, which was fortunate because that law firm ended up hiring me.

Another oddity: As the clock ticked toward the end of each 20-minute interview, we interviewees would fill the narrow hallways of the Lawyers' Club, standing dutifully outside the door of our assigned room and sweating through our suits. In order to stick to the strict schedule, we had to knock on the door of the interview room as soon as our interview time rolled around, thereby ensuring each interviewee was given their promised 20 minutes to shine. The resulting chorus of simultaneous, disembodied knocks on every door in the building is a memory that will haunt me forever.

Those cinematic moments of OCI aside, returning to the classroom as a 2L felt weird not because it was foreign or new, but rather because it was remarkably the same. After spending the summer passably convincing myself that I could handle legal work (with tons of guidance from the lawyers around me, of course), it was startling to be in the same rooms where I sat as a terrified 1L.

This feeling was exacerbated by the fact that my 1L knowledge of the Model Penal Code and negligence and promissory estoppel did not prove useful at any point during my summer work. In theory, I understand the important foundation that doctrinal courses provide, but the theoretical big picture is not what comes to mind when my alarm goes off on Monday mornings.

Granted, 2L does offer much more variety than 1L did. My Evidence and Legislation and Regulation courses involve coursework similar to 1L doctrinal classes, but those subjects are of my own choosing and seem more likely to apply to the litigation work I want to pursue. I'm also taking an Entertainment Law course and an Alternative Dispute Resolution practice simulation that differ markedly from my 1L course load, both in terms of subject matter and structure.

Additionally, 2Ls are freed from the 1L division of students into sections, which had meant that we saw the same faces and heard the same voices every day, in every class. I had nothing against any of my classmates; I just agitated at the monotony of it.

Beyond class work, the second year of law school also brings an entirely new challenge: journals. My cite-checking and Note-writing responsibilities as an associate editor on the Michigan Law Review add quite a bit of work to my week. Fortunately, the wiring in my brain is just faulty enough that I don't hate my journal tasks. I might go so far as to say that Thursday nights with the Bluebook and an NFL game on in the background are the closest approximation of peacefulness that I've found in law school work.

If nothing else, cite-checking and academic writing, along with the more varied set of courses, represent a refreshing change from the cycle of dense cases and exam anxiety that largely defined 1L year.

Renee Griffin is a second-year student at University of Michigan Law School. 

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