The value of counselling in managing law school stress and anxiety
When I started law school, I felt like I was on the top of the world. After years of hard work, I’d finally made it. I was ready to start learning, to start arguing, and, most of all, to start exploring what my career might look like. I felt like nothing could stop me.
Flash forward to my second semester and my 1L job search. I had been unsuccessful in the 1L recruit—which I told myself was fine because I hadn’t gone in with any expectations. But when I was unsuccessful in the Law School Summer Employment Program (LSSEP), I started to worry. It seemed like everyone already had their summer work lined up while I was frantically applying to every post on UTLC, with no replies. That worry started to get worse.
What if I don’t get a legal job this summer—will that mean I will be unsuccessful in the 2L recruit? What if I am unsuccessful in the 2L recruit? Will I be able to find a job at all? What if I am the only one still struggling?
These thoughts swirled around my head day and night until it was all I could think about. That’s when that worry turned into something else: anxiety. I started to experience a host of physical symptoms—erratic heartbeat, heavy breathing, restlessness, and insomnia. And it scared me. I had never experienced something like that before. I had never been so worried that I couldn’t fall asleep. I had never been so anxious that I felt it throughout my whole body. I realized that I was going through something which I didn’t know how to manage on my own. This is why I decided to restart clinical counselling, or therapy.
Now the most important word in that last sentence is restart. The counselling I started in 1L was not the first time I had done counselling. I had started counselling once before, during a particularly challenging part of my undergrad, when I was in the process of coming out and leaving a religious community. It would not be an exaggeration to say that counselling changed my life, and I credit it for why I am at the law school today. My only regret about my first counselling experience is that I didn’t start it earlier.
I didn’t start counselling the first time until months after I had come out—months into the emotional turmoil that arose from that decision. I knew I was dealing with an emotional crisis, but I didn’t think that counselling was for me. I thought counselling was only for really big problems, not people like me.
Then I listened to Other People’s Problems, a podcast which allows listeners to hear anonymous, real sessions between a clinical counsellor and her patients. I remember listening to it and thinking these people sound like me, and their problems sound like my problems. I realized that counselling was something that could make my life better and, within the month, I made the first step.
I came into law school knowing that a) using counselling services is entirely normal, b) counselling can be for anyone and for any problem, big or small, and c) counselling can provide effective tools to make your life better. Having known that coming in, I found it so much easier to reach out for resources when I needed them.
I restarted counselling as a precautionary measure. The anxiety I experienced scared me—not just because of how I was feeling then, but because I knew if I didn’t find a way to manage it, it was only going to get worse. I knew that going into the 2L recruit, when the stakes were higher, that those worries were only going to get more intense. I restarted counselling so I would have the tools to take that on.
And it worked. My counsellor and I worked on strategies for managing anxiety throughout the summer. We talked about how to work through the emotions of success and failure. We talked about how to manage transition and workplace stress. We talked about how to stay confident throughout my interviews. I was even able to book a session the night before my OCIs where all we did was come up with strategies for the next day—what to do if an interview goes bad, how to prepare for the next one. Many of these strategies I didn’t end up needing, but knowing that they were there made me feel so much more confident that I could handle the stress of the day. I walked into my 2L recruit not with worry, but with confidence. That’s what counselling did for me.
Many of us at the law school have spent our entire lives as the perfect student, the golden child, the straight-A machine—never had a slip-up, never put a foot wrong. All of us at the law school also have the dream and aspiration of taking on a legal career. That means that when we start looking for work, some of us for the first time, there are a lot of emotional cards on the table.
The problem with the 1L job search, in my experience, is that it begins with the 1L recruit—a process which is incredibly competitive, where very few spots are available, and very few students secure a position. The result is that many students begin their job search being unsuccessful. Although you tell yourself that it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t take away how challenging that failure can be.
Being less successful in your 1L job search says absolutely nothing about how you will do in the 2L recruit, or law school, or your career generally. But when you are experiencing your first failure, when you are worrying for the first time that your dreams and aspirations may not come true, no amount of objective analysis can change the emotional reality that the experience is terrifying.
It was for me, and I know it was for others too. What I want to say to all the 1Ls who will be starting their job search, all the 2Ls who may have been unsuccessful in the recruit, and even the 2Ls who were successful but were scared by how stressful the experience was: your worries and anxieties are completely normal.
So many people at the law school look like they are on top of the world, even though they are going through the same challenges as you and I. The law school can sometimes foster a climate that makes it hard to talk about these challenges. I want you to know that you are not alone. You are not the only one who has worried about what their career will look like. You are not the only one who has experienced anxiety. And you are not the only one who may need help.
I know I never would have started counselling if I hadn’t learned that it is entirely normal to do so—if I didn’t know that there were people like me who found it useful. My hope is that by sharing my story, I can contribute to an environment at the law school where students feel comfortable sharing their challenges and confident in using the resources that are available to them.
