A Different Kind of Law School Experience
My name is Dimitrios Tsilikis, and I am a third-year SJD student researching Bankruptcy Law and Private Law Theory, working on a moral understanding of insolvency and casually commenting on big corporate bankruptcies. In my short bankruptcy career, I have bid farewell to Northvolt, Hudson’s Bay, 23andMe, and crypto companies, and I am quite excited for more to come; I am also pretty certain I could not have picked a less hopeful opening (yeah, I know I must be fun at parties; not).
Ever since Abhirami reached out to me about sharing my graduate experience with you, I have been thinking about only one word, and that is “different.” Being an SJD student is completely different than being a JD/LLB or an LLM student; it entails nearly no mandatory courses, no class attendance, no cold calling or Socratic method, but it also entails not getting to know a lot of new people (hey, we are just 6-8 per year), not understanding a single pun made by Law Follies—but smiling all the same—and being somewhat on the sidelines of the societal part of Law School—though being in the forefront of the School’s research, at least as per our program’s advertisement. All in all, it’s a very different experience than anything that comes before it in the life of an aspiring scholar.
As SJD students, we spend our time in really weird activities: most of the day, we research very niche legal concepts that we are really enthusiastic about, and the rest of the day, we write long papers trying to get other scholars interested in them as well; and of course, we dream about the time we will plant, as Professors, easter eggs of our dissertations throughout our 1L syllabi—because obviously someone needs to learn about all the caselaw I studied on insolvent debtors gambling successfully (that’s not legal advice) their last available cash, duh!
We also receive and comment on colleagues’ papers, and we prepare and give presentations. Through this process, we learn something called “constructive academic criticism,”,which practically translates to not being a pr*ck to our fellow scholars and building great patience in anticipation of the lunch break during conferences.
In any case, SJDs also have side hustles. Firstly, we have students, and we supervise or teach them. For me, that’s one of the best perks of the job because I get to interact with some students and help them formulate their own projects into complete papers, which provides a great perspective on what I am doing with my supervisor as well. We also do some work to keep our own program interesting, like organizing weekly work-progress groups or writing sessions with other SJDs.
But our most important side hustle is to apply. We apply for seminars, scholarships, publications, post-docs, tenure, window repairs, and a better coffee machine; generally, once we enter our program, we understand that the art of applying is an integral part of Academia—and probably what makes a 2000+ hour billing requirement on a Big Law salary a really, really appealing choice.
Now, of course, since most of you, JDs, have not met any of us, you would be perfectly reasonable to wonder where we spend our days; the answer would be either the Bora Laskin Library or Falconer Hall, where our offices are—on the third floor, not the dungeons where the School has thrown the lovely Ultra Vires publication. A lot of SJDs elect to work remotely or do some semesters in a different university, but I prefer to spend most of my time on campus, in my office so that I get to interact with other students as well (COVID-19 remote work was a bleak experience indeed), and I’m more than excited to report that, since I started my program here in 2022, many more SJD students have elected to spend a significant amount of their time in school, socialize, and build a community in Falconer.
Apart from that, SJDs also socialize a lot through GLSA—the graduate SLS, that is to say- sponsored events, like pub nights, throughout the year; and, though I may be self-promoting here since I am the current President, I do believe that the association helped put the graduate community back together in the post-COVID era by funding a plethora of events and helping LLMs, GPLLMs, and SJDs get to know each other—we are working on doing the same with JDs as well. Walking into Falconer today is nowhere near doing the same a couple of years back.Now, I am not sure how to wrap up this piece, but I guess I should conclude with some remarks on my experience as an international student in Canada. Canada is just different as an experience; it has poutine, maple syrup (yeah!), trash pandas, like my lovely Marvin—the raccoon terrorizing my office—but also Canadian weather (literally, why? I am Mediterranean), ice skating (no, I cannot), a fixation on deadlines (mainly a UofTears feature), which I vehemently hate and never meet—sorry Abhirami, and the fact that people interact a lot through sporting clubs (I am quite unsure whether any other country would consider a running club as a dating activity). But I have spent a lot of time here already to know that UofT, the Law School, and Canada feel homey. Oh, and s’mores in a campfire: what a wonderful thing I have been missing for 25 years on planet Earth!