Despite this stress, the job search encourages law students to clarify our goals and develop our individual legal identities. The law school experience does not occur in isolation. We have jobs, families, friends, and outside interests. Some students make the law school the central focus of their lives. They live in law student dorms, associate mostly with other law students, and join law journals and various student organizations.
Many students are either married or in serious relationships, and some have children too.
Our outside lives do not come to a standstill simply because we have classes, reading assignments, papers, and exams. Sometimes our commitments outside law school are more important to us than going to class and studying. It often seems as if our professors pile on the work without recognizing that we have other commitments. Our families and friends outside of law school do not always understand why we are not as available for them as we would like to be. Thus, another part of the process of becoming lawyers is finding ways to integrate academic work and other obligations and interests.