Making Friends in Law School

Friend—“One attached to another by affection or esteem; a favored companion.”

-Merriam Webster’s Dictionary

Oh wow, the past four weeks have gone by insanely quickly and I can’t believe it’s been this long since I’ve written a post!  However, in those couple weeks, I’ve become intimately familiar with this topic.  I’ve never really had a problem making friends.  I’ve had the same best friend since kindergarten and in high school, I had the same friends from grade school.  In college, I became friends with my college best friend the first day of orientation.  So not having a good group of friends in law school was a new thing for me.

For my first year of law school, I decided to get an apartment by myself.  And while it’s kind of a great set up since I don’t have to worry about annoying roommates, it also came with the built in disadvantage of not having a friend from day one to hang out with.  So when I went to orientation, I literally knew no one who I am going to school with for the next three years of my life.  During orientation, I met a few people I thought I could be friends with, but I spent many of my weekends for the first few weeks of law school going shopping near me by myself.  However, things changed around the middle of September and now I can truly say I’ve made some really good friends.  Trust me when I say, that a lot of other people feel the same way as you if you don’t feel like you’ve made a core group of friends within the first couple weeks of school.

Here are my tips to make friends during law school: 

  1.   Join clubs or run for a position in a club.  When I first came to law school, I didn’t really know what groups I wanted to be involved in but I thought running for a 1L rep position for SBA might be fun.  Although I ultimately didn’t win, it was a great way for me to make friends.  During my “campaign,” I encouraged people to vote for me while waiting outside of our classroom.  A group that started as three people grew to include many more people and that’s how I made some of my friends.

   2.   Make connections with other students.  My law school had a Facebook group for our 1L class.  Once our schedules came out, I looked up my fellow classmates on Facebook (don’t say you didn’t do it either) and saw that a fellow student made the same choice between schools as I did.  Little did I know, we would later become good friends since we had so many similarities.  This obviously isn’t as easy as in undergrad when icebreakers were abundant but just by talking to other people in your section (or not in your section), you can make these connections with other students.

   3.    Be bold.  During orientation, I met one girl who I ended up sitting next to during classes but I didn’t think she had time to be my friend outside of class.  Some of the friends I had met previously and I decided to have a girls’ night on Thursdays to watch How to Get Away with Murder.  Once we made these plans, I decided to include her in the plans and our group added another member.  Honestly, asking people if they want to hang out right after you meet them is a little awkward but in the end, you can make good friends.

 

So those are some of my tips on how to break the ice with people in law school and make friends during this new transition in life.  And just remember, if you’re feeling like no one wants to be your friend, I’m sure there are others who feel the same way. So don’t feel awkward asking them if they want to go to a happy hour or just hang out after class.  I promise I’ll try to post again before another month is over!