Studying Law – Intentions versus Reality

It’s back to school time, kids - law school style. For the countless students out there, it’s time to dust off your textbooks, dig out your laptop and get your sweet little cheeks down to your university’s campus for enrolment.

For newbie students, or seasoned pros who should know better, here’s the Law Actually run down on typical law student kit, what it should be used for, and what you’ll probably end up doing with it.

Item	What you’re meant to do	What you actually do
Textbooks	Read them and, you know, learn about some lawwy type stuff.	Use them as expensive doors stops, or stack them up as a bedside table.
Casebooks	Read the relevant bits of jurisprudence to save you dragging your sorry ass down to the law library to read the full case (you know… like you were meant to)	Doorstop, thick coaster or propping up that dodgy shelf.
Laptop	Type up all of those first class scholarly papers.	Surfing porn, f***book and twitter, and researching whether you’ve picked up an STD as a fresher.
Legal Dictionary	Remind yourself of those legal terms and bits of Latin which you really should remember	Provide an ideal environment for dust bunnies to thrive.
Study Guide	Use it as a pathfinder to help ease your way into a subject, or whilst outlining revision notes.	Crack it open in sheer desperation when you realise your 3000 word paper is due in in 4 hours’ time and you haven’t got the foggiest.
That money your parents gave you	Spend it wisely and carefully on essentials	Blow it down the student union on your first night there!
That credit card you took out for emergencies	The clue’s in the name – though it should have come stamped with ‘for emergency use only’.	Give in to temptation and buy that Xbox 360, Kinect, widescreen plasma TV... hot tub?
Study session in the library	Researching / writing / slowly returning to life having snuck out of the early lecture after nearly pickling your brain the night before down ‘the union’.	Ogling the tastier members of your class / chatting with buddies
Printer	Printing out those scholarly papers.	Print out those embarrassing pictures of that night you got really wasted so you can pin it up on your dorm room wall. Better be quick, before the ink dries up in the cartridges!!