How Law Students Are Using Time Between Classes To Change The World

You don’t need to make major sacrifices in your legal career to change the world. This is especially true during law school, the first stage of that legal career.

When we first introduced WeCite, we never expected that law students at over 100 law schools could make 125,000 contributions in a single semester, or that 40 student ambassadors would sign up to lead the charge. But what’s interesting to me about the success of WeCite isn’t just the tremendous effort from motivated students across the country. It’s that WeCite represents a model for doing something that many law students struggle with: leaving time and energy to make the impact that inspired you to come to law school to begin with.

Like so many others, I went to law school to make a difference — in my case, to help make legal information free, accessible, and understandable. But as many law students, past and present, can attest, it turns out it’s really easy to find yourself focusing your attention on a million things other than changing the world.

For many law students, day-to-day demands — grades, extracurriculars, résumé-builders — detract focus from whatever motivated them to attend law school in the first place. As we prioritize the things that are most urgent, our passions get inadvertently pushed down on the to-do list, becoming something to tackle after graduation instead of during law school. For some of us, this habit carries through after law school, and we continue putting off these goals while we focus on the demands of starting a legal career. While in law school and as a young lawyer, I, like many others, focused on other priorities, and only later left my law firm to focus on making the law free and accessible.

But you don’t necessarily need to make major sacrifices in your legal career to have an impact. This is especially true during law school, the first stage of that legal career.

The key is making it a personal priority to strike a balance between your transformative vision and your daily demands, starting now. Striking that balance will not only help you get an early start on your goals, but also help you establish habits that will persist after graduation and help shape your legal practice.

There are things you can do now to start making a difference in the world outside of law school. Many students join clinics to support the underrepresented, or bring their developing legal acumen to bear on community volunteer opportunities. Others WeCite, joining law students all over the country who are working together in a student-driven already improving public access to legal information.

WeCite has taken off at law schools because students are able to make a real impact on a longstanding problem in the legal community without having to trade off their other priorities. They WeCite for a few minutes between classes, or sit down for hours to make a larger contribution — which works well for people who are, like I was, both passionate about transforming the legal field and constrained by the demands of law school. The law students who together have made the mind-boggling 125,000 individual contributions to this public resource are transforming legal research and expanding access to the law in just a few clicks per day, while at the same time developing case comprehension skills that are helping them in school and will further their legal careers.

This scale of impact has only been possible because high-minded, innovative students have been working together to change the legal profession. Those who are most passionate about access to the law have taken on a leadership role through our Ambassador program. They’ve received training, support, and a behind-the-scenes view into legal innovation as they lead the effort to democratize access to legal knowledge at their schools. In just a few hours a week, our current class of Ambassadors have made a real dent in the access to justice problem by inspiring classmates to help grow a resource that helps the public better understand case law. But there’s much more to do, and enormous opportunities for leadership, including as a Spring semester ambassador.

Whether your passion is opening up access to the law or another equally noble goal, finding ways to get involved, like WeCite, is in many cases easier than it seems. It’s easy to let your desire to have a big impact intimidate you into putting off your personal mission until some future date when you feel like you can fully commit your time to it. But that’s a dangerous game. By making even small contributions a priority in law school, you’re starting habits now that will extend throughout your legal career. Plus, you’ll be continually reminding yourself why you enrolled in law school in the first place, and you’ll avoid letting those goals get buried in exams, essays, studying, and starting your legal career.


Jake Heller is the Founder and CEO of Casetext, the best place to read and write about the law, and recently named one of the 25 Hottest Startups in SF. To work with him and the Casetext team this spring, apply to be a Law Student Ambassador at your school at https://casetext.com/student-ambassadors.