What First-Year Law Students Struggle With — and How to Improve Early

If your first term of law has felt harder than you expected, you are in very ordinary company. Almost every law student hits the same walls early on, and almost none of them talk about it. This is not a motivational piece — it is a plain look at what tends to go wrong in first year, and what actually helps.

None of these struggles mean you are not cut out for law. They mean you are learning a genuinely new way of thinking, and that takes time. The students who improve fastest are usually the ones who name the problem early and practise the right thing, rather than just working longer hours.

1. “I can read the judgment, but I can’t extract the principle.”

Cases are long, and first-year reading often means drowning in facts and losing the point. The fix is to read with a purpose rather than start to finish. For each case, look for five things: the facts that mattered, the legal issue, what the court decided, the reasoning, and why it matters for the wider law. If you can write those five lines, you have understood the case — the other twenty pages were context.

2. “Half the sentence is words I don’t know.”

Legal language is a barrier before it becomes a tool. When every paragraph contains unfamiliar terms, reading is exhausting and slow. Building your vocabulary deliberately — rather than hoping it sinks in — pays off across every module. Our Durmah Lexicon is built for exactly this: turning unfamiliar terms into ones you can read and use without stopping.

3. “I know the law, but I don’t know how to apply it.”

This is the big one, and it is the heart of problem questions. Knowing a rule and applying it to a messy fact pattern are different skills, and most courses test the second far more than the first. A reliable structure helps enormously here. Learning to use IRAC or ILAC gives your answer a spine: issue, rule, application, conclusion — with most of your marks living in the application.

4. “I keep describing the law instead of analysing it.”

A very common feedback comment in first year is “too descriptive.” It usually means you have set out what the law is but not engaged with how it applies, where it is uncertain, or what the counter-argument is. Analysis is a habit you build: after every point you make, ask “so what?” and “what would the other side say?” Our guide on asking better legal questions is a good way to train that reflex.

5. “There’s more reading than there are hours.”

The volume is real, and trying to read everything perfectly is a trap. The students who cope are not faster readers — they are more selective ones. Prioritise the set cases and core readings, read actively, and protect time for practising application rather than spending every hour collecting notes you never use. For exam-season specifics, see our law exam technique guide.

6. “I only find out what was wrong after the grade comes back.”

Feedback in law often arrives weeks late, when you have already moved on, so the same mistakes repeat. The shift that helps is to seek a read on your structure before you submit, while you can still change it. We wrote a separate guide on why feedback before submission matters and how to use it well.

A gentler point about confidence

Plenty of first-years stay quiet in seminars because they are afraid of asking something “obvious.” In law, the willingness to ask is part of the skill, not a weakness — which is exactly why we argue that no question is a stupid question. The students who ask early tend to be the ones who are no longer confused by exam season.

For the wider picture beyond first year, the free UK Law Student Guide sets out what matters at every stage of the degree, and the Real-World UK Legal System guide gives the practical context that makes early modules feel less abstract.

How Durmah can help in first year

Durmah is designed to support precisely these early struggles: a companion to help you plan a structure, build vocabulary, practise applying the law, and review your own drafts — while you stay the one doing the thinking. It will not write your work or replace the reading, and that is the point. The aim is to help you become a more independent legal thinker faster, not to lean on a tool. If you want the longer version, read how Durmah helps law students build better legal reasoning.

Durmah is an independent study companion and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any university.