The summer after graduation is a strange interval: the degree is finished, the review year has not begun, and for the first time in four years there is nothing due on Monday. Used well, it is the cheapest head start in the whole project. Used badly, it is four months of intending to start.
What the summer is for
Three things, in this order:
- Rest that is actually rest. Four years of accumulated sleep debt and no small amount of accumulated anxiety. Two or three weeks of genuine recovery is not laziness; it is the thing that makes a year of sustained work possible.
- Administrative clearance. The application, the documents, the requirements — for the examination and for whatever else the year involves. These are small, they have deadlines, and they are catastrophic if missed.
- A running start on one subject. Not eight. One.
The running start, specifically
Choose the subject with the largest weight that you are weakest in — for most candidates that is Remedial Law, at 25% — and give it four to six weeks of unhurried work.
Use the time for the thing that is hardest to do later: building the map.
- Read the coverage for the subject end to end, without studying it.
- Read the foundational provisions properly: jurisdiction and the structure of the Rules.
- Write the skeleton outline — headings only, no detail.
- Brief five or six leading cases, using the bar brief format.
That is perhaps forty hours across the summer, and its product is not knowledge of the subject. It is a structure that the review year can fill at speed, while everyone else is still working out what the subject contains.
What not to do
Do not start the full review. A year is long, and starting it in May produces the burnout described in handling review burnout by February.
Do not buy everything. Materials purchased in panic in June are a source of anxiety, not knowledge — see free bar review materials for what is already free and authoritative.
Do not read the whole syllabus in detail. Read the bulletin and the coverage for your chosen subject. The rest can wait until the plan says so.
Do not spend the summer deciding how to study. Plan-making is the most comfortable form of procrastination available to a law graduate. Choose a plan — the twelve-month plan is one — and act on it.
The administrative checklist
Small tasks with hard deadlines, which is exactly the profile of things that get forgotten:
- Read the bulletins and the issuances on application — from the official sources in where the bulletins are published.
- Assemble the documents the application requires, and check the dates and the formats.
- Note the deadlines in a calendar with alarms, not in your memory.
- Register for whatever the platform requires, as soon as the instructions permit.
- Sort out the practical year: where you will live, how you will study, whether you will work. A review year planned around a job looks different from one that is not — see reviewing while working full time.
A shape for the summer
| Weeks | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Nothing academic. Rest, and finish the administrative tasks |
| 4–8 | The running start: one subject, its map, its foundational provisions, five briefs |
| 9–10 | Set up the year: the calendar, the retrieval habit, the materials |
| Last week | Stop. Start the review year on the plan's first day, not three weeks early |
That last line matters: a review year is a marathon, and the candidates who spend the summer sprinting arrive at the actual race depleted.
The one habit to install before the year starts
Twenty minutes of daily retrieval, from the first day of the review. Not from October, not "once I am organised": from the first day. It is the habit that compounds most and is abandoned first, and installing it in a quiet summer week is far easier than installing it in a busy October.
What the summer is really buying
Not content. A structure and a habit, installed while there is slack in the system. The review year is unforgiving about setup: the first month is where a candidate discovers that their notes cannot be revised, their plan is too big, and their materials are ambiguous. The summer is the only time to find those things out cheaply.