Maryland Law Student Creates Law School Musical

BALTIMORE (AP) - A third-year law student at the University of Maryland School of Law has created a YouTube music video about his experiences titled Law School Musical.

Owen Jarvis said he suffered a drastic shift in expectations because he didn't hit the ground running like he expected upon entering 1L, the term students have for the first year of law school.

"It's a blow to the system," he said. "If everyone's an overachiever, then someone's deluding themselves."

Out of that breakdown, Jarvis said he began working on what would become Law School Musical. He wrote the song during final exams, singing "1L life is hell."

In his second year, he fleshed out the song with illustrations of his school _ which he doesn't name _ and he managed to find a singing cat to make a cameo for him. Using the illustrations, he turned the whole production into a video that he posted on You Tube in September.

By November?

"I'm the closest thing to a rock star at University of Maryland law school," the 25-year-old said.

Jarvis sings about the travails of a first-year law student, including a lack of money, little sleep, and fellow students who hurt each other to help themselves.

Apparently a lot of law students and law school applicants have seen the three-minute clip. By Dec. 27, it had been seen nearly 146,000 times and generated more than 150 comments.

His drawings show him using an apparently worn-out laptop computer alternated with a plea for money as he sits homeless on the street holding a sign "Will sue 4 food."

Julia Belian, an adjunct law professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City, told Jarvis she used the "amazing" video in two classes.

"I remember how that felt _ I remember it very clearly," Belian wrote in an e-mail to The (Baltimore) Daily Record. She said she "wanted them to know they're not alone, that this is a pretty much universal experience for 1Ls."

Jarvis said his cocky attitude was forcibly adjusted by the different environment he found in law school. The video includes before and after pictures of him that depict his undergraduate days as fun-filled and him as popular and attractive.

He said he quickly learned the "half-studying" he used to get through Salisbury University wasn't enough. And in turn, he became insecure.

Once when questioned three times by a professor about a reading assignment, he said the professor asked other students each time why Jarvis was wrong.

"My sense of self-worth just left the building. In my weaker moments that still kills me," he said.

But in the midst of such struggle and purifying experiences, he said one of the keys to sanity is finding a way to have fun and take a mental break. In the past, he said he's gone camping, visited Atlantic City, played football or just met up with friends.

And after managing to get past his breaking point, he said he also's learned more about what he wants to do once he graduates. He interned for U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., last spring and worked on Terry Hickey's Baltimore City Council campaign.

By getting his hands in the middle of grass roots politics, Jarvis said he knows what excites him.

"That kind of community lawyering, or politicking, is where redemption can be found," he said.

He said law school also brought a kind of redemption for him _ to teach him what his weaknesses are and how he needs to respond.

"It really shined a spotlight on my character weaknesses, my professional weaknesses," he said. "I can say now sometimes I'm too sure of myself and too cocky, and that's all part of the innate lessons I learned in learning about the law."

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Information from: The (Baltimore) Daily Record, http://www.mddailyrecord.com

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