Stress in Law Students: A Comparative Study of First-Year, Second-Year and Third-Year Students

This article starts from the premise that stress is not inherently bad, but that heightened levels of it in a definable population should lead to further inquiry. That further inquiry could reveal the specific stressors that contribute to that heightened level and then determine whether and how those stressors should be addressed. Therefore, the first section of this article reviews the research literature on graduate students, law students, and stress-to determine baseline concepts about stress in those defined populations. The second section describes a survey of defined populations first-year, second-year, and third-year law students. The third section reports the results of that survey. The fourth section discusses the results of the survey in light of the literature.