What should your spouse expect when you go to law school? For those married law students, a husband or wife is an asset and responsibility that most colleagues will not understand during your venture through law school.

Frank Sinatra crooned that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, but law school and marriage remains a more difficult connection to make. Law school can be a challenging and rewarding experience for the student and is a common stepping-stone to success later in life. However, law school can be a difficult time for a spouse (or significant other) and its important for both partners to understand what the next three years will entail and what each one should expect.

Law school is an intense three training and initiation into a profession and students must be able to commit fully if they are to be successful, support from the spouse can make this commitment less of a burden. A spouse or a significant other can be a blessing during the slog through a legal education by providing support and a natural social outlet and the spouse should not be neglected during that time.

When I met my wife it was before I started law school and she, God bless her, stuck with me through my law school career. A law school career where I saw more of the library than I did of her. What made the difference was that we had a frank conversation before I started and she was well aware of the large amount of time that I planned to commit to school.

We had a system that worked for us and it was based on predictability. I worked during the day and went to law school at night so I would leave the house by 7:30 AM and not return until 9:30 PM (this schedule incidentally is not too unlike the schedule of a first year associate). She knew that Friday was our night; since there was no class we were therefore able to spend some time together.

I did most of my reading on the weekend since work and school already monopolized my time during the week. I would spend roughly 10 hours in the library reading for the upcoming week in addition to taking care of any other projects that needed to be completed. This routine allowed my wife to know when I was and was not going to be around. The predictability was what made easier for her to plan both her schedule and ours.

Was this a perfect system? Probably not, but it worked for us and for those married students there may be another solution but what is important to take away is that a little communication between partners can be the difference. I’m no marriage counselor but that advice could be applied to dozens of other situations beyond law school. If the marriage (or any relationship for that matter) is to survive law school, communication is critical. The student must keep the lines of communication open so that the spouse is aware of upcoming projects that may require more time (e.g. the memo that must be completed before the next legal writing class) so that there are no surprises. Likewise, the spouse should be honest with the student if any feelings of neglect begin to creep in. You didn’t hear this from me but taking an extra hour or two to have dinner as a family is probably more important than anything in the Contracts hornbook.