Five Years in Law School: What the Books Don't Teach

The Rhythm of Brazilian University Life

University in Brazil is completely different from America. You don’t choose your classes. There’s no buffet of courses where you build your own curriculum. Everyone takes the same classes. All first-year students enter the same sequence, pass through the same professors, learn the same subjects in the same order.

It was simultaneously comforting and terrifying.

My daily rhythm was simple: wake early, arrive at university at 7:30 AM, sit in a classroom with a hundred other students, and absorb Constitutional Law, Civil Law, Criminal Law—all in fluent Portuguese, which wasn’t yet my Portuguese.

Classes ended at 11:30 AM. Then came work teaching English. Then came studying.

Breaks were short—only a month in July and another in January. There was no luxury of a “mid-semester study break.” You accelerated, learned, advanced.

Tools of Survival

I started leaving a tape recorder running during every class. My professors thought it was strange at first, but eventually accepted it. “Ah, so you can understand better later?” one asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. It was because hearing the lecture again at home let me pause, rewind, focus on the parts I hadn’t understood.

Later, with headphones, I’d replay the entire class. Sometimes a one-hour lecture took three hours to digest, because I’d stop at each sentence, write down new words, look them up in my dictionary.

My Portuguese-English dictionary became my best friend.

The library became my second home. That’s where I met the elderly woman whose name I’m still not entirely sure I ever knew properly. To her, I was always “the American.” She’d arrive with a stack of articles—about constitutional law, about Brazilian history, about politics—and say, “Shall we read?”

We’d read together. She showed me how words connected. How a paragraph in Portuguese isn’t simply a translation from English—it’s a different way of thinking, of structuring ideas.

“You can’t translate word by word,” she’d tell me. “You have to understand the spirit of the sentence.”

The Professors Who Saved Me

Professor Sergio wasn’t just an academic mentor. He was an academic father. When I’d arrive tired, unmotivated, thinking I couldn’t make it, he’d pull up a chair, sit with me, and say:

“You’re here. In my university. Speaking Portuguese. Discussing constitutional law. This is impossible, but you’re doing it. So finish.”

There was no false empathy. No “poor thing, you’re a foreigner.” Just the recognition that the impossible was happening and that I should simply continue.

Other professors also embraced the experiment. Some allowed me to take oral exams instead of written ones, because reading was my strength. Others let me submit written work in English and then we’d translate together—not as a cheat, but as part of the learning process.

“This is how we learn,” one professor told me. “You translate from English to Portuguese, and in that process, you understand how the law functions in Portuguese.”

It made sense.

Life Beyond the Classroom

But university was more than lectures. It was friendship. Brazilians who didn’t see an American—they saw a classmate going through the same torture they were.

We studied together in the library. Occasionally someone would bring snacks. We’d drink coffee. Talk about the professors, about boring classes, about brilliant teachers.

They also taught me—not formally, but through daily interaction. They corrected my Portuguese. Laughed at my attempts to understand jokes in Portuguese. Took me to bars after class where, over a beer, Portuguese finally flowed a little better.

I made friends who became brothers. People I still talk to regularly.

In my third year, during these friendships, I launched my English school. My friends helped. Some even taught with me—in exchange for more intensive Portuguese instruction. It was a natural, organic trade of knowledge.

The Challenge of Technical Portuguese

The Portuguese I’d learned on the streets of Presidente Prudente was different from the Portuguese of a law school classroom.

When you speak with friends, small mistakes don’t matter. “I went to home” instead of “I went home”—nobody cares.

But in an essay about constitutional law? Everything mattered.

I had to learn not just casual language, but technical language. Legal terms in Portuguese that have no perfect English equivalents. Specific grammatical structures. The way Brazilian lawyers write—formal, precise, almost archaic sometimes.

A course called “Legal Technique” was particularly challenging. It was basically “How to write like a lawyer.” Every sentence had to be perfect. Every paragraph had to follow specific logic.

I passed that course on my third attempt.

When the professor learned it was my third time, and that I’d finally passed, she came and embraced me in front of the entire class.

“You did it,” she told me. “You really did it.”

Her eyes were wet.

The Parts Nobody Discusses

Nobody talks about the difficulty of being in a classroom where everyone laughs at a joke and you have to ask for explanation. Nobody talks about writing an exam and knowing your grammar isn’t perfect, basically praying the professor will understand your point through the accent.

Nobody talks about how, for five years, you’re simultaneously a normal student and an attraction—a living experiment of “can an American really become a lawyer in Brazil?”

But you also learn that “unusual” can be an advantage. My professors didn’t just want me to pass—they wanted to prove it possible. They wanted me to be evidence that Brazilian education was good enough, was accessible enough, to transform even an American boy who didn’t speak the language.

That created silent pressure and also an invisible network of support.

Graduation and Beyond

In my fifth year, I was finally there. My grades were respectable—not brilliant, but good. I’d passed every course. I had knowledge of Brazilian law. I had friends who are still my brothers.

Graduation was as described—three days of celebration. But what mattered most was my conversation with Sergio after it all ended. He pulled me aside by the shoulder.

“You have potential,” he told me. “Now the real work begins.”

And he was right. Law school had taught me theory. It had given me knowledge. But the true practice—how law offices really work, how you actually defend a client, how you handle the politics of a courtroom—all that I still had to learn.

Reflection

Looking back, those five years were about so much more than law. They were about transformation. About discovering that you can be a foreigner in a country and still build a complete, meaningful life within its institutions.

They were about Brazil embracing an American and saying, “You’re ours now, so let’s help you.”

If you’re studying in Brazil or considering coming to study, know that it’s possible. ZS Advogados understands the path—not just the legal part, but the human one. If you need guidance with visas, OAB registration, or any legal aspect of your education in Brazil, I’m here.

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Related Reading

• The Definitive Guide to Immigration to Brazil
• How I Speak Portuguese Today: Zero to Fluent
• My First Case as a Lawyer
• Essential Documents for Immigration

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Each case has specific circumstances that should be analyzed by a qualified attorney.