Lawsagna

E-Guide To Public Service at America's Law Schools

Equal Justice Works and Newsweek.com released the E-Guide to Public Service at America's Law Schools:

The E-Guide to Public Service at America's Law Schools is a free interactive online resource that provides a broad range of information about public interest programs and curricula at 116 law schools. Equal Justice Works, a Washington-based nonprofit public interest law organization, created The E-Guide to fill the void in existing commercial publications by providing information about public service in law schools and about factors many consider essential to a quality legal education.

You can read the rest of the press release here.  Newsweek.com hosts the E-Guide. 

Tip Bit #13: On reflective learning

People like to be in control of what they do.  It applies to learning as  well.  One way to make your learning experience more meaningful to you is to take time to reflect on the learning process itself.  Imagine that you want to go to Paris for vacation.  To see the city, you can either choose to go on a group tour with a guide or you can create your individual sightseeing agenda.  If it’s your first time in Paris, you don’t know anybody there and you don't speak French, a guided tour may be your best option:  you will be shown all the main points of interest and receive the basic information about the places.   However, if you are familiar with the city enough to decide what to see and how to organize your trip, you can create much more personal and meaningful experiences in Paris. 

How does it apply to learning?  Law school is in many ways like a guided tour with a busy schedule.  But when you get off the bus and have some free time, consider a few questions to orient yourself towards better learning experience.  What kinds of questions should you be asking?  Here are some examples for a weekly review:

1. What confused you most in class this week?
2. What is the best way to resolve your confusion?
3. What key ideas and information did you learn?
4. What was the most important idea you learned this week?
5. What surprised, dismayed, delighted you most in class this week?
6. How does your learning relate to the larger context of your life and work goals?
7. Have you learned any practical skills, ideas, tools, techniques that you can easily apply to real-life situations?
8. Have you learned anything new about yourself, your interests, feelings, values?
9. What helped your learning?
10. What interfered with your learning?
11. What should you do more of?  What should you do less of?
12. What is one thing (skill, habit, activity) you want to focus on next week?

Stanford Law School launches the Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic

Here is an interesting example of collaboration between a law firm and a law school to expand the clinical education in the law school curriculum.  Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP has committed $250,000 to establish the Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe Fellowship for a Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic at Stanford Law School.  The clinic, which is scheduled to launch in Fall 2007, will give students an opportunity to work with non-profit organizations and micro-businesses.  The students will act as general counsel to non-profits, doing transactional work, including corporate governance matters and corporate disclosures. 

The Nonprofit and General Counsel Clinic is one of ten clinics that operate as a single law firm – the Stanford Legal Clinic.  Among them is the well-known Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which has enabled students to work on more than two dozen Supreme Court cases.  Other clinics do pro-bono work ranging from immigrants' rights to cyberlaw and environmental protection.   

What do you think of clinical education?  What kinds of clinics would you want to see at your law school?

Related post: 
Teaching practical skills to students

On books, papers and citations

Do you know what book holds the record of being the longest book ever written in the world?  It is Yongle Dadian - "The Encyclopedia of Yongle Emperor's Reign in Ming Dynasty.”  It took 4 years for 3,000 scholars to finish the compilation of 11,095 volumes and 22,877 chapters in 1408.  The encyclopedia has an estimated 370 million Chinese characters. 

As to much shorter but surely no less important Bluebook, check out "Introduction to Basic Legal Citation" by Peter W. Martin.  It has good information on legal citation, which you may want to read if your goal is to join a law review or write for one.

If you want to streamline your legal research and writing, CiteIt! may be the right choice for you.   It is a software that automatically formats legal citations according to The Bluebook or The ALWD Citation Manual, inserts properly-formatted citations into your word-processing document, creates a table of authorities and makes it easy for you to store, search and organize your legal research.  You can download a free trial version.
   
If you must write a research paper for any course or journal that uses MLA, APA or Chicago style, Slate Citation Machine is a free simple-to-use online citation tool to reformat a citation to the style you need.

Finally, here is a good compilation of resources for writing a research paper from St. Ambrose University Library.  This is how I found the Thinking Page, which offers information on improving organizational and individual thinking. 

Psychology of color

What colors do you like?  How do different colors make you feel?  Colors affect us emotionally, mentally and physically.  If we pay attention to how we relate to different colors, we could use them for our benefit.  Here are some tidbits about colors and their meanings. 
 
Red is associated with energy, passion, strength, danger, power.  It represents “emergency” in the field of medicine, “hot” and “danger” in engineering, and “loss” in finance.  Red has a great emotional impact.  Use it when you need to energize yourself and prepare for action.   Red is often used for “Buy Now” and “Click Here” buttons in web ads to prompt people to make quick decisions.    

Orange is associated with enthusiasm, stimulation, creativity, joy, warmth.  Orange is an attention-getter.  Use it to stimulate your mental activity and appetite.

Yellow is associated with sunlight, happiness, intellect, inspiration, energy.   Use yellow to cheer up or stimulate your curiosity.  It excites the brain and aids perception and memory, so it is good for learning.   

Green is a color of nature.  It symbolizes freshness, renewal, growth, safety, tranquility.  Green represents “money” and “profit” in finance and “safety” in engineering.  Green will help you relax.  It promotes the feeling of peace and harmony.

Violet is associated with luxury, mystery, creativity, independence, nobility, spirituality.  Use violet if you want to feel inspired and creative. 

Blue is associated with stability, calmness, trust, confidence, security, order.  It represents “reliability” in the business world.  Blue is a soothing color, it promotes mental relaxation.  Use it if you seek clarity and better ways to communicate something.  It is also known to slow down metabolism and decrease appetite.   

White is associated with coolness, purity, lightness, innocence, cleanliness.  Use it if you want serenity and simplicity. 

Black is associated with power, formality, elegance, sophistication, mystery.  Use black when you want to create the impression of strength and authority. 

Some believe that your preferred color can tell something about your personality.  Do you agree? 

How about taking ColorQuiz, a free five-minute personality test based on color psychology?

Finally, visit this site if you want to know more about color therapy. 

Capture the contrast

Life is full of contrast.  We don’t always like it, but the contrast keeps the  current of life flowing, forcing us to change, adapt, move forward.  There is no “hot” without “cold."  The balance of sweet and sour gives flavor to our food.  We can’t feel joy unless we know sadness.   Sometimes, the only way to discover what makes us happy is to experience what makes us unhappy.  How can we harness this power of contrast and bring more momentum and clarity to our everyday routines?  Here are a few things to consider:

• If you have to do something that you don’t like doing, pair it up with an activity that you enjoy.  Maybe, a cup of good coffee will help you through a boring part of the textbook, just like a good CD makes a long drive more bearable. 
• Reward yourself after you have accomplished a project that felt more like punishment. Come up with a reward before you begin the unpleasant task.  That way you have something to look forward to and keep you motivated.   
• Play Devil’s Advocate.  When you prepare an argument, always consider the opposing points of view.  You will discover the weaknesses of your position before your opponents have a change to point them out. 
• Stretch yourself by experimenting with the ways you do things.  If you read slowly, try speed-reading.  If you are used to typing up your notes, leave your computer at home and take notes by hand.  If you are usually quiet in class, force yourself to ask more questions.  Reflect on how it feels to do the opposite and how it affects the process and the outcomes. 
• When you read a text in legalese, translate it into plain English to aid comprehension and practice effective writing.      
• If you are quick to jump to conclusions, stop and ask how one could reach the opposite conclusion. 
• When you evaluate a legal opinion, ask yourself what would have happened if the court had decided differently.  Think in terms of precedent, policy, outcomes. 
• When you consider career paths or job offers, visualize yourself doing the opposite of what your initial choice would be.  Notice how it feels and how your body reacts.  Do the same exercise with the other options.    
• If you have failed at something, ask yourself:  “What can I learn from this experience that will help me succeed in the future?”
• Counteract the negative self-talk with positive affirmations. 
• If you are angry, think of kindness.  If you are frustrated because you didn’t get what you wanted, express gratitude for what you have.  Start giving in order to receive. 

How else can you use contrast to your benefit? 

Tip Bit #12: Three easy ways to recharge yourself

One thing I am learning to do as I work is to recognize the point when I begin feeling fatigued and take a quick step to recharge.   If you spend long hours studying or working, watch for the following signs:

• You begin yawning.
• It becomes hard to concentrate.
• You space out for a few seconds.
• You rub your eyes.
• You body feels stiff.

Aren’t you getting tired just after reading these symptoms?  When you start feeling this way, try the following easy steps to break the cycle of fatigue. 

1. Take 10 deep breaths.  We are all guilty of shallow breathing.  When you are hunched over a book or the keyboard, you can’t fully expand the lungs.  Also, when people feel stressed, they tend to take short, rapid breaths.  When you feel tired, take deep, relaxing breaths to bring more oxygen to your body.  Are you feeling better already?
2. Now it is time to stretch.  I like the Yoga Triangle Pose because it gives a good stretch to my whole body and releases the tension from the lower back.  Because it is a standing posture, I don’t even need a mat.  You can find the instructions and tutorial animation at the ABC-of-Yoga website.  As with any stretch, go slow and stop if you feel any pain.  The website describes many other poses, so you can choose the ones that you are comfortable with.  The tiredness starts to melt away.
3. Finally, drink a glass of iced water with lemon.  Thirst causes fatigue.  The cold water wakes me up (and burns a few calories, as a bonus).   The fresh smell of lemon is invigorating.

These little interventions are easy to do and don’t take much time.  If you can’t take a nap or get to the gym, they can be your next best thing and a healthy alternative to reaching for more coffee and a cookie (I am writing this for myself and I should tape this to my coffee-maker).  What do you think?  Do you have any tips for a quick energy boost?  Please share them with the rest of us! 

How to be a versatile communicator

Here’s one more skill that law students will probably have to master on their own:  how to present information in a visual way.  It turns out that lawyers differ from the general public in the way they learn and communicate.  According to the Attorney Communication Style Study conduced by Animators at Law, attorneys are 10% more likely to be auditory learners, 4% more likely to be kinesthetic learners and 14% less likely to be visual learners than the general public.  61% of the general public learns visually, 53% of practicing attorneys are either auditory or kinesthetic learners.  (Thanks to Idealawg for pointing me to this research).

What do these results mean to law students and lawyers?  On one hand, if you happen to be a visual learner (that’s still 46.9% of practicing attorneys), you may be at disadvantage in law school, which emphasizes verbal and auditory skills, but you have an advantage when you communicate with your clients or jurors.  On the other hand, non-visual learners need to adapt to the preferred visual style of their audience.  (Here’s a link to my previous post on how to communicate “on TAP”:  topic, audience, purpose.) 

How do you communicate visually?

You can use charts, graphs, pictures, slides or draw on a whiteboard.  Check out a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for ideas on how to visualize information.   Another good resource to engage you spatial intelligence is the information aesthetics blog. 

Pay attention and “mirror” the language patterns of visual learners.  They may say phrases, such as “I see…,” “Imagine that…,” “Look at it this way.”  If you are an auditory learner, you are likely to use phrases, such as “I hear…,” “That sounds good.”  Kinesthetic learners may say:  “I feel that…”, “Can you grasp this concept?”   

Interestingly, when people interpret metaphors, they make connections across senses in the cross-modal areas of the brain where information from touch, hearing and vision comes together to form abstractions.  Jaron Lanier explores the relationship between images and sounds in "Jaron’s World:  The Meaning of Metaphor" for Discover.    

Finally, if you need an excuse to play video-games or simulations once in a while, now you have it:  you are developing you spatial skills to be a more versatile communicator.  Here’s a long list of free online flash games.

The Name Game in the Memory Palace

If you were to compete in the USA National Memory Championship, you would first have to memorize 99 names and faces in 15 minutes and recall them in 20 minutes. Next, you would memorize an unpublished 50-line poem in 15 minutes, followed by a series of random digits, an arbitrary list of words and a shuffled deck of playing cards.  How do you think you would do?  It turns out that best competitors in the world can memorize a deck of cards in less than a minute.  Joshua Foer describes these exciting memory battles in Forget Me Not: How to Win the U.S. Memory Championship.

Some of the methods used by the competitors originated in the ancient Greece.  In his historic overview of the "science of memory" in Mappa.Mundi Magazine, Carl Malamud tells the story of the poet Simonides of Ceos, who witnessed the destruction of the banquet hall where he sang his poem just minutes before the collapse.   Simonides was able to reconstruct the guest list by visualizing the exact location of every guest at the table.  This visualization technique became known as the “memory palace.”  First, you choose your “memory palace”, which can be any place or route that you remember well.  Next, you place your thoughts or images that you want to remember next to the distinctive points in the rooms of your palace or along your route. Those points serve as memory hooks.  When you need to recall the material, you mentally walk through the palace and “collect” the pieces of information that you left at each distinctive point.  You can use this technique to memorize a presentation or a legal argument, for example. 

What if you have trouble memorizing people’s names?  Play The Name Game and learn 8 tips on how to remember people’s names from memory expert Frank Felberbaum.  Then test his advice at the next networking event. 

What memory techniques do you like to use? 

Citegraph

Citegraph is a tool that visually represents the connections between your legal search results.  The database currently includes a little over 3000 U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit cases, with more cases added each day.  Once you enter a search term, Citegraph retrieves all the matching cases.  The cases are displayed as circles, and the lines between the cases are citations from one case to another. The case circles differ in their size and color depending on the number of citations to those cases in your search results. Mouse over a circle to highlight all the connected cases and display the case name.  Click on the circle to lock the highlighted area.  The Help section of the website describes additional functions.  The visual representation allows you to see the relative importance of various cases to your legal research.

The leftovers guide to productivity

As I was cleaning out my refrigerator yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder about the similarities in the ways we deal with the leftovers and the ways we approach our projects.  What do you do with your leftovers?

• Do you finish them even though the food may have lost its initial appeal?
• Do you re-work them into something new and delicious?
• Do you put them into the fridge and forget about them until a rather peculiar smell reminds you to check on your biological experiment?
• Do you throw out the leftovers right away because you know that you won’t be eating them again?

Now, it’s time to see how you handle your projects.

1. Do you always finish what you have started even if you are not as excited about the project as you were at the beginning?   If so, you certainly have the self-discipline and good planning skills.  And you probably accomplish a lot.  As long as you choose your projects wisely and don’t compromise on your taste, you are in good shape.  One thing for you to remember is that some projects, just like the leftovers, have an expiration date:  if a project goes bad, don’t be afraid to toss it. 
2. Are you one of those lucky people who know how to breathe life into an old project?  You know where to look for inspiration to keep your projects alive and exciting.  You are flexible and you are not afraid to make changes as you go.  The only word of caution for you is not to lose the essence of your projects.  There is only so much you can do with the leftovers.  Sometimes, it is better to start from scratch.   
3. Do you tend to start projects and then put them “on hold” when something better or more important comes along?  Do you have a long to-do list that keeps running through your mind?  Then, your head is probably full of mental “leftovers.”  Schedule regular times to clear you head by deciding what to toss, what to work on right away, and what to “freeze” till sometime in the future.  Planning and prioritizing will save your energy and make you more productive.
4. Do you have trouble completing your projects?  Maybe, you have many interests and you are very enthusiastic to try out new things, but you get bored easily.   As a result, you struggle to stay focused.  Try “freezing” some of you "leftover" projects for future use and re-working the others.  Find sources of motivation to stick with the project at hand.  Circulate several projects so that you can easily switch from one to another when you get frustrated.  Revisit your inventory of "frozen leftovers" periodically to see when it is a good time to thaw them.  While variety is good, you don’t want to be wasteful. 

Free movie tickets to "Peaceful Warrior"

Do you want to see an inspirational movie for free?  Universal Pictures and Best Buy will give away up to $15 million in free tickets to the nationwide release of "Peaceful Warrior" on March 30 - April 1.  Starting March 18, you can obtain up to 10 free movie tickets.  For information, go to the Best Buy site.  "This truly is an example of an offer with no strings attached," according to Adam Fogelson, president of marketing, Universal Pictures.

Tip Bit # 11: What’s on TAP?

It’s Friday, get ready for the happy hour.  What’s on tap?  Not what you  expected, I am sure.  Save your energy for St. Patrick’s green beer tomorrow.  Today, we are talking about a different kind of TAP – the one that you must remember to turn on when you are about to write something important.  This TAP stands for “Topic,” “Audience,” and “Purpose.”  In other words, before you write anything, you need to be clear about the topic of your writing, you need to know who your audience is, and what purposes your writing is going to serve.

Topic.  Some writing assignments in law school include a specific topic, so you won’t have a choice in the matter.  However, if you need to write a research paper or a student note for a law journal, you will have to choose what to write about.  Here are some factors to consider when you choose a topic:

• Your interests.
• Your experience.
• The importance of the topic to the legal community.
• The relevance of the topic to your personal and career goals.
• The availability of resources for research.
• Access to experts in your area of interest.

It is better to select a narrow topic than a broad one. If your topic is too broad, you run a risk of not being able to cover it with adequate depth.  The research may be too extensive for the time constraints you are given.  However, if your topic is narrow, you are more likely to uncover everything there is to know about it.  If after your research, you realize that you need to broaden it a bit, it is going to be easy to do.  Most likely, your research will reveal some additional areas that you may then decide to include in your topic.   

Audience.  Who is your reader?  It is very important that you know the answer to this question as you start writing.  Writing is a way of communication.  The writer is responsible for its effectiveness.  When you know your readers, you can make assumptions about their knowledge base, education, interests.  The structure of your writing, the explanations you provide, the level of formality – all depend on your target audience.  Lawyers write for fellow members of the bar, judges, juries, clients, public at large.  Can you think how their writing can be different depending on which group they target?

Purpose.  Every piece of writing has a purpose.  If you keep a journal, you write to express yourself. In law school and law practice, you write to communicate, inform, persuade, create a binding relationship.  If you write an essay in response to an exam question, your purpose is to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject.  A single writing piece can serve multiple purposes.  As you compose and revise your draft, keep in mind what you want to accomplish with your writing.

How to develop your emotional intelligence

Learning has the potential to change people.   As people change, so do their relationships with others.  Sometimes these relationships change for the better and sometimes for the worse.  Today’s round-up is about the emotional intelligence and people skills that we all need to master our relationships. 

The first people to notice the changes in you are the people closest to you:  your spouse, significant other, your kids, your close friends.  Even if they want to be supportive, the change can be hard for them to accept.  Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation offers great insights about relationship transitions in the article When you change, all your relationships change.   One of her tips is to “communicate clearly and frequently with those around you about the changes that are going on in your life.” 

Maybe, you sense that something is amiss in your relationship, but you can’t quite figure out what is going on with the other person.  Would you like to learn how to read people?  Life Training – Online offers the series on How to Read People.  It will show you how to develop the mental mindset of the “effective people reader,” how to master the techniques and how to determine if somebody is lying to you. 

You can’t read people unless you listen actively to what they are saying.  Inside Practice offers the excerpt on how to “Connect with Your Client through Active Listening” from The Successful Lawyer: Powerful Strategies for Transforming Your Practice by Gerald A. Riskin.  You must be able to hear not only the facts, but the emotions as well.

What if you hear anger? Can you deal with it?  Here’s a piece of advice from a Buddhist monk at ProBlogger. 

What do you do if somebody tries to put up barriers to your progress?  Listen to John H. Johnson’s lesson of success:  “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.”   Belief in yourself and perseverance are the best answers to those who doubt you. 

There comes a time in our career and personal life when we need to apologize to others.  It may not be an easy thing to do for a lawyer.  We are trained to assign blame, not to accept it.  Cheryl Stephens of Building Rapport shares the results of her research on the subject of apology in Apology – the Unknown Universe.  Brad Shorr of Word Sell offers tips About Writing Letters of Apology.   

Finally, Dr. Tammy Lenski talks about a neat mood-visualization tool – MoodJam.  It is a free service provided by the MoodJam Research Group in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.  It allows you to visualize your moods in color strips.  You can then share your moods with those around you to let them know when you are safe to approach and when they should stay away.

What advertising can teach us about outlining

Have you ever wondered why a line of a TV commercial can be stuck in your head for years without any effort on your part to memorize it, but an important legal rule may elude you right when you need it most?  Can legal concepts be presented like ads in a magazine?  Consider how certain notions applicable to advertising can be used to make the content of your outline more memorable.

• Function.  Ads inform, persuade and call for action.  What are the objectives of your outline?  Your entries must inform:  state a rule, accurately describe a legal test, provide a holding in a case, etc.   The persuasion part translates into legal reasoning.  Your outline must reflect the reasoning behind the laws.  Finally, it should address the application of the rules and standards.  What can you do with this rule?  That’s your “call for action.”
• Positioning.  In advertising, positioning means identifying the right target audience for your message.   When applied to outlining, positioning signifies the “big picture.”  When you outline, think about how each of your entries relates to other entries.
• Message.  Memorable ads usually convey a single clear message.  When you outline, make sure you break down complex concepts into smaller components.  Take time to distill the main idea from the legal mumbo-jumbo.
• Truthfulness.  Ads must not mislead the customers.  The same is true for the outlines.  The content must be accurate.
• Language.  Advertising phrases are short and punchy, but they remain coherent.  Coherence allows you to reconstruct the full meaning despite the simplified syntactic structures and lack of connectives, such as "and," "so," "therefore," which mark relationships between sentences.  When you outline, get rid of needless words.  At the same time, whatever is left must be sufficient to bring back the full concept. 
• Sings and symbols.  Ads often use signs and symbols that are commonly recognized by the audience, like McDonald’s Golden Arches.  One of the interesting things about sings is that the relationship between the sign and the object it signifies is arbitrary.  Common signs are a matter of convention.  The good news is that you can be creative and invent your own symbols and signs to remember the information better. 
  For example, to remember the charity-to-charity exception to the Rule Against Perpetuities (acronym “RAP”), which applies when both the present and the future estates are created in favor of charities, I use the following phrase:  “Red Cross does not RAP, but it takes two to tango.”  This saying is my memory clue.
• Layout.   The elements of an ad, such as text and images, are organized in a certain way to reinforce the message.  Most students’ outlines are bland.  While adding pictures and colors may seem like extra work, it pays off when you need to recall the information.  You’ve probably heard that the process of outlining is more beneficial than the final result.  You aid your memory when you engage your multiple senses and intelligences while creating the outline.

Do you want your outline to work like an ad?

The information world according to Tufte

If you want to ace presentations, you need to get familiar with the work of Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design.  The New York Times called him “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.”  He has written numerous books on information design, including his new book Beautiful Evidence.  I just received a brochure about his upcoming one-day courses "Presenting Data and Information."   It may be a good investment in the development of my spatial intelligence.   Edward Tufte’s website  also has a moderated forum, Ask E.T., where he answers questions and leads discussions dealing with information design.  Check out the Grand truths about human behavior or Advice for effective analytical reasoning for some thought-provoking commentary.      

On rejuvenation

I just got back from Nashville, Tennessee; it was 70°F there and it made me realize how much I was looking forward to Spring.  I want to shake off the heavy coats and winter slumber.  I like Spring’s vigor, freshness, and the sunny disposition.  It is easier to get up early, there seems to be more hours in the day, and the air is full of good energy.   

Students enjoy their Spring Break around this time.  It may be a good opportunity to rejuvenate your spirit.  Do you feel tired and sluggish after long winter months?  What will it take to bring your life forces back?  As you celebrate the arrival of Spring, choose a few ways to nurture and nourish your body and mind:

• Get out in the sun (don’t forget the sunscreen) and take longer walks to breathe in fresh air, smell the early flowers, and clear your head. 
• Release emotional toxicity with the 7-step process from Deepak Chopra.
• Get a massage.
• Drink green or white tea to flush the toxins out of your body.  I recently bought this new LIPTON White Tea with Island Mango and Peach, and I love it.
• Set a goal of eating a minimum of two pieces of fresh fruit every day.  Joe’s goals will help you to stay on track.
• Find time to call your friend with whom you haven’t spoken for a while.
• Incorporate at least some of these 52 Proven Stress Reducers into your life.
• Find an art exhibition that you would like to visit in your area and go. 
• Create a Spring reading list that includes books that you don’t have to read but really want to. 
• Find time to appreciate what you have in life by recording your thoughts in a gratitude journal. 
• Bid farewell to snow by making a snowman with your kids, classmates or co-workers, like these lawyers from a federal agency in Washington, D.C. did as part of their humor training.  Sounds silly?  That’s the point!  Lighten up and laugh!
• Get inspired with 10 Timeless Lessons From Dalai Lama, discussed by the Ririan Project.
• Start recording your favorite quotations.  I like this one by Anaïs Nin:  “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”   

What do you need to blossom?

Tip Bit # 10: Do Your Words Speak Louder Than Actions?

We’ve all heard the saying:  “Actions speak louder than words.”  I wonder if sometimes, the opposite is true:  can the words we speak reveal more about ourselves than we care to admit?  Sometimes, the choice of words signals inner beliefs that may be holding you back.  Does the way you talk about money reveal a conscience of abundance or limitation?  Does your language support the image you want to project or takes away from it?   Do you appear confident in front of others, but insult yourself privately with negative self-talk?  Becoming fully aware of your own word choices is not easy.  I’d like to cut down on the use of the verb “try,” but I am sure, it slips in more often than I notice.  Asking a person close to you to listen to how you say things and give you feedback may be a good way to start.  What words do you want to eliminate from your vocabulary?  What would your Best Self say?   

Smart bites

Today I am serving up a few brainy diet suggestions along with a story of how you can turn a dinner plate into a memory peg. 

For an appetizer, choose among The 29 Healthiest Foods on the Planet, as recommended by Belly Bites (via Lifehack).  How about some crab cakes for vitamin B12 and zinc to boost your immunity?  Or steamed artichokes with zesty lemon juice on top to give you a nice dose of antioxidants?  Plus, the smell of a lemon will invigorate you.

For the main course, fish curry looks good, according to Eat Smart by Christen Brownlee in Science News Online.  The foods you eat affect not only your body, but your brain as well.  You probably already know that fish is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for your brain.  What you may not know is that curcumin  -  a component of the curry spice turmeric -  may reduce the amount of beta-amyloid, a protein that can aggregate into waxy deposits that have been associated with Alzheimer's symptoms.

You can finish your dinner with a choice of Top 10 Foods for a Good Night’s Sleep, suggested by Yahoo! Food.  Sleep allows us to consolidate our memories so that we can learn new things.  Did you know that March 5 – 11 is 2007 National Sleep Awareness Week?  To catch some Z’s, drizzle a little honey in your warm milk or treat yourself to one of the low-fat lullaby muffins, made with whole-wheat flour and bananas (the Yahoo! Food article has the recipe). 

But before you doze off, check out the Waffle House grill cook cheat sheet via information aesthetics.  It illustrates the way in which a cook marks the orders.  For example, a tub of jelly placed upside down at the 6 o'clock position on a dinner plate indicates scrambled eggs and a wheat toast.  It made me wonder if a dinner plate could be used to memorize, let’s say, the filing deadlines for pleadings in the civil procedure rules.  One minute of a clock can represent one day so to remember the deadlines, you would need to visualize the positions of the clock hands.  Then, you can come up with foods for different stages of the process, and you are ready to arrange your “action-plate.”  Is it too much work for what it’s worth?  I don’t know.  Sleep on it. 

Tips and tools for your job search and career development

Are you looking for a summer internship or a job?  Do you contemplate a career transition?  If so, here is a round-up of some tips and tools that can help you in the process. 

Each of you has had a variety of experiences in you life that have helped you to develop certain skills that are valuable to your potential employer.  But when time comes to prepare your resume or answer questions at a job interview, you may not remember this valuable information.   This inventory list will ensure you give yourself credit for all the wonderful things you have accomplished in life.   It has two parts:  Part I discusses “Sources of Evidence That You May Possess Skills, Experiences, and Attributes of Interest to Employers” and Part II lists “Skills, Experiences, and Attributes You Have That Might Be of Interest to Employers.”   It’s a good check list to go through and make sure you are not forgetting anything important.  And you may be surprised at how much you already know.  Also, if you need to add some action to your resume, check out Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs. 

Do you need help with job interviews?  Lifehack discusses a new tool – InterviewTrue -  which allows you to practice your interviewing skills virtually. You can customize your interview by choosing from the database of 1000 questions from the leading companies.  You record yourself with your own webcam as a virtual interviewer asks you questions.  After the interviewing session is over, you receive a transcript of your interview.  You can watch the recording to evaluate your body language and analyze your responses in a transcript.  The InterviewTrue site has a demo and a free trial option. 

Here’s another interesting way to play out your interview scenario.  It comes from the area of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).  As you do the exercise, you visualize the desired behavior and build confidence. 

As you network for success, don’t make The Ten Biggest Networking Mistakes, described by Harvey Mackay.  Instead, focus on developing the Seven Habits of Successful Rainmakers, shared by Sara Holtz in The Complete Lawyer.    

If you aspire to build a solo practice, Build A Solo Practice blog by Susan Cartier Liebel will guide you in the right direction. 

Perhaps, you want personalized advice in exploring various career options.  If so, visit Life at the Bar blog by Julie Fleming-Brown, a professional and personal coach for lawyers.

Related posts:
5 questions to ask when you evaluate job options
Find out your networking quotient

More on the importance of perspective: view from the top

Last week I wrote a tip bit about the importance of looking at a situation from different perspectives.  Later, I received this photo via email, which seemed to be a perfect illustration of how a choice of perspective defined the outcome.  It was taken by photographer George Steinmetz for National Geographic Magazine (you can download the image as wallpaper from the National Geographic website, look under Week 4). 

Do you notice anything special about this photo?  Spoiler:
The actual camels are the tiny white lines on the ground.  The large black silhouettes are shadows.  This is a view from the top.    

8 things that kill learning

Do you know what stands in the way of your learning?  There are many barriers to learning.  Difference people face different challenges.  As you are trying to identify yours, consider the following common enemies of learning:

1. Prolonged stress or depression can affect your memory.  People who are under a lot of stress or suffer from depression show elevated levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that appears to shrink the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory and other cognitive functions.   
2. Lack of sleep can also impair memory and alertness.  Sleep allows us to consolidate memories, find creative solutions to problems, re-energize.  Don’t sacrifice sleep if you want to learn.
3. Negative attitude towards learning can sabotage your efforts.  Maybe, school was hard for you and you convinced yourself that you were not up to the task.  Perhaps, you study only for external recognition, such as a degree, certification, or promotion, and you don’t value the process itself.  Or you feel guilty that you have been a student for far too long instead of making money in the real world.  What are your mental roadblocks to learning? 
4. Irrelevance derails the learning process.  Would you rather learn one hundred made-up words that have no use in real life or one hundred words of Italian if you know that you will go to Italy in a month?   There are lots of things that compete for our attention at any given moment.  The information that is relevant to us and that we can apply in the real world has a higher chance of making it into our long-term memory.  Sometimes, the trick is to figure out how to make the material that you are studying relevant to your goals. 
5. Too much explanation or too little explanation can inhibit learning.  Learning happens in stages.  When you are given lots of detail up front when you have not had a change to get the basics, you are likely to feel overwhelmed.  In addition, our brains are wired to solve problems.  We tend to remember things better if we have struggled to find the answer ourselves.  That’s why it may be counterproductive to start reading treatises and outlines before you have had a chance to grapple with the issues on your own.  On the other hand, the lack of explanation can leave us confused because we haven’t found a way to link the new information to what we already know.   As many things in life, it is a matter of balance. 
6. Poor time management jeopardizes your learning objectives.  Learning requires the time commitment not only to acquire new information, but also to review regularly the old material.  You must develop a studying schedule and stick to it. 
7. Lack of feedback hinders learning.  If you don’t get feedback, you can’t learn from your past actions and you can’t measure your progress. 
8. Lack of support creates anxiety that’s not good for learning.  We learn better in collaborative environments than in highly competitive ones.  If you are afraid of making a mistake or being ridiculed, you won’t take risks and you won’t learn.

What kills your learning? 

Tip Bit #9: Consider Multiple Perspectives

When you are making a decision, do you like to look at a situation from multiple angles?  If you want to test yourself, try solving The Riddle of Three Hats offered as an assignment for the Harvard Law School course CyberOne:  Law in the Court of Public Opinion (when you see the syllabus page, scroll dow n to the “Assignment”). The ability to consider a problem from multiple perspectives is part of critical thinking.  Whatever we are dealing with, we bring our own biases, prior knowledge and experiences to the table.  They can cloud our judgment preventing us from seeing the complexities and nuances of a situation.  Engaging multiple perspectives helps to illuminate our blind spots.  How do you develop this skill?

Start with identifying all the parties whose interests may be potentially affected by the situation.  When you read a legal opinion, you are given the names of all the interested parties.  The real life cases are not always straightforward.  If you don’t recognize a potential interest, you may miss an important issue or problem that can surface down the road.

After you have your list, look at each party one by one and brainstorm what issues and interests each party brings to the situation.  You may decide to use a wheel layout similar to the one in this post to record your observations.  You can then give your wheel a mental spin to evaluate how each party is related to each set of issues/interests.

Whether you plan to litigate, negotiate or mediate, you can benefit from the multi-perspective approach. 

Think before you think

Neuroscience tells us now that the human brain can change and new neurons can be created.  I've just finished listening to an interview with science writer Sharon Begley in which she talks about her new book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.  (Thanks to SharpBrains for featuring this interview.)  Brain neuroplasticity hints at exciting possibilities as neuroscientists discover the factors that affect the brain development.  One of these factors is exercise, which promotes the growth of neurons and the strength of their connection, according to the article "Buff and Brainy" by Christen Brownlee.  Meditation is another practice that builds awareness and attention, which appear to be a prerequisite for the shift in brain patterns.  Even lawyers are willing to dedicate some of their precious time to meditation.   

If you want to know how law practice can benefit from brain research, read Idealawg by Stephanie West Allen.  Stephanie and Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz co-authored the article "Brain Management: Law Firm Leadership on the Neuro Frontier" which appeared in the February, 2007 edition of Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report (Not available online, but Idealawg has the beginning of the article.) 

Another great resource for brain-based business advice is the Brain Based Business blog by Dr. Ellen Weber who teaches businesses how to capitalize on the brain power for maximum results.

Are you taking a good care of your brain?