Lawsagna

"Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0"

What would the law school of the future look like?  Paul Lippe shares his insights in the article "Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0" in The AmLaw Daily.   He discusses the challenges of the current system of legal education and suggests directions for improvement. (Hat tip to Idealawg).

Related Posts:
Is your learning significant?
Finding opportunities for cognitive apprenticeship

"THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY" By Don Tapscott

In his thought-provoking Edge piece "The Impending Demise of the University,"  Don Tapscott explores that future of learning and the function of universities in a networked society: 

Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge serving both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.

Meanwhile on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.

Knowing how to work with information becomes more important than mastering subject matter content:

In the old model, teachers taught and students were expected to absorb vast quantities of content. Education was about absorbing content and being able to recall it on exams. You graduated and you were set for life — just "keeping" up in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you're set for say, 15 minutes. If you took a technical course half of what you learned in the first year may be obsolete by the 4th year. What counts is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, critically evaluate it; to apply research to solving problems; to collaborate and communicate.

But now that students can obviously find the information they're looking for in an instant online in the crania of others online, this old model doesn't make any sense. It's not only what you know that really counts when you graduate; it's how you navigate in the digital world, and what you do with the information you discover. This new style of learning, I believe, will suit them.

Universities should be places to learn, not to teach.

Click here to read the full article.

The Complete Lawyer: Focus on Coaching and Mentoring

The March Issue of The Complete Lawyer focuses on "The Critical Importance Of Coaching And Mentoring For Today's Lawyer."  I couldn't agree more, and yes, it is a self-serving statement, coming from a coach.  Here are some of the great offerings:

"Use Coaching To Develop Your Lawyers' Skills And Expand Your Firm's Potential" by  Susan Beneville and Sandee Magliozzi

"Senior Male Mentors Help Women Lawyers Get Promoted To Shareholder" by Ellen Ostrow

"Today's Economic Pressures Work Against Natural Mentoring" by Marian Lee

"When Is Coaching Really Coaching?" by Debby Stone and Laura Biering

"Master The Four Elements Of A 'Coachee's' Success" by Arnie Herz

"Mentor By Example With Excellent Delegation" by Julie A. Fleming

My interview for LawBound

I recently did an interview for Julia Hays of LawBound, "a blog for students and those in the workworld considering a career or education in the field of law."  It is about my "journey from Russia to the United States and from law to life coaching" and the lessons and experiences I gained in the process.   Click here to read the interview.

Blawg Review #142: Letter to New Lawyer

Blawg Review #142 is here, hosted by Susan Cartier Liebel at Build A Solo Practice, LLC.  It is designed as a “Letter to New Lawyer,” and it will make you think, dream, laugh, learn and soar!  Be sure to read it.

Professor Matthew Bodie looks into the future of the casebook

What would a law school casebook of the future look like?  Professor Matthew Bodie’s article "The Future of the Casebook: An Argument for an Open-Source Approach," published in the Journal of Legal Studies, discusses the possibilities for creating a digital casebook as an open-source project. (Hat tip to video visi visum).

Abstract:      
Despite dramatic technological change, the thick, attractively bound casebook remains ensconced as the written centerpiece of legal education. That will soon change - but its replacement has not been established. This paper argues that the legal academy should take this opportunity to implement an open source approach to future course materials. Guided by analysis and examples of commons-based peer production such as open source software, professors could establish electronic commons casebooks with a myriad of materials for every course. These joint databases would unshackle individual creativity while engendering collaboration on levels previously impossible. Although there may be concerns that such a project would not draw any interest, or might be swamped by too much interest, the successes of other peer-production projects demonstrate that such concerns are generally unwarranted or manageable. Copyright ultimately poses the biggest difficulty, but even that barrier can be circumvented to greater and lesser degrees. Although as yet an untried experiment, an open source approach has the potential to open a new era in legal pedagogy.

If you let your imagination run free, what opportunities do you see for a future casebook?  Perhaps, audio files of cases, possibility to search related materials with keywords and tags, templates for case notes, briefs and outlines, collaborative legal wikis?  Nothing heavy to haul around, please...  Everything available at a click of a button, including virtual chats with your professor during office hours.

 

Should professors prepare law students for disappointing exam results?

Grant Morris raises this interesting question in the research paper entitled "Preparing Law Students for Disappointing Exam Results: Lessons from Casey at the Bat."   The article highlights the emotional toll of the first-year finals and offers a strategy to prepare law students for the realities of the exam results.  Here’s the abstract:

It is a statistical fact of life that two-thirds of the law students who enter law school will not graduate in the upper one-third of their law school class. Typically, those students are disappointed in their examination grade results and in their class standing. Nowhere does this disappointment manifest itself more than in their attitude toward their classes. In the fall semester of their first year, students are eager, excited, and willing to participate in class discussion. But after they receive their first semester grade results, many students withdraw from the learning process - they are depressed and disengaged. They suffer a significant loss of self-esteem. This article considers whether law professors should prepare their students for the disappointing results - the poor grades - that many are certain to receive. I assert that professors do indeed have a role to play - in fact, a duty to their students - to confront this problem. I offer a strategy by which professors can acknowledge students' pre-examination anxiety and deal constructively with their impending disappointment. There are lessons to be learned from Casey at the Bat, Ernest Lawrence Thayer's immortal poem about failure.

Hat tip to Law School Innovation.

Student Loan Forgiveness

YourABA reports on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which was signed into law last month.  The new law includes the income-based repayment program for public service:

Under the program, borrowers of student loans who are working in qualified public service would repay loans at an affordable percentage of their income and, after 10 years of service, would have the balance of their loans cancelled.

The program caps monthly payments at 15% of discretionary income.

Optimists in Law School

Dave Shearon, whose work focuses on the application of positive psychology to law and education, wrote an interesting article about optimists in law school for Positive Psychology News Daily.  The article discusses Breaking Murphy’s Law by Susan Segerstrom, who examined the research on optimism and its effects on immune system.  Shearon writes:

Segerstrom studies future-oriented optimism. Such optimists hold more strongly to expectations of future good events than to expectations of future bad events. In general, optimists have stronger immune system functions than pessimists. However, Dr. Segerstrom found in her research, beginning with that for her doctoral studies, that this relationship was not nearly as strong for law students as in most other studies. On further investigation, she found that the optimists split into two groups, one that had the expected strong immune system, and one where the immune system was somewhat suppressed.

Read the article to find out more about the two groups of optimists.  One important lesson from the book is that it is not just your thoughts that count, but rather how your thinking causes you to act.

Interview with Ann K. Levine, Law School Admission Expert

Today, I am happy to offer you an interview with Ann K. Levine, who kindly agreed to talk to me about her perspective on the law school experience.  Ann K. Levine, Esq. is a law school admission consultant and proprietor of www.lawschoolexpert.com. She is also the author of the pre-law advice blog LawSchoolExpert (http://lawschoolexpert.blogspot.com). Ann is the former director of admissions at two ABA law schools and, since opening LawSchoolExpert.com in 2004, she has helped 600+ law school applicants nationwide create strong applications and strategies for their admission to law school. For more information about Ann's background and experience, see http://www.lawschoolexpert.com/experience.html 

1. Lawsagna:  How was your learning experience in law school?
   Ann Levine: I used parts of my brain I never knew existed. I felt stimulated and successful in a classroom setting for the first time. It wasn't about the end result of grades; I actually enjoyed the exercise of taking the exam and thinking through each problem and issue, applying my accumulated knowledge from the semester. I know this made me a big geek in law school, but this learning experience gave me confidence in many aspects of my life - even socially, as it gave me the confidence to run for student bar association office and to seek jobs I never would have considered myself eligible to hold.
2. Lawsagna:  From your experience as a law school admissions consultant, what are the main misconceptions about law school that applicants hold and share with you?
   Ann Levine:   #1 - that the LSAT is the only thing that matters. #2 - That their individual experiences are so unique and exceptional that law schools will completely overlook the LSAT. #3 - that you have to overcome paralysis or save someone's life to write a fantastic personal statement. (One of my clients said to me today that she feels the obstacle she has to overcome is not having had any obstacles to overcome! I assured her there were plenty of ripe topics from her life to address).
3. Lawsagna:  What skills do you consider important for a successful learning experience in law school?
   Ann Levine:  Self-reliance is vital; do the work yourself. That's how you learn. If you do rely on others, be sure about the quality of their work. There is no lazy way to grow from the law school learning experience. Obviously, self-discipline goes along with that. You need to keep on top of the work each week. Set up a study schedule and spend time each week reviewing/outlining the previous week's class notes. Don't leave review and outlining for the week before exams. That's the time to use your already-completed outlines and narrow them down - from 50 pages to 20 pages to 10 pages to 5 pages to 2 pages. This is how you learn the material and apply it on exams.
4. Lawsagna:  Do you feel that law school applicants know what the life as a lawyer entails?  Do they have a realistic picture of the legal profession?
   Ann Levine:  Absolutely not. I didn't, and very few of my clients really understand the practice of law before their first job after graduation. Even summer clerkships fail to provide a realistic experience because law firms sugarcoat the work and culture for recruitment purposes. Most law school applicants see law as a prestigious, financially-viable career that has some level of excitement and personal satisfaction. This is not wrong, but it's not the whole story. The bread and butter of law practice - court procedures, filing pleadings and motions, the discovery process, due diligence work - is not about standing up in court. It's about detail work, lots of paper, keeping track of deadlines, and incredibly long hours.
5. Lawsagna:  What are the most common mistakes law applicants make in the admission process?
   Ann Levine:  I just posted an article about the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Law School Applications (http://lawschoolexpert.blogspot.com/2007/10/5-common-mistakes-in-law-school.html). For mistakes in strategy, I'd have to say #1 - Applying to the wrong schools; #2 - Over-emphasizing the rankings; #3 -Applying too late in the game to take advantage of rolling admissions; #4 - Taking advice from the wrong people (see my response to the next question for more on this); and #5 - picking the wrong person to write a letter of recommendation http://lawschoolexpert.blogspot.com/2007/07/lors-part-1-absolutely-no-family.html
6. Lawsagna: I imagine that the law school application process is stressful for many applicants.  Do you have any tips or suggestions on the ways to alleviate or manage that stress? 
   Ann Levine:  Listen to people who can help you and do not listen to people who cannot help you. Your peers (competition) are not the right people to listen to, whether your friends or strangers on law school discussion boards. A good pre-law advisor, a good law school admission consultant, a good LSAT tutor, will help you manage each task during this stressful time in your life. Take each step individually rather than setting broad goals. For example, it's fine to put on your to-do list that this week you're going to ask 3 people to write your letters of recommendation. It's not reasonable to say you're going to fill out all of your applications this week. Unreasonable goals cause stress because you'll always feel behind.
7. Lawsagna:  Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of Lawsagna?
   Ann Levine:  My next webinar will be held on Saturday, October 27th at Noon EST/ 9 a.m. PST. It's entitled "I have my LSAT score; Now What?" and will provide a "to-do" list for the law school application process. The one-hour webinar will be offered FREE to Lawsagna readers. To register, email me at [email protected]

Thank you, Ann, for sharing your insights with Lawsagna readers!

Learning Incubator

• Are you a knowledge worker whose livelihood depends on how quickly and accurately you process information each day?
• Are you a life-long learner with the passion and curiosity for knowledge who wants to use this knowledge for impact?

Pull up a chair, get your cup of coffee (or tea) and join our conversation about informal learning and professional development.

Think how rapidly things change nowadays.  Successful knowledge workers have the skills to learn fast, think clearly and act decisively.  They don’t feel overwhelmed with information because they know what to look for and how to find and prioritize it.  Yet, many of us would probably agree that we have very little time to work on the skills we need to learn better.  Here’s an idea.  Let’s have a conversation about our informal learning and professional development.  How do we learn?  What works and what doesn’t?  How can we maximize our learning “on the job” – by doing what we already do anyways, but perhaps with better approaches, frameworks, and focus?   

Are you ready to take charge of your learning?   Join our Learning Incubator community to share your learning goals, achievements and tips for success, to inspire and get inspired to be the best learner you can be.  Bring curiosity, humor, respect, and appreciation – that’s how we learn best.  The membership is free.  What’s there to lose, except a good conversation?

What do lawyers really make?

The economic statistics of the legal market described in the Wall Street Journal article "Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers" by Amir Efrati shouldn't really come as a surprise, but it is a good reminder for law students to start their financial planning early:

Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book "Urban Lawyers" found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% -- while income for the other 75% actually dropped.

A BigLaw job is like a lottery - the chances are against you, so you owe it to yourself to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the hyped-up talk about lawyers' salaries.   

Read Build A Solo Practice, LLC and Blawg for more discussion of this topic.   

The Complete Lawyer: "What Can Law Schools Do Better?"

The current issue of The Complete Lawyer focuses on the question “What Can Law Schools Do Better?” 

Larry Kramer, the Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean at Stanford Law School, highlights a few areas where legal education is failing students in “Law School Innovations Result In Broader Students:”

This shouldn’t surprise anyone:  by the third year, students know the drill and are no longer getting as much from their classes….

The second problem with legal education is that it is too individually focused.  Students basically work alone. They study for class and for their exams, they write their papers.  But the work is all done individually, whereas lawyers in the real world invariably work in teams….

As the profession has evolved, the international or global dimension has become incredibly important, and we’re just starting to come to terms with what that means.  What should we teach students who are going to work with lawyers, clients, businesses, and regulators from other countries and across borders?

Last, like every other profession, legal practice has become more specialized, and as that has happened, law firms have changed.  They do not train young lawyers the way they used to:  they can’t, their clients won’t pay for it.  It’s not that law schools need to teach the nitty gritty of practicing law—new lawyers still learn this best by doing it, on the ground.  Rather, law schools must teach students to be reflective lawyers, must teach them how to think about what they are doing and the choices they’re making.  Clients will demand this of them, and rightly so.  And lawyers need to be trained to be problem solvers as well as problem spotters.

Donald Polden, Dean and Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, addresses the importance of building leadership skills in law students in the article “Educating Law Students For Professional And Community Leadership:”

Instead of serving as community models of professional excellence, discernment and good judgment, lawyers in contemporary America are perceived to be caught up in the commercial and business demands of their work and are not sufficiently attuned to their prudential roles and responsibilities to their communities, to the national polity, and to the legal profession.

Daisy Hurst Floyd, Dean and Professor of Law at Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law, talks about the importance of developing a healthy professional identity in the artcile "A Matter of Identity:"

During their time in law school ... many students experience a loss of purpose, which is harmful to individual students and has negative consequences for the profession and for those served by the profession. The loss of purpose results from students’ changing identities.

In the article “Critical Relationship Building Skills For Associates,” Arnie Herz, a practicing attorney, mediator, and the author of the Legal Sanity blog, reveals three core business relationship principles that you need to know to have a successful and satisfying career.

Professional life coach Anne H. Whitaker will help you “Create A Personal Vision And Change Your Life.” 

Paula Patton from the NALP Foundation discusses new insight on associate attrition in the article “Why Do Associates Leave Firms That Want Them To Stay?”

Among 2,225 associate departures reported by 118 law firms during 2006:

• 21% were characterized as “desired”
• 28% were characterized by law firms as being “neutral” departures (neither desired nor undesired)
• 51% were described as “undesired” or “unwanted” 

In the article “Six Key Pieces Of Advice Straight From Corporate Counsel,” Marcie Borgal Shunk, a principal with The BTI Consulting Group, talks about the key characteristics corporate clients look for in a law firm. 

And there are more interesting articles to read in The Complete Lawyer, so check it out.

Law School Loan Repayment Assistance Programs

Ann Levine of LawSchoolExpert blog compiled a great list of law school Loan Repayment Assistance Programs.  Check it out here.

Thinking about going to law school? Check with LawSchoolExpert

I’ve recently had the pleasure to discover LawSchoolExpert blog when its author Ann Levine shared her comment and tips for the bar exam preparation here at Lawsagna.  Ann is a law school admissions consultant.  Her blog has great advice for those of you who are considering law school.  And what’s even more exciting is that she is offering a free 1-hour webinar to readers of The Frugal Law Student on the law school application process entitled  "I've taken the LSAT; Now What?"  You can choose to participate on August 4 (9 a.m. PST/Noon EST) or August 8 (5 p.m. PST/8 p.m. EST).  Read her post and the instructions at The Frugal Law Student on how you can take this $150 webinar free of charge.

Susan Cartier Liebel of Build A Solo Practice, LLC answers my question

Susan Cartier Liebel is an attorney, national coach and consultant who shares her wisdom and advice on how to create and grow a solo practice in her blog Build A Solo Practice, LLC.   Here’s what I asked Susan:

“I saw your category of "You Ask...I Answer" posts and thought I'd ask a question on behalf of my readers.  Summer time is when many students try to get practical experience by interning at a firm, government or non-profit.  If students know they would like to go solo after graduation, what would you recommend they do during their summers to prepare for their solo practice?”

Susan was kind enough to craft a great answer with good questions to make you think about your overall law school experience as it relates to your goal of becoming a solo, as well as practical advice on what you should be doing with your time outside law school:

“If you know you are going to become a solo practitioner upon passing the bar then everything you do, from your course selection to your extracurricular activities to your summer internships should be geared towards two things, networking/building professional relationships and gaining 'practical' experience that mirrors the life of a solo practitioner.”

Read the rest of her post here as she shares her three-step approach to your solo success.

Thank you so much, Susan!

Are you in a maze or a labyrinth?

Daniel Pink in his book “A Whole New Mind:  Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” explains the difference between a maze and a labyrinth:

“Mazes and labyrinths are often lumped together in the popular imagination, but they differ in important ways.  A maze is a series of compartmentalized and confusing paths, most of which lead to dead ends.  When you enter, your objective is to escape – as quickly as you can.  A labyrinth is a spiral walking course.  When you enter, your goal is to follow the path to the center, stop, turn around, and walk back out – all at whatever pace you choose.  Mazes are analytical puzzles to be solved; labyrinths are a form of moving meditation.  Mazes can be disorienting; labyrinths can centering.  You can get lost in a maze; you can lose yourself in a labyrinth.  Mazes engage the left brain; labyrinths free the right brain.” 

It strikes me as a good metaphor for the learning process.  When it comes to your learning, do you feel like you are in a maze, disoriented and trying to find your way out as soon as possible?  Or are you in a labyrinth, focused, enjoying the process and making progress at your own pace?

Stephanie West Allen and Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz give us Brain on Purpose

Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg and Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz have teamed up to launch a new exciting blog – Brain on Purpose.  It explores the implications of neuroscience for the field of conflict resolution.  It’s a must read for anybody who deals with conflicts as part of their professional life.  And who doesn’t?  The recent post "There's a great future in [neuroplasticity]. Think about it. Will you think about it?" makes you ponder how much control you have in shaping your own brain.  Our brains develop new connections with every choice we make.  If you let others make those choices for you, you may end up with a brain shaped by your clients, co-workers, relatives, friends, even strangers in a grocery store.  It makes me wonder about the challenges the legal profession faces when it comes to the brain neuroplasticity.  How do you stay compassionate and empathetic without letting your clients’ problems get to you?  Can you use combative trial tactics without harming your own brain and the brains of others who come in contact with you?  Do you feel more responsibility now that you know that your actions may affect somebody else’s brain?  When does the adversarial turn into adversity? 

Want to know what happens to your brain in law school?  Read “Law Students: Create A Well-rounded Life” by Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey M. Schwartz in The Complete Lawyer.

Summer Associates’ Guide to the Point of No Return

You are interning away, doing the best job you can and hope that your efforts, the economic trends and the Universe will produce the coveted offer to return to the firm as a permanent employee.  Let’s say you receive that offer.  Now what?  You will feel the pressure to accept it proportional to the amount of debt you have accumulated and the good intentions of friends, family and career services.  Does it mean you should take the plunge?  Even if you have one of “The Ultimate Summer Internships” described by Tara Weiss for Forbes.com, don’t let the “outrageous summer internship perks” cloud your judgment.  What makes you happy during your summer gig may not be the key to your long-term happiness.  Here are a few things to pay attention to as you continue your internship and questions to ponder when you decide on an offer:

What benefits do you get from working for that particular firm?  Consider expertise, types of cases or deals, networking opportunities, training, mentorship, career advancement, future employability, resume enhancements, paycheck. 

What are the costs or downsides?  How much control will you have over your lifestyle?  Will this work allow you to express all your talents and offer the best you have to the world? 

Will working for this firm bring you closer to where you want to be in your life 5, 10 or 15 years from now?  Consider the long-term implications of your decision.  Will this workplace help you become the person you want to be? 

How do you like the work itself?  Does it fuel your passions?  Can you see yourself doing this work day in and day out?

Are you comfortable in the culture of this place? Do you fit in?  Can you be who you are when you interact with your co-workers?  Will you have to compromise on your own values and attitudes if you take this job?

How do you like the partners or “bosses” you are going to work for?  Will they care about your professional growth?  How much will you be able to learn from them?  Do you respect the way they practice law and deal with clients? 

Have you noticed any red flags?  The support staff gets no respect.  The clients’ phone calls don’t get answered promptly.   Yelling is an acceptable form of communication.  You can’t get straight answers to your own questions.   People who work there seem to harbor a sense of bitterness and resentment about the place.   Different groups engage in hush-hush conversations.  There is a big turnover.  Take notice of such behaviors because they may signal trouble. 

Last but not least, once you have made a decision to accept an offer, sleep on it.  Wear it for a couple of days before you communicate it to the firm.  It’s a big decision to make, so take your time.  See how it feels.

8 bar exam preparation myths busted

Myth #1:
You need to read all the relevant materials for the subject matter before you start doing the practice questions.

In reality, you want to start practicing as soon as possible. You won’t have time to read and memorize everything.  Practice questions are a tool to train yourself to recognize legal patterns, applicable legal standards and important buzz words.  Work with the text of the question: circle, underline, highlight the key words and phrases so that they would jump out at you when you take the exam. 

Myth #2:
The bar exam is about memorizing the black letter law.

The truth is that pure rote memorization won’t get you through.  The bar exam is also about the application of the black letter law, time-management, stress-management and endurance.  You need to work on all of these aspects to be ready.  Just like you can’t prepare for a marathon just by reading books about it, you can’t pass the bar exam just by reading outlines.  Simulate the real conditions of the bar exam as much as you can:  time yourself, do practice exams, submit your essay answers for review. 

Myth #3:
You don’t have to listen to all the lectures, after all, you already have your class handouts and outlines.

In realty, listening to the lectures can do more for you than just reading.  Good professors strive to make their presentations memorable.  I still remember some of my bar course professors because they were like a one-man or one-woman show.  It’s good to have the information explained to you in a variety of ways, and you get a chance to ask questions.   Also, the content of those handouts sometimes has to be updated, corrected or explained in further detail.  So, don’t skip on lectures.

Myth #4:
You are not supposed to have any social life when you study for the bar.

In reality, you need social support even more when you are under pressure.  Find time to connect with you family and friends.  Go to the movies, eat out, do something fun, or better yet, play sports together.  It will give your brain a chance to recharge and help you relieve stress. 

Myth #5:
When you study for the bar, you don’t have time to exercise or sleep a lot. 

The truth is that you don’t have time NOT to exercise or sleep.  You will burn out before the big day.  Exercise is good for your brain, it allows you to stay physically and mentally fit.  And please take those afternoon naps, they enable the brain to consolidate your memories, which is useful taken into account all the information that you need to remember. 

Myth #6:
You need to do your own outlines and flashcards to prepare.

If you have time to do your own flashcards, that’s great.  I didn’t.   I think, your time is better spent practicing.  You will have enough written materials to absorb if you are taking a bar prep course (and I hope you are).   

Myth #7:
You don’t need to worry about the essays as long as you do well on the MBE portion of the exam.

While the score allocations vary from state to state, most people will need both strong MBE scores and good essay grades.  So write out those essay answers. 

Myth #8:
You really step it up a few days before the exam.

Ah, good old cramming, it doesn’t work.  In reality, you want to cut your studying hours down right before the exam.  Take time to get yourself in a good, healthy place so that you can regain your freshness of mind, focus and clarity.   

Other myths:

“A law student failed his California bar exam because he stopped to assist a classmate who suffered a heart attack.”

“A law student left for a bathroom break and when she got back, she couldn't find her seat because the tables and chairs looked identical in the enormous room.”

“Suddenly a woman started galloping down the aisles, flailing her arms, yelling, “I am a covenant running with the land!”

True or false?  I have no idea. Check Urban Legends Reference Pages. Maybe, they know.

Law school is bad for your health

Law School Innovation blog alerts to this new study that attempts to explain the negative effects of legal education on law students.  Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger report in "Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test of Self-Determination Theory" on the previous findings suggesting that “law school has a corrosive effect on the well-being, values, and motivation of students, ostensibly because of its problematic institutional culture.”  It sounds like the psychological distress frequently experienced by lawyers in practice may originate in law school.  Interestingly, this new study shows that student autonomy may lead to better well-being in the 3rd year, better grades, better bar exam results and more motivation on the job.  All the more reasons to be proactive and take control of your learning.

Is your learning significant?

How do you know if your learning experience is significant?  What factors will make it better?  Dee Fink  addresses these questions in his book “Creating Significant Learning Experiences.”  While the books is primarily for the instructors who are involved in designing college courses, students can benefit from its concepts as well in evaluating their learning and devising their own unique ways to make it better if the formal instruction falls short.  Fink writes:

“For learning to occur, there has to be some kind of change in the learner.  No change, no learning.  And significant learning requires that there be some kind of lasting change that is important in terms of the learner’s life.” 

Fink offers the “Taxonomy of Significant Learning” based on the following six kinds of significant learning:

Foundational Knowledge.  Learners must have the basic understanding of main concepts and ideas of the subject matter.

Application.  Application makes the learning useful.  It includes the ability to engage in various kinds of thinking, such as critical, creative and practical, and the development of skills needed to apply the knowledge and manage complex projects.

Integration.   Learners must be able to make connections between ideas, people and different realms of life.

Human Dimension.  Learning must lead to self-improvement and enable learners to function better in the world.

Caring.  Significant learning will make learners care about something more than they did before. 

Learning How to Learn.   Learners must be able to improve their studying skills and develop the characteristics of a self-directed learner.

How does you learning measure against this taxonomy? 

To find out more about Fink’s book and the design of significant learning experiences, visit www.significantlearning.org.

Letter to a Young Lawyer

Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters To A Young Poet,” Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg invited her readers to post on their blogs their “Letter to a Young Lawyer.”  Since I receive correspondence from the ABA Young Lawyers Division, I am among the audience, still trying to figure things out.  But I decided I’d give it a shot and write about a few paradoxes that I observed in law school and the beginning of my law practice.  So, here we go.

Dear Young Lawyer:

You have chosen a profession and a career that is full of contradictions.  By now, you should be comfortable with contradictions as they are abundant in the pages of law books that you are reading.  They are just another problem to solve.  Isn’t it what we do – solve problems?  This brings me to the first contradiction:

1. Lawyers are very good at solving other people’s problems, but they often disregard their own needs, hence the sad statistics on the dissatisfaction and burnout among lawyers.  Wouldn’t we take better care of our clients if we took better care of ourselves? 
2. If you entered law school because you were not sure what you should do with your life, be aware that you can graduate from law school, pass the bar and begin practicing, and still not know what you should do with your life.  The upside is that you can pay your bills as you are trying to figure out your life’s purpose. 
3. Some people love law school and hate the practice of law, others hate law school and love the practice of law. 
4. Everybody wants to be in top 10 percent in law school, everybody can’t be in top 10 percent in law school.  According to the ABA Legal Education Statistics, in 2006-2007, 43, 920 students were awarded J.D. or LL.B. degrees.  10 percent of that is 4,392.  There is a future for you in the legal profession even if you are not in top 10 percent, and (gasp!) you haven’t done the law review or moot court. 
5. Contrary to what your classmates, career services and other stakeholders want you to believe, you don’t have to go into BIGLAW if you are in the top 10 percent.  What will make you feel the blood rushing in your veins every morning?  (“Coffee” is not the right answer here.)
6. You may like a certain subject matter in law school but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will enjoy that area of practice.  Stay flexible, get a taste of various areas of practice, rotate through different departments in your summer programs.  Give yourself time to decide.
7. In law school you are led to believe that the practice of law is about unique knowledge, expertise, and problem-solving skills.  Once you begin practicing, it becomes more about people and relationships, just like in any business. 
8. There is no “one day” and you won’t have free time, so find a way to do what you want to do right now.  If you are “paying your dues,” make sure you know what you are getting in return.   
9. The practice of law is local in nature, but you are likely to feel the global currents more and more these days.  Stay informed of what is going on in the world and how it affects the profession.   
10. The world is changing faster than you can say “mutatis mutandis,” be prepared to change with it.  Gerald Weinberg wrote in “The Secrets of Consulting”:  “When change is inevitable, we struggle most to keep what we value most.”  If you find yourself struggling, it’s a good time to ask what is important to you and how you can get it.

Getting ready for the bar exam

No groundbreaking secrets here, just the ground work to pass the bar.  I ended up taking the bar exams in two states, Illinois and New York, due to the move.  And, guess what… I am no longer in either of those states, but I don’t see a third bar exam in my future.  So, the first lesson I’ve learned is not to move so much if you want to practice law, or work for the federal government, then a license from any state will do.  Here are a few other things I learned:

• To succeed at the bar exam, it’s not enough to know the law, you also need self-discipline, endurance, time-management and stress-management skills.  You must train for each of these requirements accordingly.
• Remember the three “Ps” of performance:  prioritize, plan, prepare.  You need them as you study for the bar.  To make my life easier, I just followed the schedule of the bar review course.  You must have a schedule and stick to it.  You won’t be able to catch up if you seriously fall behind because of the large volume of the material. 
• Find a routine that works for you.  It may consist of lectures in the morning, a lunch break, a short study session, a nice nap, another study session, a workout, dinner – you get the idea.  See how your energy flows throughout the day and adjust your activities accordingly.   
• Pace yourself and take study breaks.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint, you need to build up your endurance and mental toughness and not to burn out in the process.  Incorporate some type of exercise into your routine to bring oxygen to your brain, relieve stress and stay healthy.  Take naps if you can.  You are going to be learning so much every day, an afternoon nap will help you consolidate your memories.  I started meditating daily for about 10-15 minutes when I was studying for the bar. 
• Don’t try to make yourself more miserable than you need to be.  Reward yourself periodically with some fun and entertainment, but avoid anything that can give you a hangover, insomnia or indigestion.  The idea is to make you feel better, not worth.  You can even combine your studies with something pleasant.  Pack your books and go to a park or to the beach.   
• Do lots of practice questions for the MBE portion of the exam.  After reading a lot of questions, you become more attuned to the language and start recognizing patterns better.  Time yourself when you do them.  Getting the pace right is very important at the bar exam, so you should practice time-management early.
• Make sure you practice writing your full essay answers within the time constraints.  Go back and edit some of your essays to make the writing more crisp and concise.  Find better ways to state legal rules and standards so that you can use those phrases in other essays.  For the rest of the essay questions, outline your answers to see if you can spot all the issues. 
• Do the in-class, practice MBE exam, you need to know what a six-hour exam feels like. You can also schedule your own practice test or partner up with another bar candidate and take it together. 
• On the day of the exam, the last thing you want to worry about is getting lost or being caught in traffic, torrential rain or blizzard.  Visit the place beforehand.  If you have to drive far or if the weather is unstable, consider staying in the hotel nearby for the days of the exam.  When I moved to Buffalo, New York, I decided to take the February bar exam.  Buffalo can get lots of snow, and I didn’t want to concern myself with the weather, so I stayed in the hotel where the bar exam took place.  I slept better and longer. 
• Finally, no matter what, just remember that it is going to be over soon. 

Good luck!

How do you deal with fear?

Whether we like it or not, fear is part of our life, and it is often part of the learning process.  When we learn new things, we challenge ourselves, we venture outside our comfort zone, we grow, change, and redefine who we are.  That’s when we become scared.  What if I am not smart and capable enough to do it?  What would others think of me if I fail?  What would they say if I follow my gut instinct and not what everybody else says I should do?  How will I handle rejection?  Can I be financially secure?  How we respond to those fears has a huge impact on our success in life, happiness, and peace of mind.  So how do you deal with fear?

Do you feel that you must overcome your fear?  Is it stopping you from achieving more in life?  If so, read 5 life-changing keys to overcoming your fear at the Positivity Blog. 

“Can We Control Our Fears?”  Sevil Duvarci and Denis Paré tackle this question from the neuroscientists’ perspective. A recently published study suggests that “the expression of learned fear is flexible and subject to modulation by the prelimbic cortex, depending on the circumstances; our expression of learned fears is less rigid and less automatic than the expression of innate fears, which are beyond the reach of the cortex.”

Perhaps, you welcome fear.  You may even believe that if you don’t feel fear, you are not doing enough.  Fear may propel you to action.  Is Fear Actually An Asset?  It may well be according to Success from the Nest.  Get to know your fear and learn from it.    

Do you share your fear with others or do you hide it?  Executive Coach Doug Sundheim believes that revealing our vulnerabilities to others may strengthen our relationships and generate good energy.   He shares his 5-step approach at Fast Company Expert Blogs.  Interestingly, neuroscientists also tell us that social contact reduces the brain response to threat. 

Would you agree that fear is in the fabric of the law practice?  Lawyers work with people’s fears.  Sometimes, they alleviate fears, for example, when they do  a title search for the clients who want to purchase a home.  Other times, they seem to generate more fears:  just read the "default" language in a promissory note.  And then, there are circumstances when they have to say to their clients that it’s OK to be afraid and help them through their fears.   Do you acknowledge your clients’ fears?  Or would you rather shun the emotions and stick to business only?  What role does fear play in your practice?

Legal research resources

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center created The Legal Research Jumpstation with links to various legal resources under categories such as federal resources, state resources, international resources, legal associations, legal education, legal employment, Continuing Legal Education (CLE), law practice technology, ethics, legal representation, future of the legal profession, surveys and statistics, legal news sources, legal research resources, business and reference resources, electronic discovery resources. 

For example, you can visit the sites of the State and Local Bar Associations, check out various statistics about lawyers and the legal profession, read employment trend data compiled by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), find the wealth of information at the Legal Information Institute hosted by Cornell University's School of Law, search online law journals courtesy of the University Law Review Project, or browse through The Virtual Law Library hosted by the University of Indiana's School of Law. [Via Your ABA]

How to form an effective study group

Some students prefer studying on their own, others join study groups.  A study group can be beneficial if it is set up and run effectively, but it can quickly turn into a time-waster if the participants gather to socialize, share confusion and commiserate.  How do you make your study group more effective?   Here are a few suggestions:

• Choose your study-buddies wisely.   A person who is great to share a beer with may not be the best choice when it comes to studying together.  You want people who are responsible enough to prepare for the meetings, who contribute with ideas and tips, who are self-directed and motivated learners, with a schedule compatible to yours.  Also, avoid large study groups because they are hard to manage and you have less opportunity to contribute.
• At the end of each meeting, set an agenda for the next meeting and allocate specific times for every task.  Make sure you have the ending time.  Stick to your plan. 
• Assign a person to each topic on your agenda to lead the discussion.  Do it in advance of the meeting so that the person can think about the best way to address the topic and prepare questions.  This is done for the sake of efficiency, and not for the purpose of sharing the workload:  everybody must still prepare to discuss each topic on the agenda. 
• Make it a goal whenever you speak to keep your message brief, crisp and to the point.  This is good practice for real-life meetings.  Brevity helps to crystallize your understanding.
• Identify your personal goals that can be advanced in a group setting.  For example, you can practice your communication and listening skills.  You can learn to think on your feet when somebody asks a question.   You can see how good you are at motivating people.  You can even work on your leadership skills.   Pick a specific goal for each meeting and focus on it.   Don’t be shy about asking for your peers’ feedback.  “Am I rambling too much?”  “Did I present your point of view correctly?” 
• If your study session reveals points of disagreement, confusion or misunderstanding, prepare a list of questions that you can ask your professor during the office hours or have a volunteer to consult a treatise or other sources for a follow-up presentation at the next meeting.  The point is to have a course of action to clarify the confusion. 
• Role-play during your studying sessions.  It may sound silly but it is a fun and effective way to step into somebody else’s shoes.  You can act as a lawyer explaining something to a client.  Talking through the material and putting it into the words that are easily understood by a lay person will reinforce your own comprehension.  Whoever plays the “client” will make sure that you don’t speak legalese and ask clarifying questions.  Or how about trying to read your professor’s mind and predict what questions can appear on the exam?  Have each member come up with one possible question or hypo that all of you can do during a review session.  Compare your answers, give constructive criticism.  When the exams come around, keep scores to see who the best “mind reader” is.  Here’s another interesting exercise to do as part of your group review sessions – the “Final Exam” procedure by Win Wenger of the Renaissance Project.
• Do practice questions and essays as part of your meeting.  It is easier to take timed practice tests within a group.  After the time is up, trade your answers, critique and offer tips to improve.  Pay special attention to the organization of your essay answers.
• Right before the exams, the students are understandably more stressed out and may feel the need to talk about something else as a diversion.  If that’s the case, schedule some time during the meeting for stress-relief activities.  Share something positive and motivational with the group.  Look at great photography or listen to a piece of music together.  Laughter is an excellent way to reduce stress and uplift your spirit.  Do an act of kindness or say something nice to the person next to you.  It will make you and those around you feel better.

What are your experiences with the study groups?  Do they work for you?  If you participate in one right now, how can you make it better?

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. 

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

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? 

Learn to fall forward

I saw a TV commercial yesterday that used the phrase to “fall forward” as a metaphor for learning from your experiences.  I liked the association.  When you deal with your share of disappointments in law school, it helps to keep in mind that you are learning to fall forward.  If you play it safe, you eliminate opportunities for learning.  It can be scary to fall, you can get injured.  Lawyers may even be more risk-averse than the general population because the nature of their profession demands caution.  But since some falls are inevitable, you may as well learn how to fall forward in law school, which is a safer environment than the real-world legal practice.  So, how do you learn to fall forward?

• Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks when you can get a high potential pay-off.  It may be worthwhile to join a law review or a moot court competition even if it means that you will have less time to prepare for your classes.  The pay-off is the skills you develop participating in those activities that make you more desirable to the employers.
• Take challenging classes in the areas that are new to you. Stepping outside your comfort zone will increase you learning opportunities. Consider taking classes in other programs that are relevant to the area of practice you want to pursue.
• Make sure you expose yourself to the teaching styles of different professors.
• Ask questions in class if you don’t understand something. 
• Get as much feedback as you can by voicing your opinions and comments in class and talking to the professors during office hours.   
• Look for internship opportunities.  Practice your job interviewing skills.
• Ask people whose opinions you respect to become your mentors.  If they say they can’t for some reason, ask them to refer you to somebody else who may be in a position to mentor you.
• Participate in study-abroad programs to learn more about the legal systems of other countries and enhance your cross-cultural communication skills.
• Learn to network by attending conferences, bar association functions and reaching out to others.
• Hone your people skills by enrolling in a legal clinic or volunteering.  Learn how to deal with difficult people.
• Don’t be afraid to negotiate better deals for yourself. 
• Don’t try to hide mistakes.  Acknowledge them and take responsibility for correcting them.    
• Treat mistakes as learning opportunities.  Determine what went wrong, what you should do to avoid the same pitfall in the future, incorporate the changes and move forward.   

Learning takes courage.  What else can you do right now that may look risky and uncomfortable but has a potential to bring a large pay-off for your future?   

What’s in your brief?

As a first-year law student, you hear a lot about the importance of briefing cases.  It is an essential step in the development of critical thinking.  If done appropriately, the process of briefing cases will teach you, among other things, how to:

• read legal opinions effectively;
• recognize recurrent patterns in legal opinions;
• categorize legal information;
• identify relevant facts;
• formulate legal issues;
• dissect the court’s reasoning;
• translate legalese into plain English to enhance your own understanding of the material (also useful when you need to explain a legal concept to your client);
• be able to talk and write persuasively about law;
• recognize fallacies in reasoning;
• exercise your own judgment about the outcomes of the cases;
• see a big picture of how facts, issues, law, policy come together to produce a certain outcome;
• evaluate the impact of the courts’ decisions.

Here are a few things to consider and resources to consult when you learn how to brief a case:

1. Understand the goals and benefits of briefing.  If you only summarize a legal opinion to prepare for a class so that you can answer your professor's questions, you are just scratching the surface.  Set your goals in terms of what you want to learn from the exercise to keep yourself motivated to do it regularly.  Read about the Power of the Brief at Law School Academic Support Blog to learn how cognitive theory supports briefing and understand the benefits. 
2. Choose an appropriate structure and level of detail for your brief.  Law Career Blog has suggestions about the structure in How to Brief a Case.  For more discussion of the elements of a student brief, go to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice website.  And here is a link to a sample case and brief.
3. Write in your own words.  Some legal opinions are wordy and confusing.  If you copy a part of such legal opinion into your brief, you bring the uncertainty with it.  Instead, take time to dissect the opinion into comprehensible bits by rephrasing the sentences.  Clear language enhances comprehension.   
4. When you brief a case, don’t forget the dissenting and concurring opinions.  They may offer important insights about the factual basis of the decision and help you determine which facts are pertinent and why.   They also shed some light on how the judicial doctrine may evolve in the future.
5. Practice expressing your own opinion about the courts' decisions.  Part of being persuasive is the ability to take a stand on an issue.  Law Career Blog offers More Thoughts on it.
6. Consider the big picture.  How does this decision fit in the overall doctrine?  What are the implications of the decision?  What kind of policy does the decision support? 
7. Work out the mechanics.  You may choose to set up a form in your word processor with the relevant categories to streamline the process.  I always advocate the use of color codes to aid your memory:  you can choose different background colors for your categories.  Number the issues and the steps of the court’s legal reasoning.  Put the key words in bold or highlight them.  Leave space for comments and notes you may want to add during class. 

What do you like or dislike about briefing cases?

Teaching practical skills to students

According to the Carnegie Foundation report on legal education, law schools don’t do enough to prepare students for the realities of law practice.  The release of the report prompted a discussion of what could be done to address this issue.  It is probably too early to talk about the best practices, but here is a round-up of a few interesting programs.

Law School Innovation offers a series on the use of simulations in legal education.  Gene Koo discusses Stanford’s simulation-based courses that teach students “to think like a client” and better understand the client’s needs:  “Through simulations, law students work in teams with students from other graduate schools to solve a fully-described, substantive problem.”  For example, law students work with engineering students on a simulated patent infringement case. 

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law is about to launch its new Law Firm Program for third-year students. The program offers a series of courses that simulate the practice of law in a large law firm. Students are divided into groups corresponding to different practice areas. 

More and more law schools are establishing Supreme Court clinics where law students help attorneys develop real cases that go to the Supreme Court.  If the justices agree to hear the case, the students get a chance to work on the briefs and oral arguments, and even go to Washington to watch the justices in action.   

Massachusetts Bar Association offers Job Shadow Day when students can “shadow” attorneys through their work day. 

The challenge of developing “soft skills” is not unique to law schools.  MBA programs are grappling with this problem as well.  The Wall Street Journal reports on how M.B.A. Programs Hone ‘Soft Skills’ (need subscription).   Some MBA programs borrow soft-skill training techniques from the corporate world, including coaching, personality assessments and peer feedback.  Perhaps, law school can also benefit from those approaches. 

What do you think current law students can do to enhance their practical skills even if their law schools are too slow to catch up?   Do you have a personal development plan?

Ready to use or ready to lose?

Have you noticed how well items are packaged these days?  I can’t open anything without cutting my fingers.  Yesterday, I fought a plastic wrap on a tea box for much longer than such a simple task should take.  Do you know that they sell CD and DVD openers now?  I expect to see the following message on a box soon:  “Batteries included.  Box opener sold separately to prevent tampering.”   Then again, maybe I should look for the clues more carefully:  a red string to pull or a scissor line to tear.  I am afraid, I am too impatient for that.

It got me thinking about how information is packaged these days.  In our fast-pace life, how much time and effort are we willing to spend on acquiring knowledge we need?  Internet makes it very easy to access information.  We are accustomed to punching in a few words into a search engine and getting hundreds of pages of stuff.  Wealth of information is at our fingertips. But does it make us more impatient and less inclined to dig deeper in our search for meaning?  Are we relying too much on the sources whose credibility we cannot verify?

The other side of the spectrum is the knowledge that we have to struggle to receive.  You can’t become a lawyer just by surfing the net.  You have to read cases, brief them, endure the Socratic questioning, outline.  Sometimes, it seems easier to pick up a study aid instead.  There is an abundance of commercial outlines, hornbooks, nutshells.  Even students’ briefs and outlines are available online.  The thing is, though, that even if you read all of them, it won’t make you a lawyer.  Don’t get me wrong, I think study aids have their place and purpose in legal education.  I have personally used some.  But their purpose is to aid, not to substitute for the real work.  Our brains don’t like to be spoon-fed information.  We are wired to solve problems.  Our brains like challenges even if it feels like your head is about to split.  We remember things better if we had to struggle to understand them.  We have to own the material to turn it into the ready-to-use knowledge.  Otherwise, we lose it.   I guess, sometimes, we just have to fight through the bubble wrap because it is there for a purpose.   

Ten tips for receiving feedback

Do you appreciate constructive criticism?  Does it make your angry?  Do you feel hurt?  All of the above?  Constructive feedback is essential for learning.  Feedback is a scarce commodity in law school.  Students often don’t know how well they are doing until they see their grades.   There is no homework to turn in so that the professor could evaluate your progress.  There is very little team work in law school.  In real life, you are going to hear criticism from partners, other associates, clients, opposing counsels, judges.  Not so in law school.   You need to be proactive in seeking feedback from your professors.  The sooner you learn how to receive and act on the constructive feedback, the better off you are going to be.  Here are ten tips for receiving feedback:

1. Develop the right mindset.  Law School Academic Support Blog has a great post on The First Year Five-Step Grade Acceptance Plan.  Feedback is information, and your brain must be receptive to take in the ideas that are offered.   If you are angry, emotional, defensive, you can’t think clearly.  Use stress-management techniques, such as taking deep breaths, to control your emotions.   
2. Schedule appropriate time and place for receiving feedback.  You don’t want to be rushed or disrupted.  It is probably not a good idea to seek feedback right after you see your grade even if you feel the urge to deal with it right away. 
3. Prepare for your feedback session.  Think of the questions you may want to ask your professor.  It should be a two-way conversation.  Focus on the solutions of the future rather than the mistakes of the past.
4. When you listen to your professor, your goal should be to understand, and not to judge what you hear.  You will have time later to decide if you agree or disagree with the professor’s opinions and recommendations. 
5. Repeat back what your professor has said to avoid misunderstandings.  You can offer your summary of the main points at the end of the session:  “Let me see, Professor, if I understood you correctly.  In your opinion, I should focus on …”. 
6. Ask clarifying questions, but don’t get into an argument.  Keep it professional.
7. Take notes so that you can review them later when you decide what to do about the feedback. 
8. Don’t feel that you have to accept each piece of advice.  You can sort the recommendations you received into three categories:  “cash,” “stash,“ and “trash.”  “Cash” is the “golden” advice that you should definitely follow. “Trash” is the advice you choose to ignore.  “Stash” is the advice that you need to think about in the future. 
9. Turn your feedback into a set of goals and actions to implement.  There is no use in feedback if you don’t plan to do anything about it.
10. Acknowledge your professor’s time and expertise and thank him or her for the feedback.

You are in law school to learn, and your professor is there to teach you.  A feedback session can make the process easier for both of you.

What a ‘jailhouse lawyer’ can teach Harvard law students

What can a ‘jailhouse lawyer’ teach Harvard law students?  Gigi Stone and Mary Harris set to explore this question in their article 'Jailhouse Lawyer' Lectures Harvard Law Students.  It is a story about an inmate who received life in prison without a possibility of parole due to what he believed was ineffective assistance of counsel.  He taught himself law and now uses his legal skills to help fellow inmates to prepare their appeals.  His article was published in the Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Review, and he is a guest lecturer in one of Harvard’s law classes.  The authors write that his “presence at Harvard has transformed the career goals of many students.” 

As I was reading the article, I began wondering why his lectures had such an impact.  What made this learning experience so effective?   As I was thinking about it, the six principles of stickiness came to mind from the book Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die…Made to Stick by Cheap Heath and Dan Heath.  The six principles are simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories. (Brain Based Business has a nice review of the book.)  It’s not really surprising because learning is about ideas that we hope are going to stick.  The 'jailhouse lawyer’s' message is so effective because:

1. It is simple.  His position is clear and easily understood.
2. It is unexpected.  We don’t expect that a public defender’s mistake is going to render a person in jail for life.  It is unexpected for an inmate to become a lawyer in prison and teach Harvard law students.
3. It is concrete.  His story makes abstract legal principles come to life.  Students see the consequences of a bad decision.
4. It is credible.  Unlike the “Law & Order” series, it is a real person talking to the students by speakerphone from prison.  It’s one thing to read about a victim of the legal process, it’s another to talk to him. 
5. It is emotional.  The message is about people’s lives, justice, and the lawyers’ role in the process.  It touches students in a way that a textbook cannot.
6. It is a story.  It is about a crime and the unfair punishment, the obstacles and the newly found purpose in life.  Stories are the oldest way to communicate and a powerful way to learn.  We remember lessons better when they are embedded in a story.    

Do we need more of such learning experiences in law school?  What do you think?  What makes learning effective for you?  As always, comments are welcome. 

The art of course selection

How do you decide which courses to take each semester? The approaches and results can be as varied as students themselves.  For Shelley’s Case, the choice is between London and Bahamas.  I see course selection as akin to the art of mixing drinks.  The process contains the elements of fun and danger at the same time.  It’s fun because it sets you up for a new experience, but it’s like playing with danger because you are not quite sure how it will end.  Your taste and preferences are important.  Do you like it strong or with just a hint of alcohol? You better follow the proportions and add the ingredients in a certain order.  Finally, it’s good to know how well you can hold your liquor.  Below is my guide to the art of course selection.  It’s a framework that some of you may find helpful in thinking about the matter. 

The first step in the process is to decide what purposes you want your course selection to serve.  Here are some examples:

1. Specializing in your particular area of interest.  If you want to know everything about trusts and estates, you may want to take as many courses relevant to this area as you can find. 
2. Getting a better feel for different areas of practice.  Perhaps, you are trying to decide which area of law you like best.  If that’s your goal, you may take a variety of courses from different areas of law. 
3. Following your interests at the moment.  Maybe, you just want to enjoy every class as much as you can, so you will chose only those subjects that are interesting to you. 
4. Preparing for the bar exam.  Are you worried about the bar exam?  And who is not?  You may decide to take the subjects that will be tested on the bar exam to get yourself familiar with the issues. 
5. Developing special skills.  Perhaps, you want to develop special skills, such as client counseling or negotiation skills.  You may want to enroll in a law clinic for that.   
6. Taking courses from the best professors.  Maybe, you have such a great professor that you are going to take any class he or she teaches.
7. Increasing your chances for better grades.  Everybody wants better grades although not everybody will agree that they should be the driving force in your course selection.  If you are worried about your grades, don’t take four very difficult subjects in one semester.  If you know you do better on take-home exams, you may want to choose a class with a take-home test or a seminar with the final paper instead of the exam.
8. Making your resume and law school transcript appealing to a particular employer.  You may have asked a job interviewer or your mentor: “What classes should I take to prepare myself for this type of work?”  Well, you may take their advice and structure your curriculum accordingly. 
9. Making the best use of your time.  If you have kids, or need to work part-time, or have other demands on your time, creating a convenient schedule becomes very important for you.  Even if you have some flexibility, you can still prefer to have all classes one after another or just four days a week. 

After you have listed all of the goals that are important to you, assign weights to all of them.  If I have nine categories, I will rank them from “1” being the least important to “9” being the most important to me.

The final step is to look at your course options and see how many purposes each course is going to serve.  For each course, you then add all the weights of the relevant categories.  For example, if Corporate Finance satisfies purposes that I weighed as 4, 5 and 9, the score for this course is 4+5+9=18.  Each course will have a score, and the ones with the top scores win.   

Good luck with this exercise.  Then again, sometimes a house merlot is just what you need, so don’t overthink it, your gut may know best.

Law school rhymes

Apparently, I’ve read too many nursery rhymes to my almost one-year-old daughter.  Those poems and songs keep circulating in my head.  Yesterday, we read a cute book by Elizabeth Verdick entitled Tailes Are Not for Pulling.  We’ve got two dogs in the house, so we decided to instill good pet habits early. The rhymes were stuck in my head for a while, and I had to do something about it.  Pardon my venture into law school rhyming, here’s is my law exam advice:

Law tests are not for stressing;

Multiple choice is not for guessing;

Essays are not for confusing;

Errors are not for excusing;

Issues are not for ignoring;

Test time is not for snoring;

Rules are not for misstating;

Facts are not for creating;

Professors are not for complaining;

Frustration is not for explaining;

Answers are not for comparing;

Grades are not for despairing.

Good luck on your tests!

The Avatar Goes To Class

While law schools debate the use and misuse of computers in the classrooms (see Computers in Class from the Law Career Blog for the arguments on both sides and links to more commentary and discussions), some law students send their avatars to class and let them IM / text chat all they want.  This educational milestone became possible due to the CyberOne:  Law in the Court of Public Opinion course, offered by Harvard Law School and partially taught in a 3D virtual environment called Second Life.   The course materials are freely available to the public at the CyberOne website.  (Try to solve The Riddle of Three Hats, which was one of their assignments, you don’t need to be in Second Life for that.) I’ve been reading about the developments at the video vidi visum: virtual blog, and it’s been quiet fascinating.  For those interested in the use of Second Life in education, E-Content has some additional links to the resources on the topic.   All this makes me wonder what law schools will be like ten years from now.  What do you think?  

How do you know what you don’t know?

As you may have heard, Harvard Law School is revamping its first year core curriculum to include courses focused on regulation and legislation, international law and legal theories.  As I was reading the reactions to this development at Law Career Blog and the Volokh Conspiracy, I began wondering what framework I should use to think about this issue. As I often do, I resorted to my wisdom form the kitchen.  I am usually pretty good at making decisions in the kitchen.  It’s simple, really.  Before I know if I need, let’s say, onions for dinner, I have to decide what I want to eat for dinner.  After I choose a dish, I know what kinds of ingredients I need.  On some days, I look into the refrigerator to take my inventory and then decide what I can have for dinner. The second approach is much less appealing to me because my options are limited.  I also understand that there may be some trade-offs involved:  if I want a three-course gourmet dinner, it will cost me more money and I will have to work longer and harder for it but the outcome may be worth it.

How is it related to the law school curriculum debate?  Before I can form an opinion on what is good and what is not good for the first year law students, I need to know what law students want.  After all, they are the ones who pay the tuition.  Law students, as informed consumers, what do you want for your money?  Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What kinds of skills do you want to develop in law school?
• What kind of person do you want to be after law school?  I believe that professional programs have the potential to change the way people approach life situations.  My pre-MBA husband was a bit different from my post-MBA husband.  I am sure, he agrees that the law school changed me as well. 
• Would you rather learn what the law is or what the law can be?  Stated differently, do you want more emphasis on the black letter law or on the analysis of the options and possibilities?
• Do you think that the litigation and transactional areas should be equally represented in the core curriculum?
• Should we talk more about ethics in law school, in light of the recent corporate scandals?
• Should law schools foster cooperation or competition?
• Should we have more writing in law schools?
• Should there be more technology-based courses?
• Do you want to know anything about legal systems of other countries?
• Should law schools allow graduation credits for electives outside the law program?
• Should law schools offer more practice management courses?

I’d like to hear your voice.

Obsolete lawyering and avant-garde cooking

How much has the practice of law changed since, let’s say, a hundred years ago? It is not the fastest changing industry, for sure, but it is not immune from change either.  Now we have, in no particular order:  Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw, e-mail, internet, law office management software, the SEC filing system EDGAR, legal forms on CDs.  The dynamics of the legal practice change as well.  Outsourcing Times reports that 79,000 legal jobs will be outsourced by 2015 according to Forrester Research.  Unbundled legal services gain momentum. Partnership is like the horizon:  you can see it, but you can’t reach it. Bold men are looking from the billboards:  Divorce? Bankruptcy? Injured?  Arrested? 

So-so-so, what do we know? It turns out that the law school does not prepare law students to face the challenges of the modern legal practice.  In the New York Law Journal, Thomas Adcock reports on the results of the survey of mid-size law firms conducted by Pace University law school: only 8% of U.S. midsize law firms filled their recruitment needs by hiring law school graduates.  The reason is that they do not have the time and resources of big law firms to train the inexperienced associates.  Law students do not get enough exposure to the technology that has automated the litigation process.  When asked how law schools could improve their curricula, survey respondents emphasized writing (38%), practical skills (24%) and more clinical experience (21%).  Law students, take notice!

Are chefs as technology-averse as lawyers?  Not the members of an avant-garde culinary movement of “molecular gastronomy”, described in the BusinessWeek article Feed Your Mind by Adrienne Carter.  These chefs experiment with cutting-edge scientific processes and tools, such as lasers, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, to produce surprising combinations of flavor and appearance:  how about egg whites tasting like a coconut. These innovative products stimulate not just the taste buds but the minds as well.  What’s the most avant-garde thing in law right now?