Lawsagna

You don't need to meditate for hours to improve concentration

Studies have shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration.  However, initial experiments involved well-trained meditators.  For instance, in his collaboration with the Dalai Lama, Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found much greater activation of powerful gamma waves in the trained meditating monks than in the students during meditation [PDF]. The intense gamma waves signaled higher mental activity, better concentration, learning and memory.

Now, it appears that we can get cognitive benefits associated with mindfulness without spending hours in meditation, although the practice still needs to be consistent.  According to a recent study, meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day:

The experiment involved 63 student volunteers, 49 of whom completed the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned in approximately equivalent numbers to one of two groups, one of which received the meditation training while the other group listened for equivalent periods of time to a book (J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit) being read aloud.

Prior to and following the meditation and reading sessions, the participants were subjected to a broad battery of behavioral tests assessing mood, memory, visual attention, attention processing, and vigilance.

Both groups performed equally on all measures at the beginning of the experiment. Both groups also improved following the meditation and reading experiences in measures of mood, but only the group that received the meditation training improved significantly in the cognitive measures. The meditation group scored consistently higher averages than the reading/listening group on all the cognitive tests and as much as ten times better on one challenging test that involved sustaining the ability to focus, while holding other information in mind.

The researchers instructed the participants in this meditation training "to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose. If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let 'it' go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath."

While these gains in concentration and other cognitive skills sound amazing after such a brief period of time, it helps to remember that the brain is like a muscle.  It needs a regular workout to stay in shape. 

7 Barriers to Active Listening: Why we don’t listen as well as we could

"As a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to know your own mind but there is no point in imposing your views on others without some debate. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice. Get out there, listen to people, draw people out, and learn from them."
~ Richard Branson, "Five steps to start and make business work"

Effective leaders and influencers master the art of listening, and they understand that people want to be heard.  In our fast-paced world, active and empathetic listening is a rarity, and it's not as simple as it sounds.  Even if we know how to listen, we often don't for a number of reasons.

Next time you talk to someone, watch for the following seven common listening barriers that block a good conversation flow and may cause misunderstandings:

1. We join the conversation with predetermined attitude and assumptions about the other person or the subject matter to be discussed. Good conversations have the power to create new shared meaning and understanding, but it is only possible if we are open enough to consider those new possibilities.  So many people use conversations just to reiterate their own positions on issues.  Little is gained with such approach.  Instead, join a conversation with an open mind and desire to learn something new.  Listen with curiosity and without bias.  

2. We are so preoccupied with our own thoughts that we are unable to listen attentively. Maybe, we are distracted by something unrelated to the topic of the conversation, or we are busy developing our own response and miss what’s being said.  It's not easy to pay focused attention to the other person's words.  Our prefrontal cortex, the brain region implicated in planning complex cognitive tasks, decision making, and moderating correct social behavior, is easily overwhelmed.  We can process just about seven pieces of information in our conscious mind at any given moment.  It makes it impossible to attend to several things simultaneously that require our concentration.  We have to train and discipline our mind to listen actively and push any other distracting thoughts aside.

3. We are completing the other person’s thoughts and jumping to conclusions. How often do we hear something and say to ourselves:  "Oh, I know where she is going with it."  We attribute ideas, motivation, and intentions to others that they may not have.  This leads to misunderstandings.  This is especially true if we have known the conversation participants for a long time.  We feel like we know what they will say.  Patience pays off in conversations.  Let the others finish their thoughts and don’t assume you already know what they are going to say.  

4. We engage in selective listening. It occurs when we listen only to what we want to hear.  We like to be right, and our minds like consistency.  We don’t feel comfortable when something upsets our belief system.  It's easier to ignore that information. The downside is that we can't learn from others or collaborate effectively.  To overcome the habit of selective listening, paraphrase or mirror back what you hear to ensure you understand other points of view.  Engage in conversations with people who you know will disagree with you and learn to discuss your disagreements respectfully.  Encourage different opinions with the intention of considering them thoroughly and learning from them.  

5. We feel too tired, anxious, or angry to listen actively. Our brains run on glucose.  The glucose levels drop when we are tired, so we no longer have the energy to think clearly.  When we experience strong negative emotions, as when we are angry or under stress, the glucose goes from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala in the limbic system of the brain, responsible for the emotional control and memory of our emotional reactions.  The amygdala triggers the "fight or flight" mode.  As a result, our mind "freezes," and we  either launch verbal attacks or withdraw from the dialogue.  Strong feelings and emotions affect our listening, reasoning and judgment.  If the parties feel overwhelmed, a better strategy is to take a break from the conversation.  

6. We don't pay enough attention to body language and supersegmentals, such as intonation, rate of speech, emphasis, or tone. We can focus not only on what's being said, but also on what's not being said.  The supersegmentals and body language give away clues about people’s emotions, feelings, stress levels that provide additional information that may not be expressed in words.  To be an active listener, you have to be a good observer too.  

7. We are in a hurry. We don't have time to listen and can't wait for the other people to finish their thoughts so that we could get on with our business. People will sense that you don't really want to listen to them.  If you find yourself always trying to control the pace of conversations, talk too fast, or urge others to get to the point, try to consciously slow yourself down.  Find a better time to talk.  A conversation is not a race to the finish line.

Learn a language in 2009 and improve your brain

As a linguist by training, I have always liked learning new languages.  In fact, English is not my native language, Russian is.  I started truly learning English when I was in high school and added a few more languages later while studying linguistics.  After reading "The Bilingual Brain" in the Society for Neuroscience Brain Briefings,  I am considering adding a new language to my 2009 resolutions: 

"Parlez vous francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsches? Hablas español? If so, and you also speak English (or any other language), your brain may have developed some distinct advantages over your monolingual peers. New research into the neurobiology of bilingualism has found that being fluent in two languages, particularly from early childhood, not only enhances a person’s ability to concentrate, but might also protect against the onset of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline."

Those who start learning languages at an early age benefit the most.

"In fact, being bilingual may give children an advantage at school. Bilingual preschoolers have been found to be better able than their monolingual peers at focusing on a task while tuning out distractions. A similar enhanced ability to concentrate—a sign of a well-functioning working memory—has been found in bilingual adults, particularly those who became fluent in two languages at an early age. It may be that managing two languages helps the brain sharpen—and retain—its ability to focus while ignoring irrelevant information."

I am glad I am raising my daughter bilingual (English and Russian), and we'll be adding Spanish soon.

Adults benefit from learning languages as well.  There are many misconceptions surrounding adult language learning, especially about the "critical period" hypothesis that argues that the brain is too rigid to learn after puberty, making second language acquisition more difficult for adults.  Current neuroscience research into the competitive nature of brain plasticity offers a different explanation.  The skills we practice compete for our brain map space.  In his book "The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science," Norman Doidge writes:

"As we age, the more we use our native language, the more it comes to dominate our linguistic map space. Thus it is also because our brain is plastic—and because plasticity is competitive—that it is so hard to learn a new language and end the tyranny of the mother tongue.

But why, if this is true, is it easier to learn a second language when we are young? Is there not competition then too? Not really. If two languages are learned at the same time, during the critical period, both get a foothold. Brain scans, says Merzenich, show that in a bilingual child all the sounds of its two languages share a single large map, a library of sounds from both languages."

This can also explain why learning a language as an adult is quite possible and much easier if you immerse yourself in the environment where that language is spoken, or if you otherwise have a strong need or desire to learn it, for example, when your close friends, your spouse, or your co-workers speak a different language.  If you put enough attention into it, it will happen.   It is, to a large extent,  an issue of priorities, time, and motivation. 

What language are you learning this year?

150 Resources to Help You Write Better from OEDb

Online Education Database has a list of  “150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively.”  The list is organized according to the following categories:  Almanacs, Business and Legal Matters, Citation Styles, Dictionaries, English Language Skills, Genres, News Digests, New Media Resources, Organization, Professional Organizations, Rhetoric, Toolboxes, Writing Services, Writing Skills, Writing Software. You will want to bookmark it. 

The brain of a leader

Thursday’s issue of The Wall Street Journal includes an interesting article entitled “This Is Your Brain on the Job” by Phred Dvorak and Jaclyne Badal.  It reports on the efforts of an Arizona State University management professor, Pierre Balthazard, and a neuroscientist and EEG expert, Robert Thatcher, to map the brain activity of visionary leaders.  They hope to use the data to train others in leadership skills:

Mr. Thatcher says preliminary analysis of 50 brain maps shows some big differences in activity between managers who rate high on a psychological test of visionary leadership, and those who rate low. The visionary leaders had more efficient left brains, which deal with logic and reasoning, and better connected right brains, which are responsible for social skills.

Maybe, the phrase “to think like a lawyer” will soon have its visual representation as well.  What do you think?

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.

Three kinds of empathy

If you are in the serving profession, you have probably wondered more than once how much you should be involved in your clients’ stories.  It can be challenging to find that perfect place where you can be caring and compassionate without jeopardizing the effectiveness of your service and your own emotional balance.  In his blog, Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, reports on his conversation with Paul Ekman, an expert in understanding facial expressions and emotions, about three kinds of empathy:  cognitive, emotional and compassionate. 

According to Paul Ekman’s classification, “cognitive empathy” is “simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking, this kind of empathy can help in, say, a negotiation or in motivating people.”

“Emotional empathy” is described as a state “when you feel physically along with the other person, as though their emotions were contagious.” 

Finally, with “compassionate empathy,” “we not only understand a person’s predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.”

Paul Ekman believes that the three kinds of empathy are learnable, like other emotional intelligence skills. 

You can read Daniel Goleman’s post about the benefits and downsides of each kind of empathy here.

Take the Six Seconds emotional intelligence test SEI-360 free of charge

Six Seconds is a not-for-profit organization that offers information, tools, and services related to emotional intelligence:

“Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage feelings. It is the key competency for personal effectiveness, essential to communication, self-direction, problem-solving, and leadership.”

During the month of July, you can participate in the free trial of the Six Seconds emotional intelligence assessment SEI-360.  The SEI-360 is an online test that measures how you use your emotional intelligence in your daily life and how other people, who you choose to give you feedback, perceive your emotional intelligence skills.

It sounds like a great way to learn more about yourself.  Hurry up because the test is available free of charge as a research version only till the end of July.

Tip bit #23: Make a list of what you really need to learn.

Today’s tip is inspired by Stephen Downes’ list of “What You Really Need To Learn”.  He thinks it is important to learn:

• How to predict consequences
• How to read (and really understand)
• How to distinguish truth from fiction
• How to empathize
• How to be creative
• How to communicate clearly
• How to learn
• How to stay healthy
• How to value yourself
• How to live meaningfully

Many of the above skills are not taught in school and yet they seem to be essential if you want to have a good life and be successful in today’s world. 

So, what is in your list? 

National Pro Bono Opportunities Guide

Looking for opportunities to do good and gain legal experience?  Look no further than the National Pro Bono Opportunities Guide, a project jointly sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service, the ABA Center for Pro Bono and Pro Bono Net.

The Guide lists various programs across the United States that need volunteer legal professionals. After you choose the state that interests you, you will be taken to the listing of the programs in that state.  The directory offers additional filters to narrow your search options by county, area of law, the population groups served and the volunteers’ desired level of experience. The last filter allows you to search projects for law students, transactional lawyers, mentors, paralegals and others.  You can also search by keywords. 

The Dog Days of Summer: Advice for Summer Associates

With the approach of the summer, many of you are heading to your first legal internships.  Do you remember the first time you looked at the blue ocean glistening in the sun?  You are thrilled and mesmerized by its power and magnitude.  It’s alluring on a sunny day and frightening when the skies turn dark.  The waters are treacherous if you don’t know how to swim, and what you don’t see can hurt you, but swimming in the ocean is exhilarating.  Are you ready to swim with the big fish?  Here’s is your survival kit.

Law Career Blog describes "Do’s and Don’t’s for Summer Associates" and tells you "What NOT to do as a Summer Associate."

Kathleen J. Wu  offers her insights in the article "Rules Summer Associates Should Live By":

“Even if the firm isn't ladling work on your plate, try to find some way to get something substantive out of your time at the office. Everybody knows that law school teaches you next to nothing about the everyday reality of being a lawyer. We learned the law in school, not lawyering. So spend your summer watching lawyers.”

Read “Summer Associates, Settling In” at Law.com for more advice on schmoozing and boozing, as well as deal-making and partaking.

Finally, here's  “Law Blog News You Can Use:  An Associate Etiquette Lesson” with the focus on table manners.

Tip bit #21: Change the word

When you study for a multiple-choice exam, such as MBE, you need to read the questions  and options very carefully.  Your choice of the answer may depend on just one word.   Can you recognize those powerful words that trigger legal standards, call for doctrines, or cunningly distract you?  To practice identifying such words, try the following game.  Once you solve the original hypothetical question, go back and change one or two words in the question in such a way that alters your analysis.  Rewrite the hypo and see where it takes you.  It’s a good game to play with your study group if you participate in one. 

More bar exam tips

Still worried about the bar exam?  Here’s a list of resources that can help you study for and pass the bar.  (You can read my previous post here if you want my personal perspective on the bar exam experience.)

PLI offers bar exam tips from a panel of experts in the video and HTML text formats.  Learn about Preparation Just Prior to Starting Your Bar Review Course.  There is also advice on How to Write a Successful Bar Exam Answer and How Not to Be Conclusory.

Check out Passing the Bar site created by Professor Vernellia Randall.  It covers a variety of topics related to the bar exam preparation, including Specific Study Advice and tips on how to Develop Keywords Flashcards.

Carolyn Nygren describes a 7-step training strategy for bar candidates to practice before the bar review course starts.

FindLaw has a list of resources for the bar.

You can do it!

Tips to develop intercultural competency

What are the chances that in your practice, you will represent a transnational corporation, take an assignment at a foreign office of the U.S. law firm, advise international clients on the U.S. law, outsource legal work to lawyers in India, help American retirees to settle down in Mexico, or devise an estate plan for foreign nationals with assets in the U.S.?  You may think that you have a local practice, but in today’s economy, more and more of your business and individual clients choose to trot the globe.  Are you ready to travel with them?  If you need help, the following resources can be your guide across cultures:

Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation gives advice on "How not to be a cultural knucklehead in a global business world." 

Lynn Gaertner-Johnston of Business Writing addresses pitfalls of cross-cultural communication in her post “Do You Like My Dressing?” 

Janet Moore offers great advice to lawyers across borders at her International Lawyer Coach Blog.  If you are considering a study abroad program, read the post “Study Abroad Opportunities for Law Students,”  which has a list of helpful websites.  The blog also has useful information for foreign lawyers in the U.S. 

I always look forward to Anne Fox and Dr. Laurent Borgmann’s podcast ‘absolutely intercultural!’ which deals with intercultural issues in creative and engaging ways. 

Law Practice: What Every New Associate Needs to Know

The current edition of Law Practice is online now.  It covers many important topics for young associates.  Here are some of the articles:

“The Smartest Marketer Around: What New Associates Should Know About Marketing” by Allison Wolf.  If you want to be a partner one day, start developing the business owner mindset from the start.  Do you know what it takes to run a successful legal business?   

“Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch” by Catherine Alman MacDonagh and Beth Marie Cuzzone.  Will your “elevator pitch” pass the "so what?" test?  Learn how to make it succinct, memorable and unique. 

“Being a Good Boss: Dos and Don'ts for Working with Your First Assistant” by Paul McLaughlin.  Should you introduce your assistant to your clients?  Can you share your personal problems with your team?  How often should you give feedback to your assistant?  The article answers these questions and many more. 

“The Art of Making Rain: Seven Steps That Give Associates an Edge” by Lawrence M. Kohn and Jill Rose Kohn.  You didn’t think you were going into sales when you graduated from law school, did you?  The sooner you start building a foundation for rainmaking, the better your chances are to become one of those powerful connectors that everybody wants to know. 

“The Culturally Savvy Associate: Top Three Tips for Moving Up in a Global Economy” by Janet H. Moore.   These days, even if you don’t want to practice international law, chances are that your practice is going to be affected by it.  Can you spot international issues?  Are you comfortable working in multinational teams?

“Associate Technology Challenges: A Snapshot of Need-to-Know Applications” by Browning Marean.   There's life beyond LexisNexis and Westlaw.  What decision analysis tools would you like to use?  Are you ready for electronic discovery?

On logical fallacies and metaphorical thinking

Do you want to know how to avoid fallacious reasoning and evaluate arguments? Check out Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies created by Stephen Downes.  It is an impressive collection of fallacies with the names, definitions, examples and ways to prove that the fallacy is committed. 

What are the mechanisms of abstract reasoning?  Those of you who are fans of linguistics, cognitive science or neuroscience may enjoy the interview that George Lakoff gave to Edge.  The interview starts off with the following observations from his new book “Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought” co-authored with Mark Johnson:

"The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical."

He goes on to explore the role of the body and brain in human reasoning:

“Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical, based on metaphors that make use of our sensory-motor capacities to perform abstract inferences. Thus, abstract reason, on a large scale, appears to arise from the body.”

On job search and networking

Are you looking for a job?  Do you want to learn the skill of business development and networking?   Today’s round-up is for you:

Law Career Blog offers job hunting advice for 3Ls and recent grads.  I like the suggestion of being proactive, flexible and creative in your job search.  Some students buy into others’ vision of how things should be and adopt the victim’s mentality when things don’t turn out that way.  How do you make the best with what you have?  It takes courage, creativity and consistent work.  You begin by valuing what you have to offer because if you don’t value yourself, you can’t show your worth to others.  Take the challenge and write your own life story, don’t let others write it for you.  The upside is that you can learn so much more about yourself and your true aspirations in the process.   I suggest you sit down and make a list titled "Here's why I am so awesome!"  Place this list where you can see and read it often.  Strive to add new things to it each day as you go about your search for business.   

Do you want to know nine essential characteristics for making partner?  Inside Practice offers an excerpt from "Making Partner: A Guide for Law Firm Associates" by John R. Sapp.  Among those characteristics are “Maturity: You are in control of your life” and “Entrepreneurial attitude: You think like an owner rather than an employee.”  Now is the time to start working on those skills.  And if you already possess them, maybe you don’t need an employer.  Build A Solo Practice, LLC will help your to plan your own business venture. 

Here are a few nuts and bolts of networking.  Business Writing teaches you How to Ask a Stranger for a Favor and offers Great Tips for Email.  If you want advice on phone networking, listen to Escape from Cubicle Nation podcast Networking tip:  Use the phone! Finally, is your body language congruent with the words you speak?  Read about 18 ways to improve your body language from The Positivity Blog.

Happy hunting and gathering!

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?

Creative thinking

I’ve decided to dedicate this week to thinking because that’s how my posts shaped up so far.  It will be known as the “Thought-Full Series.”   Robert Sternberg, the developer of the triarchic theory of intelligence, divides thinking into three categories:  analytical thinking, creative thinking and practical thinking.  The analytical thinking refers to abstract thinking and logical reasoning.  It is about analyzing and evaluating information.  Creative thinking is about the ability to generate new ideas and deal with novel situations.  Practical thinking is about the ability to apply the knowledge in the real world and change your environment.  Last Monday, I wrote about reasoning by analogy as part of analytical thinking.  Yesterday’s post about goal-setting illustrated practical thinking.  Today’s theme is creative thinking.   

How important is creative thinking to lawyers?  Lawyers are not usually seen as creative types.  After all, they research the rules and advise on how to follow the rules.  At the same time, there are many aspects of law practice that can benefit from creativity:  how to find ingenious solutions for your clients while obeying the laws, how to negotiate better outcomes for all, how to mediate conflicts, how to communicate with your clients effectively, how to cut costs and grow business.   Can you think outside the box but play by the rules?   

“Think like a fool,” advises Roger von Oech of Creative Think.  You will benefit from fresh perspectives, shrewd observations and surprising insights.

Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project offers Eight tips for sparking your creativity.  Let your mind wander and take notes. 

I like to listen to Accidental Creative podcasts because I want to be “prolific, brilliant and healthy.”

What do you do to nurture your creativity?

Reasoning by analogy

Learning how to reason by analogy is one of the most important objectives of legal education.  But you certainly don’t have to be a lawyer to use analogy in your thinking.  In fact, whenever we encounter a new situation, we start searching for some familiar elements in it to give us an indication what to do.  In law school, you have to build awareness of what is going on in your head when you reason by analogy.  In other words, you deconstruct the process.  Generally, when you reason by analogy, you take the following steps:

1. Identify the analogy by recognizing the similarities between objects or situations.  Let’s say, you see a tangerine for the first time and you want to compare it to oranges, lemons, and peaches that you are familiar with.  We like to think in big categories or archetypes, so the first thing that probably jumps out is that they are all fruits, and the tangerine is just like an orange or a lemon because it is a citrus. 
2. State the purpose of the analogy.  The purpose allows you to determine what characteristics are essential.  In the above example, if your purpose is to avoid citruses because of the allergies they may cause, the attribute of being a citrus is essential and your analogy between the tangerine and the orange or lemon is good.  Now, let’s say, you want to know how easy it is to peel off the skin of the fruit.  If that’s the case the analogy between the tangerine and orange is still good, but the analogy between the tangerine and lemon becomes weak because it’s hard to peel a lemon. If you compare the sweetness of the fruits, the tangerine becomes more like a peach than a lemon.
3. Assess the source of your analogy.  If there are alternative sources of comparison, how do you choose which to use? Let’s say, in my last example, which focused on the sweetness of the fruits, I could use kiwis as another basis of comparison but I chose not to.  What is the significance of my choice?  Is there a difference in the perceived sweetness when I say, “Tangerines are just like kiwis,” and when I say, “Tangerines are just like peaches”?
4. Evaluate the ambiguities, dissimilarities, false attributions that may weaken or break the analogy.  Do the differences between the tangerines and peaches undermine the analogy?  What are the underlying assumptions when you make the comparison?  In the example above, I assumed that I was comparing ripe fruits, otherwise, the analogy wouldn’t make sense.   If you hear the sentence:  “This toy is a lemon,” does it mean that the toy is defective or it shares some attributes with the fruit?   

For additional sources on reasoning by analogy, check out LawNerds and Analogy and Precedent from the Bridge site. 

To test yourself, do Analogy Exercises by Peter Suber.  For some practice in pattern recognition, try Brain Workout for Your Frontal Lobes from SharpBrains.

Writing tips from Warren Buffett

Annual reports are usually not a fun read, but the annual reports of Berkshire Hathaway may be an exception.  Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, writes his annual reports in a direct, witty and engaging style. So it is not surprising that he wrote the Preface to “A Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents” for the US Securities and Exchange Commission.  His advice is good for any type of writing, not just annual reports:

One unoriginal but useful tip: Write with a specific person in mind. When writing Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report, I pretend that I’m talking to my sisters. I have no trouble picturing them: Though highly intelligent, they are not experts in accounting or finance. They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them. My goal is simply to give them the information I would wish them to supply me if our positions were reversed. To succeed, I don’t need to be Shakespeare; I must, though, have a sincere desire to inform.

No siblings to write to? Borrow mine: Just begin with “Dear Doris and Bertie.”

For more writing lessons from Warren Buffett, check out Away With Words.

Holistic learning

In his thought-provoking post How to Ace Finals Without Studying and the follow-up, Scott Young describes holistic learning and its benefits:

Learning holistically is not done by trying to remember information by using repetition and force. Holistic learners instead organize their minds like spider webs. Every piece of information is a single point. That point is then consciously related to tons of other points on the web. There are no boxes with this form of learning. Science becomes literature which becomes economics. Subject distinctions may help when going to class, but a holistic learner never sees things in a box.

The interconnectedness of ideas, concepts, experiences, disciplines is at the heart of holistic learning.  Whether or not you practice holistic learning regularly, I think you are likely to experience the “magic” of holistic learning when you research and write a paper, work on a case in a clinic, or work on a project as an intern.  You don’t try to memorize the material, but the engagement and thinking involved in the process will cause you to remember it even years later.   

Holistic learning is synthesis on steroids.  You establish connections not only between the legal concepts you study, but also link to other disciplines and areas of life in general.  Law is fertile ground for this as it permeates almost everything around us.  In addition, law is constantly evolving, so to understand where a legal standard stands in relation to other rules and doctrines on the grand scheme of things is more important than to know its current interpretation (that doesn’t apply to the bar exam).  It is like star gazing when you identify the stars by their relative positions in the constellation.  Issue-spotting is another context where the holistic approach will serve you well because you have to take the characteristics of the familiar pattern and extend it to a new situation.   

So how do you approach the study of law holistically?  Next time when you struggle to understand a legal concept, consider the following questions:

• What is this concept like?  Think of any association that comes to mind.  Go further and analyze the essential characteristics that make this association work.  Is there a point where the association breaks down? 
• What does this concept remind you of?  Think of what you already know and how it can help you understand this concept better.  Does it involve a process similar to “X”?   Can it be applied just like “Y”?  Does it produce outcomes much like “Z”?   
• How does this concept relate to the previous material?  Here you engage in synthesis. 
• How do you think the doctrine will develop from this point on?  Make some predictions about what’s to come. 
• Do you know of any concrete, real-life scenarios where you can practice applying the theory?  When you encounter or read about various controversies, think of what you know and how it applies to the situation in question. 
• What other disciplines influence the evolution of this concept?  For example, technological developments affect patent law.  Ethics come into play in the regulation of biomedical research.  As you read papers and listen to the news, think of the ways the law may change in the future.
• What areas of life are affected by this concept?  Think of the results and consequences.  Do you like them? 

Mind-mapping can be a great tool to visualize these multiple levels of connections. 

What do you think of holistic learning?  Is it worth the time and effort?  Does it really eliminate the need for the traditional cramming right before the exam?  Have you experienced those "Aha! moments" when
things just "clicked" for you?  How did you get there?

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. 

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? 

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.      

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

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. 

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?

Tip Bit # 7: Keep a Journal of a Young Lawyer

Law students generally don’t do a lot of coherent writing during the   semester unless they take a writing class.  While briefing cases is supposed to help with the analytical writing skills, students often stitch pieces of legal opinions together instead of expressing the ideas in their own words.  As a result, when the time comes to take essay exams, students may find themselves out of practice.  If the idea of writing things out intimidates you, you may want to try a rather informal technique to get into the habit of putting your legal thoughts on paper.  Start a Journal of a Young Lawyer, or JOYL for short.   Choose the writing medium you enjoy.  Maybe, a new Moleskine notebook will keep you coming back (you can also get it at Amazon), or a private blog for tech fans.  Spend about 15 minutes a day writing about something related to law that piqued your curiosity.   It may be a case, a piece of legal news, an occurrence in class, or a discussion you had with your classmates.   Write you thoughts and opinions in your JOYL as you would in a personal journal.  The point is to remove any stress factors that you may associate with other types of legal writing and make it as casual as possible.  It’s just an exercise for you.  Don’t write about boring stuff, pick something interesting instead.  (The comments you have written in your JOYL may even help you choose a topic for a student note or a paper later.)  Try writing from different perspectives by playing a role of a lawyer, a client, or a law reporter.   Pick different sides in an argument.  If you do this brief exercise regularly, you may find it much easier to write about law when you need to do a more formal type of writing.  The time commitment can be well worth the benefit.  And let me know if the JOYL technique works for you.

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?

Think like a lawyer with "The Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald M. Weinberg

I love The Secrets of Consulting:  A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg.  This book is witty and wise.  I like to go back to it to and re-read its memorable laws. Here are some of my favorites.  I think they can teach us a few things about thinking like a lawyer:

The Law of the Hammer:
“The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding.”

The following is my version for legal professionals: 
"A student who learns to think like a lawyer will discover that anything can be turned into an argument."  On a more serious note, this law reminds me that specialists sometimes suffer from the tunnel vision that prevents them from seeing out-of-the-box solutions. 

“If you can’t think of three things that might go wrong with your plans, then there’s something wrong with your thinking.”

When you think like a lawyer, you look for anything that can go wrong. 

Prescott’s Pickle Principle:
“Cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered.”

This principle is about ethics and autonomy.  It tells us that it can be challenging to preserve independent thinking when you deal with a large and important client.  Recent corporate scandals show that even legal counsels can get “pickled” in the corporate "brine."   

“What you don’t know may not hurt you, but what you don’t remember always does.”

This principle highlights the importance of setting reminders, or triggers, for yourself and your clients of all things that you need to remember.  Do you have a system for that?

Empathy

Do you have empathy?  Can you step into somebody else’s shoes or, perhaps, try on their suit?   That’s the idea behind the “empathy suit” designed by the Ford Motor Company in partnership with the University of Loughborough,UK.  The suit simulates aging by reducing mobility, hearing and vision.  It allows the developers of products for aging baby boomers to test the usability of their creations.   

Empathy is crucial not only for good design, but for good lawyering as well.  Now, what would be the equivalent of the “empathy suit” to impart empathy to lawyers?

What's your opinion of legal writing?

Law students are getting serious about legal writing.  They don’t want to hide behind wordy legalisms.  They want to be understood.  And they offer good tips on how they plan to become effective writers. 

As part of Legal Andrew’s class action, The Frugal Law Student reveals his plan to analyze the works of great legal writers and edit old case opinions into plain English. 

Shelley’s Case has welcomed a writing muse – Laughter – while reading children’s books:  “I gasped. I panicked. I worried. I giggled. I laughed. I was enchanted by the innocent charm exuberating from these books.”  Is there a better way to learn how to tell great stories with simple words and uncluttered structure?

Mackenzie’s Weblog talks about how lawyers tend to perceive their writing abilities and how blogging can help improve writing skills.

The Top Law Student recommends a number of legal writing resources for law students.

Legal writing professors and consultants have also been looking for the fastest road to the writing nirvana.  Idealawg has a record of their search.  It started with the interview of Dr. George D. Gopen: WRITING FROM A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE and the comments by Wayne C. Schiess, the director of the legal-writing program at the University of Texas School of Law.  Their debate continued in the post Not on the same legal writing page: George Gopen of Duke responds to Wayne Schiess of University of Texas.   Take note of their suggestions and see which ones work best for you.  The beauty of a language is that it is common to many and yet as individual as the speakers, writers and readers themselves.

How about assessing your own knowledge of writing principles.  As you read the following quotations from famous people, can you tell which aspect of writing they address?

“That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”

This is Sir Winston S. Churchill’s opinion of the old rule stating that you cannot end sentences with prepositions.  You can when you need to. 

“A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

George Orwell concocted this sentence as a cure for multiple negatives. (Politics and the English Language, 1946.)

“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”

This is George Orwell’s parody translation of the following verse from Ecclesiastes:

“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

He did it to show the excessive use of abstract nouns and nominalizations (nouns that are derived from verbs with the help of the suffix -ion).

What's your opinion of legal writing?

Related posts:
The art of storytelling
Chasing metaphors
The mosaic of legal analysis
Get your pens ready:  it's time to scribble

What can you learn from people?

Some things we learn from books, by going to classes, watching presentations, listening to lectures.  Other things we learn from people by observing, analyzing, imitating, practicing.  For example, we can learn from people:

• how to communicate well,
• how to engage your audience,
• how to appear professional,
• how to explain complex things in a simple way,
• how to ask good questions,
• how to network,
• how to make people feel valued and respected,
• how to motivate others,
• how to make a joke and when it is appropriate,
• how to defuse intense emotions.

So how do you learn from people?  Here are a few questions and suggestions to guide you:

• What skills do you want to learn? What results do you want to achieve?
• Who will be your model?  Do you know a person who is good at what you are trying to learn?  If you personally know them, enlist their support, ask them questions.  But don't forget that you can also learn from public figures by observing their actions, listening to their speeches, reading their works.
• In what situations do you need to observe that person?  In other words, what is the context that triggers the desired behavior?
• While observing your model in action, decide what the important differences are that make the behavior effective.  What does this person do that others don’t?  In contrast, is there anything that the person you are modeling avoids doing that others tend to do?  What clues should you pay attention to?
• Can you recognize any patterns in the desired behavior?
• Are there specific steps or procedures that the person is following?
• Is there anything unique about the way that person interacts with others?
• Can you tell anything about the person’s assumptions, values, attitudes from his or her behavior?
• Now it is time to create your model of the effective performance.  Can you come up with a strategic list of behaviors that you can imitate?
• Try out your model in the relevant situations to see if you can achieve the desired result.  If not, how can you revise your model?
• Keep trying it out, fine-tune your strategy as necessary.

You need to be mindful and reflective when you learn from others.  It also takes discipline and patience to follow through with your plan.  The benefit is that you can improve your performance by being observant and willing to try something different.  I encourage you to keep your eyes open for other people’s talents.  Ask them questions, learn from them, and you might just add a few gifts to your own bag of tricks.   Who are the people you'd love to learn from?

Tip Bit #4: Negotiating Tip of the Week Podcast

Do you want to brush up on your negotiating skills?  The Negotiating Tip of the Week podcast with Dr. Josh Weiss, Associate Director of Harvard's Global Negotiation Project, delivers useful advice and interviews with experts in the negotiation field.  Most of the podcasts are only about 5 minutes long (the interviews are longer), so they won’t take much of your precious time, but the impact may be long-lasting. 

If you want to test your negotiating skills, check out the interactive games from the Stitt Feld Handy Group that will require you to conduct simulated negotiations with animated computer characters.  Some of the scenarios involve negotiating a raise with your boss, mediating a conflict between two neighbors, advising the wife or the husband in their marital dispute.  The games are free.  The Group also offers an on-line negotiation course for a fee. 

How to develop negotiation skills

Negotiation is an important part of legal practice and effective representation.  What do you need to know to be a skillful negotiator?  Can you communicate your client’s interests in such a way as to produce the best outcome for the client?  Here are a few resources to help you at the negotiation table.

Genuine Curiosity has great tips on how to prepare to negotiate.  Some of the questions you need to consider are:

• What do you know about the party you are negotiating with?
• Are you clear about the objectives and limits of your negotiation?
• How do you plan to rehearse your negotiation strategy?
• Where should you hold the negotiation sessions?
• How can you remain clam and focused during negotiations?

The article Win-Win Negotiation Skills for Lawyers:  The Art of Getting What You Both Want by Janet Ellen Raasch will tell you if you are a carp, shark or dolphin in negotiations.  Be a dolphin, and you won’t get grilled.

Brain Based Business offers 10 Surprisingly Simple Words that End Dysfunction and Add Profit. 

Are you good at interpreting body language?  Often, we don’t have enough time to reflect on nonverbal clues.  Maybe, we are too distracted by our own thoughts to even pay attention.  Not so for Dr. Hugo Heyrman.  His Body Language Sequences of short looped films will allow you to watch rhythmic patterns of body language in motion and appreciate its meaning.  Here’s how he describes his project:

"In the Body Language Sequences I walk through the streets of Antwerp City, to investigate how people differ from each other, how people are using 'silent language' and 'personal space'. I am interested in the temporality of speed, acceleration, slowness and pause. How 'sub-movements' are expressed. How motion precedes emotion. Up to 90% of all of our communication is nonverbal. The direct actions of the human nervous system are usually subconscious, instinctively meaningful and more honest than verbal communication. Bodies do not lie. The 'subliminal' messages of the body are playing a major role in how we relate to others and how they see us. Our bodies are the most public signals of our identities, and private reminders of who we are. We imagine by remembering, or vice versa. In the ritual quality of interpersonal actions there is a hidden code of behavioural patterns, through which hierarchical and social power structures emerge. The body language sequences of the human figure in motion, are a display of our motives in the flow of time."

How to jazz up your notes

I don’t know about you, but I like to give some texture to my text.  A simple change in the layout or format of the text can boost comprehension and recall.   It's like providing your brain with navigation tools.  I don’t like the densely-typed sameness that goes on and on for pages.  I get lost in such notes like in certain suburban neighborhoods where every house looks alike. A few days ago, I read an interesting article on How Users Read on the Web.  It turns out they don’t.  Most people just scan websites, looking for key words and ideas.  I see some similarities with student notes.  Students diligently take notes, but they don’t really want to read them again.  Perhaps, the following tips for web writing can be applied to note-taking to improve readability and retention:

• Highlight keywords.
• Use meaningful subheadings.
• Use bullet points or numbers to list items.
• Start a new paragraph for each new idea.
• Be concise. 

For note-takers, I would add:

• Develop a system of abbreviations and symbols for frequently used words and concepts.
• Use visuals, such as tables, time lines, concept trees, mind maps whenever you can.

Perhaps, if you jazz up your notes, you are more likely to go back and review them after all.  What do you think?

Related posts:
Branch out:  mind-mapping
A few notes on note-taking

Anticipation: getting ahead of the curve

"Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is."  This famous saying by Wayne  Gretzky, “the greatest player of all time” according to The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League, nicely sums up the skill of anticipation.  The ability to predict where things are going is very important not only for ice hockey players, but for lawyers as well.  Think of all the time lawyers spend anticipating the outcomes of the cases, the moves by the opposing party, witnesses’ responses,  negotiating tactics, and everything that can go wrong.   But what is anticipation?  Can we learn to anticipate better?  It certainly seems that experience has a lot to do with this ability.  Anticipation appears to be a complex skill, so I’ve decided to break it down to some more basic components.  Perhaps, if we work on those, we can get better at anticipation.  Here is my list:

• Asking the right questions.  When we anticipate something, aren’t we looking for an answer to some important question or problem that is on our mind?  If that’s the case, the practice of asking questions about future events should help us to get better at predicting the outcomes of those events.  Next time, before you read a case for your class, ask yourself some questions about it.  What do you think it is going to be about?  Was there anything in the last case you read that was left unanswered?  Why is it in the textbook?  What is it going to add to the legal doctrine you are studying?  When you try to answer those questions, look at the material you have covered so far, consult the table of contents and the syllabus for your class.  Get a bird’s view of the task, and you may see better what is to come.  After you read the case, try to predict the questions your professor is going to ask in class.   
• Recognizing patterns.  Patterns are predictable.  If you are good at recognizing patterns, you are good at anticipation.  Look for recurrent behaviors.  If you don’t review your notes or outline, you don’t do well on the test – that’s a pattern.   
• Prioritizing.  We are constantly bombareded with all sorts of information.  When we make a decision about something that may occur in the future, we need to determine what to take into consideration and what to ignore.  Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink is about learning what’s important and making snap judgments based on “thin slices” of information.  When you enter a law firm’s office, what can you tell about its culture?  What clues do you use to make that determination? 
• Mindfulness.  In order to anticipate, you need to be aware of what is going on around you.  You want to notice things, words, behaviors. Sometimes, anticipation is about paying enough attention to the present. 
• Empathy.  I think there is a connection between empathy and the ability to anticipate.  If you can share in someone’s feelings and emotions, you can understand that person better, and as a result, you are better at predicting behavior.   

Is there anything else I should add to the list?  Let me know. 

A pragmatic approach to reading

I am trying to unlearn the long-time habit of reading books from cover to cover.  Don’t get me wrong, some books I still want to read leisurely. I want to linger over sentences and savor the dialogue.  Fiction books certainly fall into this category, and some non-fiction as well.   However, there are so many more books out there that I want to get to and read for information.  I need a more effective way of reading. 

I’ve found that the previewing method works well for me.  I start off  with the book cover, the author’s bio and the table of contents.   That gives me an idea what the book is about, who wrote it, and how it is structured.   I often do it before I actually buy the book.  The next step requires more discipline.  On my first read, I want to spend just a few seconds per page and go through the whole book quickly.  I will glance at the headings, subheadings and any visuals.  That’s where my efforts often derail because I dig into something sooner than I need to.  If I do the skimming properly, I usually get a pretty good picture of the main ideas and arguments.  I also know where to find the information I need to focus on.   Then, I can go back to the pages I want to read more carefully. 

Sometimes, I feel guilty rushing through the book.  After all, somebody took time to write it.  I am concerned that I may miss some gems of wisdom.   I also like to be surprised by an idea.  At the same time, I realize that I gain more from a book if I read it with a purpose in mind.  If I know what I am looking for, I have a better chance of capturing it in my memory.  The truth is that even if I read the whole book page by page and pay attention to every idea or example, I will eventually forget the stuff that is not relevant to what I am doing.  I need to be more pragmatic about reading books:  “What’s in it for me?” 

What do you think?  How do you read books?

The art of storytelling

“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book – a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.  And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

I don’t remember the occasion when one of my law school professors read us an excerpt from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, but it was the best narrative I heard in law school about learning.  At 24, Mark Twain realized his boyhood dream of becoming a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.  The excerpt is his reflections on learning to read the river and the gains and losses involved in the process. 

Sometimes telling a story is the best way to communicate an idea.  Businesses use storytelling to convey their values, to deliver their message to customers, to initiate change.  Stories are also important to the practice of law.  Clients bring their emotional, sometimes disjointed stories to the lawyers’ offices.  Lawyers repackage them into restrained, logical and persuasive stories for the court.  They throw in some combativeness and flare for the jury.  All the while, they are pushing the story of conflict towards its resolution. 

Storytelling is an important skill for law students to learn.  Often times, this skill is disguised under the legal functions of 'writing a persuasive brief'' or 'preparing for an oral argument,' but in the essence, it is still an art of telling a good story and one of the oldest ways to communicate.  Many great people have written about storytelling much better that I ever would, so I am referring you to their narratives on the subject:

What makes a story great? Seth Godin’s blog has the answer in the article How to tell a great story. 

How to build a good story?  Check out enterRETAINment’s posts on the Story Structure.

Brain Based Business will tell you how Stories Boost the Business Brain.

TrackKnacks has advice on the use of stories for career advancement. 

Legal Sanity focuses on telling simple but powerful stories in law and beyond.

Want to discuss the wisdom of storytelling further?  Book your trip to London, UK to attend the July 2007 conference Once Upon a Legal Time: developing the skills of storytelling in law, as advised by the Legal Theory Blog.

What story are you telling today?

Find out your networking quotient

If you have ten minutes to spare and want to find out how savvy you are about networking, take a free 30-question quiz called Networking Quotient.  This assessment tool was developed by Thom Singer, who is the author of Some Assembly Required:  How to Make, Grow and Keep Your Business Relationships.  He also writes a business development and networking blog.

While it’s neat to see how you score compared to others in your demographic group, I think, you can learn more from the questions themselves because they indicate what you should be thinking about and doing.  Once you complete the quiz, you are given an option of retaking it.  You can click on that link to go back to the questions and use them to evaluate your own networking plan, if you have one.  If you don’t, it may be useful to ponder those questions a little longer and create one.   

Related posts:
How to find a mentor
5 questions to ask when you evaluate job options

8 pitfalls of listening

Students learn many useful skills in law school, including reasoning, legal interpretation, legal writing, public speaking.   One skill that does not seem to get enough attention is listening.  Attorneys need good listening skills to be able to understand the needs of their clients, build trust, negotiate effectively, develop business relationships.  One of the first things you will need to learn as a young associate in a law firm is to listen carefully to the partners’ instructions and check your understanding.  People want to be heard, but they don’t get enough opportunity in our fast-speed bottom-line oriented world.  Next time you talk to someone, watch for 8 listening pitfalls that hurt good conversations:

1. Coming to the conversation with predetermined attitude and assumptions about the other person or the subject matter to be discussed.  Good conversations have the power to create new meaning and understanding, but it is only possible if we are open enough to consider those new possibilities.  So many people use conversations just to reiterate their position on an issue.  Little is gained with such approach.  Instead, join a conversation with an open mind and desire to learn something new.  Listen without bias.
2. Developing your own response while listening.  Sometimes we are so preoccupied with our own thoughts that we are unable to listen attentively to what’s being said.  We either speak or prepare our response, but we don’t really listen.  That produces two monologues, not a conversation. 
3. Completing others’ thoughts. How often do we hear something and say to ourselves:  “Oh, I know where she is going with it.”  We attribute ideas, motivation, intent to others that they may not have.  Patience pays off in conversations.  Let the others finish their thoughts and don’t assume you already know what they are going to say.
4. Jumping to conclusions.  That happens when we choose to act on limited information instead of searching for more.  It helps to suspend your judgment, listen with curiosity and ask open-ended questions.  We’ll learn more this way. 
5. Selective listening.  It occurs when we listen only to what we want to hear.  We like to be right, and our minds like consistency.  We don’t feel comfortable when something upsets our belief system.  It’s easier to ignore that information. The downside is that we don’t learn and we don’t develop.
6. Disengaging from the conversation and using disrespectful body language. For conversations to work, the parties need to show respect to each other.  It’s a basic premise, and it’s surprising how often legal professionals ignore it.  Don’t be a conversation bully.  Listen with respect.
7. Not paying enough attention to supersegmentals, such as intonation, rate of speech, emphasis, tone.  You can listen not only to what’s being said, but also to what’s not being said.  The supersegmentals give away clues about people’s emotions, feelings, stress level that can be important to conversation. 
8. Disregarding feelings and emotions.  Strong feelings and emotions affect our listening, reasoning and judgment.  If the parties feel overwhelmed, it may be beneficial to take a break from the conversation.

Additional resources:

Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together by William Isaacs

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen

How to read effectively

Reading is a big component in the study of law.  Developing a skill of effective reading will improve your learning and comprehension.  Here are a few ideas you can start implementing right now to become a better reader. 

• Do multiple short-session readings instead of a single word-by-word reading of the material.  You can start with identifying the pattern of the text.  Read the title, table of contents, introduction, headings and subheadings, conclusion, note the visuals.  After this rapid read, you should be able to tell what the text is about and how it is structured.  On your second read, focus on the main ideas and arguments and skip the minor details.  During your subsequent reading sessions, go deeper into the text to extract the necessary level of detail till you have a good grasp of the material and are ready to integrate and implement it.
• Always formulate the purpose of your reading.  What do you want to take away from the reading?  Write down questions and problems that you think can be answered and solved once you read the text.  Your purpose and questions may change as you progress in your reading sessions. Just thinks about it, in most real life situations, you will start off with a problem that you will need to solve through your research.
• Practice active reading.  Make notes as you read, highlight the key points and trigger words, use color codes to categorize the information, tab the important pages.  Incorporate the main ideas into outlines, mindmaps, flow charts, etc.
• Probe your understanding.  Think critically, ask questions, note the logic behind the arguments, classify the information, connect the details to the big picture, compare it to what you already know.   Test it with your own examples.  Think of the ways to make the information more relevant to you personally.
• Take action.  Use the knowledge you have acquired from the reading.  Test it with flashcards, apply it to new situations, include it into your own analysis, experiment with it.  Own it.
• When you read for review, skim the text for the key words to see if they trigger recall of the main ideas.  Keep the big picture in your mind.  Test yourself continuously with questions.   

I hope you find these tips useful.  For more suggestions, read How to Read and Digest a Book! by George Ambler.

Put on your detective hat: we are going issue-spotting

Issue-spotting is one of the most important skills you need to succeed in law school and to pass the bar exam.  How do you go about developing this skill?  Here are a few ideas:

• When you learn a new legal concept, pay attention to the context in which it applies.  What are the facts that trigger this rule of law? Stories are your friends when it comes to issue-spotting. What cases do you remember best?  Probably, the ones with the most bizarre and memorable story lines.  Make the stories vivid in your mind because images help your memory.  I still remember the “hairy hand” case from the Contracts course.   
• When you prepare your outline, include a case brief or a hypothetical to introduce the legal rule.  See my previous post on mind-mapping for an example.  Just knowing the law is not enough if you can’t recognize when to apply it. 
• They say that the best way to learn something is to teach it.  If you were a professor, what fact pattern or hypothetical would you use to illustrate the legal rule?  Play with the facts, change them, see how it affects the legal outcome.  This exercise helps to train your brain to look for the relevant information.
• Create a map of tags, or buzzwords, for a particular legal rule or  an element.   Let’s say, I know my five criteria to acquire title by adverse possession, but I want to know what facts would trigger the application of the “actual” element.  Here is the sub-map I created for this specific element, click on it to enlarge. A word of caution:  this sub-map shows which facts may trigger the application  of the element “actual”, it does not tell us whether the presence of those circumstances will satisfy the test.  They may or they may not.  In fact, courts may reach different conclusions.  What’s important for you is to spot the issue and analyze it even if you are unsure how the courts will come out on this.
• Practice, practice, practice! Flashcards are very useful for issue-spotting, and so are practice tests.  You can even read a newspaper and spot issues if you want to.
• When you are taking the test, scrutinize the facts.  Why is this seemingly trivial detail mentioned here?  What is its legal significance? Ask: “So what?”  However, don’t invent issues, it’s a waste of time.

As to the different types of testable issues, read Professor Vernellia Randall’s explanations and the Flowchart for Issue-spotting.