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Amanda’s LinkedIn Posts
Welcome to my LinkedIn archive. Search by word to find what I’ve written on the topic of your choosing!
Amanda’s Archive
Dear 1L: on “However, …”
Dear 1L: On Starting a Sentence with “However,”
Dear 1L: MSJ Primer
Dear 1L, Most of you are writing summary judgment briefs this spring. You approach…
Dear 1L: IRAC Outline – Standing
Dear 1L, Here is the start of an outline template for an IRAC exam…
Dear 1L: Interview Tips
Dear 1L, I have been conducting mock Zoom interviews of law students during the…
Recent Posts
Dear 1L, the 1L spring brief is a 1L confidence thief.
Dear 1L, the 1L spring brief is a 1L confidence thief. Just as you’re…
I am starting a new series for pre-law students. This one’s on 4 things to do for your career before law school starts.
Dear Pre-L: If you start law school in the fall, please don’t get blindsided…
“It’s hard to take a brief seriously when it is MOOing at you.”
—Chris Schandevel (describing a brief in which “MOO” was used to define an agreement…
As a solopreneur, I am still figuring out what I “do.”
That is both good and bad. Good is that:—No one criticizes me.—No one dictates…
Dear 1L, It’s new: big law firms are giving 1Ls $50K to commit for 2L summer (and they can go work somewhere else for 1L summer). —WOW.
I haven’t seen this before. Apparently, too, several schools had some type of OCI…
Dear 1L, A legal brief should be evergreen.
“Evergreen” is a term you might recognize from the plant world:—it refers to trees…
Steal my study hack that passed me 3 bar exams—
🔸 My first was 1996 (NY). Debilitating back spasms made it too painful for…
Dear 1L, I can’t forget the job interview I totally bombed.
Lesson for you in your law-firm interviews: Beware of the associate lunch. Growing up,…
If you want to get better at legal writing, you need to shift how you THINK about legal writing.
Here are 5 key shifts to make: 1️⃣ I am writing to impress —>…
Law students—especially 1Ls with oral argument coming up:
👉 This is a fantastic article(and a quick read)—-it will help you!! Note the…
Dear legal writer, Feeling lost in a sentence/nothing is sounding right? Just move these 2 words:
Subject + Verb 🔹 1: Identify the subject in your sentence. The SUBJECT tells…
Dear Legal Writer, It’s hard to promote something when you’ve never done it before and don’t know how it will go, but here’s my stab:
I am thinking of hosting a small “legal writing lab” in February. The idea…
I was diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder in law school, and January was always so especially bleak. And so, dear 1L, I thought of you as I woke today.
A still-dark scene on my window bay.Forever it took for the sun to rise,And…
Dear Legal Writer, Hello to you, and DO-SI-DO. Today you become a 3-dash pro:
the hyphen (-),the en-dash (–),the em-dash (that’s 3!) Check out below, and an expert…
Dear 1L, Expel “regard” from your legal writing.
And while you’re at it, cut “regard” from your vocabulary altogether: 👎 “Regarding”👎👎 “In…
Dear 1L, Justice Elena Kagan apparently didn’t rush to “write home about” her 1L fall grades, either
She only received two, according to reports, and they came as a shock: a…
Dear Legal Writer: Stop writing “the court found”!
“Find” and “hold” mean very different things. ▪️ “Find” refers to determining facts—what actually…
Dear 1L, “To be sure” is a genteel expression that lawyers use a lot. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
Well, here’s why we use it and how you can do so effectively in…