Because five years ago, 9-22-2021, I hit “post” here for the first time.

I hoped to find law students who might need my tutoring help.
(I also secretly hoped someone would notice me and offer me a “real” job.)

What I found instead was a professional home, a workplace, and eventually all of you.

And THAT feels worth celebrating.

🛑 The WRONG WAY is to:

-Pick a random lawyer
-Learn nothing about them
-Send them a generic message
-Explain you want to “pick their brain”
-Make clear you seek a 1-time transaction
-Suggest that they “jump on” a 60-min Zoom

He crossed it out automatically—every time he saw it—to save space.

But sometimes, deleting “that” makes the reader picture a judge physically holding a party.

That was not a clarity improvement.

3.7+ GPA.
Three years of experience.
Impressive volunteer work and leadership.

Yet she had received not one interview through OCI.

Her career-services office could not understand why. Neither could I—until I saw the actual résumé.

The Habit: sticking a word in quotation marks, then stuffing it in parentheses (hereinafter, a "Parenthetical").

Once you start suffering from this Habit, you can't stop, which is a condition I call can’t-stop-itis ("Can't-Stop-Itis").

——Exhibit A ("Exhibit A")——

and 3 years from now,
only 1 of you will be here.”

Old law-school deans apparently used to say that to 1Ls on their first day of law school.

Maybe they thought it would incentivize students to work hard from Day 1, but boy doesn’t that quote miss the boat—

Here’s what I want you to think about instead:

It’s Latin.
It’s legalese.
And it makes you go in slow-mo.

❌ “Assuming, arguendo, that the case is ripe for review, the plaintiff still lacks standing to bring it.”

Try “even if” instead.

(It’ll help you sound less dead.)

✅ “Even if the case were ripe for review, the plaintiff lacks standing to bring it.”

"When doing all these readings, I find myself unable to really comprehend what I'm reading, even after a few rereads and taking hours upon hours for just one class. Do you have any tips for improving comprehension while not taking forever to get through all this material?"

Here is the letter I wrote back—

It’s for her, and for every new law student who is spending hours and hours reading and worrying that everyone else somehow "gets it."

I was skeptical about Jimmy. Jimmy Lai

And I underestimated him.

In fact, when he sent me a copy of his book, “Quietly Influential,” all I could think was:

▪️ What did some random Oklahoma lawyer who’d started posting years after me have to teach me about LinkedIn?

Verbs come in two types:

1: ACTION verbs—

These propel your reader forward by presenting action.

2: TO-BE verbs (also called, “state-of-being” verbs)—

These trap your reader in place by describing a static condition.

Wow, see the difference it makes:

-- To err is human. However, to forgive is divine.

-- To err is human. To forgive, however, is divine. ‼

Try this edit today!

Learn them now so you don’t lose points when it counts.

1. In the legal world, we spell the word “judgment” without an “e.”

—> Change your Word settings so they autocorrect “judgement” to “judgment” when you type.

Although both spellings work in the non-legal context, now that you’re joining the legal world, you should probably just start using the “judgment” spelling in everything you write.

So I came up with this new framework: M-A-D-E

M = Master the material
A = Arrange the material
D = Draft the sections
E = Edit in stages

(This is for trial-court briefs.)

Here are the details:

📍 "based on"
📍 "as a result of"
📍 "for the reason that"
📍 "due to the fact that"
📍 "in light of the fact that"
📍 "on account of the fact that"

All these ways take a roundabout route to get to your point.

They're also clunky to read, and they add to your word count.

It lures you in with the promise of high grades, a job at a big firm that pays well, and a credential that makes your school look good.

And it is very hard to climb out of once it has you.

Before you know it, you're stuck—convinced Big Law is your only path to success, even if it was never part of your plan to begin with.