Between midterms, the memo, AND recruiting for summer internships, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

And the memo is killing you.

It’s eating up way more time than expected, and you feel lost on how to structure the Discussion section.

You’ve got cases going both ways, arguments that seem to fit in multiple places, and no clear sense of what should come first.

BEFORE: I was NERVOUS before presenting this morning.

AFTER: It went really well.

Here’s what we ended up talking about:

— Three mistakes new associates make on page 1
— Three things to include in every case description

They are verbs hiding inside clunky noun clauses:
 
For example, take the clause, “make the decision”:
 
            ORIG: The court made the decision to exclude the expert’s testimony. 👎
 
            REV: The court decided to exclude the expert’s testimony. ✅
 
“Made the decision” is not wrong.

🔷 FRAMEWORK

Assume your hypothetical asks whether a plaintiff can prevail on an issue that has three subparts, A, B, and C and that you conclude the plaintiff is likely to satisfy A, B, and C—and therefore likely to win on the overall issue.  For each subpart section (sections A, B, and C), you should proceed in this order:

A: Plaintiff should satisfy element A.

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!