Welcome to my LinkedIn archive.
Categories: Dear 1L, Dear 2L, Legal Writing
By Year: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021
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Search by word to find what I’ve written on the topic of your choosing!
Dear 1L, I’ve been working on my own, from home, now for a while.
One thing that’s hard is that you don’t get to talk to many people in person during the day.
And so, it was especially nice to have someone drop by my house today—@ Monica Muehsam. If it hadn’t been for posting on LinkedIn, we never would have met!
Monica is a paralegal who recently went out on her own. She’s going to be helping me with a few projects.
Keeping up with the LinkedIn Algorithm — Fall 2022
�� Most say it’s a fool’s errand to try to keep up with the LinkedIn algorithm. That’s probably
sage advice, but I admit I get curious!
And so, when the great Richard van der Blom published the 2022 Algorithm Report yesterday, I read it.
There’s a ton to unpack, but here are my top ten takeaways:
Dear 1L Spotlight: Amelia Hamman
Dear 1L - Spotlight
Today I introduce Amelia Hamman, an immigrant from South Africa by way of Canada, who credits her work ethic and adventurous spirit to the sacrifices her parents made to give their children the best possible future.
Here’s some backstory:
▫️ Amelia grew up speaking Afrikaans before she spoke English.
Dear 1L, An excellent vocab primer.
Law students: Here is an excellent vocab primer to improve your understanding during networking conversations with attorneys. Read the thread, too, as there are other handy terms mentioned. Hope you find helpful!!
💌 Dear 1L, This is the time in the semester when everyone starts freaking out a little bit. A lot of you have reached out to me.
You’re feeling
anxious
overwhelmed
confused
lost
drained
prone to procrastination
exhausted
Imposter Syndrome.
Dear 1L: How to Keep Your Reader Engaged
✏️ Dear 1L Writer,
Your professor is prone to boredom and distraction.
That’s not some big revelation.
All Readers are, and it’s especially true for Readers of legal writing.
Dear 1L, When you first start on LinkedIn, you need to train the algorithm to show you posts you want to read. Otherwise, your feed will be all over the place—a hodge-podge.
It won’t take long to improve it dramatically, but you do need to be proactive. Here are 5 steps.
1️⃣ Follow people whose content you enjoy.
▫️ If it’s someone from whom you never want to miss a post, tap the bell icon in the upper right corner of their main profile page.
Dear 1L Writer. Many of you have said I should write posts with checklists that don’t take long to read. (1L is a busy time!)
✏️ And so, in that spirit, here are are the top 10 writing mistakes I see 1Ls make:
1: Too much passive voice. (Prefer the active.)
2: Needlessly long sentences. (Keep ‘em short.)
3: Needlessly complex sentence structure. (Keep ‘em simple.)
Dear 1L, I fell into a trap in legal writing class. I’d like to spare you the same. (Skip to the 3 Keys if pressed for time.)
💌 We learned that a doctor had autopsied the wrong body. It was the corpse of a nine year-old girl who’d just died.
Her mother had given no consent and was undone. The thought of her little girl’s body being butchered in that way was just too much for her.
She fell into deep despair.
Dear Legal Writer: It’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition
“You should never end a sentence with a preposition.” Were you taught this rule, too? Well, it’s crap.
Here’s evidence, with some important caveats to think about & references for further reading.
🔷 Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern Legal English Usage, 4th ed. (2016), pp. 723-24:
Dear 1L, You should stop spending so much time preparing for class and start spending more time after class synthesizing what you’ve learned.
🔷 Don’t worry about cold calls. You should be beyond that worry, by now.
—Your course grade is the same, whether you answer brilliantly or pass.
🔷 Skim and book-brief quickly. After class, read answers to sample essay questions.
My very first day working as a new associate in New York, I made a “big mistake.”
I didn’t think it warranted the “big” adjective, or how a partner spoke to me, but it was a mistake nonetheless.
The lesson is to carry something with you to take notes: Always be ready to receive information and assignments when you show up to work with a supervising attorney.
Recommending John Espirian
I write today to thank and recommend someone who helped and inspired me the most during my first year on LinkedIn.
John Espirian is my LinkedIn guru and overall favorite source of advice for marketing and business development (BD). John is humble, kind, and approachable—do follow him, but only connect if you’re willing to do some homework first.
Dear 1L Spotlight: Michael Aronson
💫 Dear 1L - Spotlight
Today I introduce Michael Aronson, a 2L who started as a small-town, ice-hockey goalie with big-time plans: He’d someday become the star starting goalie for the Florida Panthers.
During long training hours with the team’s goalie coach, Michael ultimately seized a spot on a Junior-level team and was one big step closer to realizing his hockey-star dream.
Dear 1L, Try to get outside today (Sunday)
Dear 1L,
I know that Sunday is likely a “stay in & catch up on reading” day for you. I won’t add to your burden long. Just a thought from the mother in me:
Do try to get outside. It is so good for the soul. And the better your whole self feels, the better you will do your reading—the better you will perform overall.