This post is for those taking the February bar exam.
I had to take 3 different state bars over 15 years.
Every time, it was sheer hell. Mixed with panic.

The volume of material was prohibitive.
Unprecedented. Abnormal even.
And oh—so—painfully boring.

These days, it’s easy to get blue.

Another winter Sunday,

In the library, you will be.

School’s become a sole social outlet.

Your desk or bed-top where you dine.

It’s all work, no play.

I received this letter from the Pennsylvania Bar. It hit me kind of hard.

It’s not a bad thing or anything like that. But it’s a clear change in official status.

It is bittersweet, too, as I loved practicing law, and it will always be a big part of me.

Dear 1L,

The best interview advice I ever received was to ask the type of questions that my interviewer would enjoy answering.

Why does this work?

Many of you are writing summary judgment briefs under Rule 56 this spring. Yet in your fall Civ Pro class, you’re lucky if Rule 56 even came up. Worse still, you’ve never written a summary judgment brief before.

I thought a little primer on procedure, with some phrases you might use, would help.

Dear 1L, When you have to write -the kind of brief you’ve never written before, on a topic you’ve never written about before, in a court you’ve never practiced in before, please do not start without several good models.

Pull the briefs from the most applicable court cases you’ve found from your research.

Read models from legal writers who are better at writing and have more experience than you.

Dear 1L, I wish I had a magic potion. You all could take it and convert Bs, Cs & Ds into As this spring. But alas, I have only my words. So please listen:

If you want your spring grades to differ from those of the fall, YOU must do something different. It’s not enough to study “longer” or “harder” this semester. You need to study “smarter.”

Dear 1L, This may sound silly, but one thing I did during 1L weekdays that really helped me was to eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch each day, at roughly the same time each day.

During those time-blocks, I sat alone and did my reading for the classes coming up later that same day.

Dear 1L, From Day 1, I was lost in Con Law. Out of my league.

At my school, there were 2 camps of people. In one were the PoliSci/Gov. majors. And their friends: the read-multiple-newspapers-every-day types.

They assembled in the library lounge to read the library’s hard-copy subscriptions each afternoon. And they blathered on about politics.

Dear 1L, Today I have news to celebrate: #Dear1L has 2,000 followers!

I’ve never publicly celebrated any milestone in my own follower count before. Doing so has never felt quite right to me (which is stupid, I know, and I’m trying to get past).

But with Dear 1L, I’ve been eager to promote.

If you’re feeling anxious about upcoming interviews for your first “legal” job, that’s normal. Here’s some advice from the 100 or so law-student interviews I’ve conducted.

1. BE YOURSELF. The best job interviews proceed like a normal conversation.

🔹 Do not recite rehearsed answers.

Dear 1L, Legal research takes time. How do you know when you’ve done enough? Follow this checklist:

1. Find, pull, and skim three relevant cases (from secondary sources, sample briefs, searches under keywords & headnotes, etc.).

Dear 1L, One job I do is reviewing writing samples for lawyers and law students who are applying to legal jobs. Here’s a strong suggestion:

Include a short cover memo with your writing sample—even if an employer doesn’t require one.

Why?

Dear 1L, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan reportedly was unhappy about her 1L fall grades.

True, she was at Harvard, but her B and B- grades from her first fall were not something she was eager to “write home about.”