Below is some info I’ve gathered for 2024. I hope you’ll help out by adding what you’ve been seeing and hearing in your location.

🔷 Some perspective:

We’ve been enjoying family time with the girls at home, playing lots of games by the fire and indulging in Matt's delicious dinners. I will be back to posting again next week.

What should your tone be with so many potential, diverse readers?

Try this:

Have ONE specific person in mind you’re writing to and write your post as if you are speaking ONLY to them.

People in the go-go, law-firm-corporate-legal world are busy.

I’d fallen out of the loop. I didn’t have anything interesting to say anymore, I suppose, so they just stopped calling. I get it.

This is for all law students about final exams. I’ve been working really hard on something for you.

It’s a template for an IRAC essay.

It shows my mental process and how I OUTLINED my analysis of each issue--BEFORE I wrote a single word.

—EXAMS: How to Structure an IRAC Essay—

Dear 1L, Follow these 9 steps to make sure you don’t miss out on points.

***

1️⃣ Identify the BIG ISSUES.

1: What kind of lawyer are you going to be?
2: Where will you be working this summer?
3: Where will you be working after law school?

🔸 For 1Ls, they likely have absolutely no idea.

Your questions will surely cause great stress.

Every 1L needs a marching band,
Where allies flock to lend a hand.

One who cheers ‘em when they start to soar.

Two who lift ‘em when they’re on the floor.

Three who push ‘em past their familar zone.

Dear 1L,

Doctrinal classes teach you to:

—read legal rules & cases;

—see both sides of an issue.

Writing classes teach you to:

When I first started posting on LinkedIn, I struggled to find my “voice.”

Here are the 3 biggest things that helped me:

1️⃣ I kept a laser focus on a good answer to “WHY?”

There’s something magical about meeting in person.

It was 2-2-2022 when I first reached out to Dena Lefkowitz, Esq., PCC ★

— just to say “hey.” (I sent an out-of-the-blue DM.)

Dear 1L, I thought you might relate to these words by Justice Antonin Scalia.

They were a key theme in his speech on “Writing Well,” as delivered at a 2008 Scribes award dinner in NYC*.

So please know, it is NOT just you.

Dear 1L, These weeks with the memo were the most brutal of 1L for me.

The memo is a bear for everyone, every year.

I know many of you are struggling out there. Please know I think of you EVERY day.

Dear 1L, Every year, I see the EXACT SAME substantive mistakes in 1L legal
memos.

Here are the 4 biggest, common culprits.

I’ll get you a self-editing checklist with technical fixes tomorrow For now, start by fixing these: