My heart races.
My stomach sinks.
My breath hastens, and SNAP:

I suddenly become drenched, head to toe.

My genes are 99% Irish, too.

So a surge of adrenaline makes the the blood pump up into my face and turn me into the most conspicuously nervous-looking red tomato 🍅.

And it’s from someone I’d never even heard of before (Brittany S. Stevens, an author of a series on law school success).

She gave 📕 Dear 1L 📕 this 5-star review on Amazon!

My favorite parts:

👉 “This is not a book you read once and shelve. It’s a trusted supplement students can return to throughout 1L and beyond.”

Just as you’re starting to hit your stride—thinking you might actually “get” how to do this whole law school thing—

WHAM ❗️—the brief smacks you in the face and you feel totally inadequate again.

Please know: it is not just you.

Writing a legal brief for the very first time is enough to bring even an experienced legal analyst to their knees.

Dear Pre-L:

If you start law school in the fall, please don’t get blindsided by early recruiting. Do these 4 things:

🔷 1: Invest time in deep soul-searching about what you want to do with your JD.

Research the types of jobs lawyers do;
find out how different lawyers actually spend their time;

I haven’t seen this before.

Apparently, too, several schools had some type of OCI (on-campus recruiting) program last week, and students now have call backs coming up soon.

So I pulled together my best interview tips from “Dear 1L” ch 15 and added a few more.

“Evergreen” is a term you might recognize from the plant world:
—it refers to trees that remain green through winter.

But “evergreen” writing means writing that surpasses its immediate purpose and audience, keeping its usefulness over time.

🔸 My first was 1996 (NY). Debilitating back spasms made it too painful for me to sit for the in‑person bar-prep courses (which were the only game in town then).

So I studied alone at my parents’ house.

Even my firm mattress felt too mushy, so I studied, ate, and slept on a comforter on the floor.

👉 This is a fantastic article
(and a quick read)—-it will help you!!

Note the emphasis on LISTENING during the oral argument.

For those with my “Dear 1L” book, don’t forget to review “Interlude No. 6” at p. 259 for my oral-argument advice.

A still-dark scene on my window bay.
Forever it took for the sun to rise,
And away it will go, long before 5.

So while, on grades, you’ve a one-track eye,
Please do this ONE thing for me today,
and here is the why:

And while you’re at it, cut “regard” from your vocabulary altogether:

👎 “Regarding”
👎👎 “In regard to”
👎👎👎 “As regards”

All of these sound like nails on a chalkboard in legal writing.
They bloat your sentences and make them sound clunky and awkward

She only received two, according to reports, and they came as a shock:

a B in Crim;
a B- in Torts.

True, Justice Kagan was at Harvard Law School—where simply passing might be cause to celebrate—but her story should inspire you wherever you attend.

“Find” and “hold” mean very different things.

▪️ “Find” refers to determining facts—what actually happened. This is the job of a fact-finder (a jury, or sometimes a judge in a bench trial or preliminary hearing).

▪️ “Hold” refers to a legal conclusion—a court’s determination of what the law means or what the law requires, given the facts.

‍ ‍

Well, here’s why we use it and how you can do so effectively in your spring brief:

🔷 “To be sure” signals, “I will now acknowledge the point that most hurts me, in hopes of defusing it on my own terms.”

Please, if you didn’t get what you’d hoped for, please know there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are not some sort of screwup.

—> What happened is you got screwed by a brutal curve.

I’ve heard the expression articulated in a number of different ways over the years, and they all piss me off.

So here’s what I want you to remember instead: