🔷 1: Convert sentences to active voice.

Eg
“The boy hit the ball.”

—is shorter than—

❌ “The ball was hit by the boy.”

I am WAY outside my comfort zone, but I know you all are too.

Aiming to spread cheer and extra energy to help carry you through the crunch time ahead.

Fondly,

💌 Amanda

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.

�� 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

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.

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!!

🔷 1: Using “utilize” for “use” won’t make you sound smart.

More likely, you’ll come off as “trying to sound smart” — perhaps smarter than you really are. That’s a bad look.

⭐️ Unless you are positive that in your legal context, your Reader prefers “utilize” to mean “use” — does anyone? — just write “use.”

You’re feeling

anxious
overwhelmed
confused
lost
drained
prone to procrastination
exhausted
Imposter Syndrome.

✏️ 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.

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.

✏️ 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.)

💌 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.

“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:

🔷 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.

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.