“What will the economy mean for law-firm job offers after this summer—and beyond?”

That’s a common question I’ve gotten from a lot of you lately. (And same query as to other legal jobs.)

The concern seems to stem from the last bad recession in 2009, when many started 3L with deferred offers, or none at all.

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.”

Dear 1L, I hope you are ok. Everyone is in some state of reeling, it seems, this weekend.

My message is that you did nothing wrong. It is just the brutal curve. 90% or more of you will not be in the top. You are, in no way, alone.

I do not fully understand why law schools grade this way, or why the curve at one law school can be so dramatically different from that at another.