Dear 1L, Justice Elena Kagan apparently didn’t rush to “write home about” her 1L fall grades, either. She only received two, according to reports, and they came as a shock:

a B in Crim;
a B- in Torts.

What’s your first move?

Try my P-E-N approach. It kills the culprits behind 3 biggies behind empty words:

— A handful of top schools are entirely pass/fail, and at the T14s I’m aware of, no one really gets below a B.

— Yet at many other schools, a large % of students fail or lose scholarships after 1L fall. The “average” is B- or even a C.

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 screw up.

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

—Did YOUR middle-school teacher try to sell you that “rule,” too?

And did she also teach you, “It’s wrong grammatically” to use a preposition that way?

Well, she sold you 2 heaps of crap.

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.

Dear Legal Writer, A recent remark by a BigLaw partner stopped me dead in my tracks.

On a post about legal writing (not mine), he commented,

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.

See if you know which of these 3 sentences is correct:

A: The cake comprised 6 ingredients.
B: The cake was comprised by 6 ingredients.
C: The cake was comprised of 6 ingredients.

Here’s the “how-to”:

For any writing project, cut your process into 4 stages. It helps to think of the stages building a house:

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.

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1️⃣ Identify the BIG ISSUES.