Legal Skills Prof Blog

Widener Law has offered buy-outs to 21 faculty members in response to falling applications

You may remember late last year that Vermont Law School announced a buy-out plan for staff members in light of declining tuition revenue given the drop in law school applications.  There was talk that faculty buy-out offers might be next through I haven't seen any reports of that actually happening.  Now the Delaware Law Weekly is reporting that Widener Law School, which occupies two campuses in Harrisburg, PA and Wilmington, DE, several months ago offered 21 faculty members buy-out packages in response to declining applications.  (The university at large offered buy-outs to another 17 profs).

Widener May Split Its Campuses Into Two Law Schools

Widener has not been immune from the drop in law school applications and, thus, decreased enrollment. According to university data, Widener had 1,369 full- and part-time students at both campuses during the fall of 2011. Of that total, 950 students attended the Wilmington campus while the remaining 419 attended the Harrisburg campus. This year, the school recorded 1,181 full- and part-time students at both campuses, with 817 in Wilmington and 364 in Harrisburg.

University data also reveals that applications for the Harrisburg campus are down roughly 24 percent. As of May 14, Widener had 308 Harrisburg-specific applications - a sharp decline from the 408 applications they had on the same date last year.

. . . .

In February, the university offered buyout packages to 21 law professors and 17 other professors university-wide. Of the law professors, 16 were based in Wilmington and five were located in Harrisburg.

"The packages were offered as a proactive method to ensure the university's financial health," Allen said. "We need to balance our budget and there is no secret that fewer people are going to law school around the country. We are taking steps to keep our finances in balance and this was one of those steps."

The administration is also considering making cuts to an intensive trial advocacy program which relies on paying the costs to fly-in guest instructors from all over the country.

Continue reading at the Delaware Law Weekly here.

Hat tip to the TaxProf Blog.

(jbl).

Plaintiff in Lemon v. Kurtzman Passes Away

 Those of us who sometimes entangle ourselves in church-state cases are all too familiar with Lemon v. Kurtzman and the “Lemon test” that it generated. Word now comes that Alton Lemon has passed on.

Alton T. Lemon, the lead plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case setting a key test for evaluating the constitutionality of government aid to religious schools, has died, according to published reports.

Lemon was an activist who helped challenge a 1968 Pennsylvania law that authorized state reimbursement of nonpublic schools, including religious schools, for "secular" services such as teachers' salaries, textbooks, and other instructional materials.

He was 84 and suffered from Alzheimer's disease, according to his obituary in The New York Times. He died May 4 in Jenkintown, Pa.

In its 1971 decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the high court struck down the Pennsylvania program, along with a similar Rhode Island program in a consolidated case, as resulting in an excessive entanglement between government and religion in violation of the First Amendment's prohibition against government establishment of religion.

The entanglement stemmed from the state oversight necessary to ensure that only secular expenses of a religious school be reimbursed, such as a continuing need by government auditors to inspect the church school's finances, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said in the majority opinion of the 7-1 decision.

You can read more here.

(ljs)

Dr. Robert Cialdini on the six principles of effective persuasion

Many are familiar with Dr. Cialdini as the author of the bestselling  Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion.  Dr. Cialdini recently sat down for an interview with the Business Insider during which he summarized his research on persuasive techniques into six guiding principles.  They include:

1. Reciprocity - It’s the principle that suggests that people give back to you the kind of treatment that they’ve received from you. If you do something first, by giving them an item of value, a piece of information, or a positive attitude, it will all come back to you. The key is to go first.
2. Consistency - People will feel a desire to comply with a request if they see that it’s consistent with what they’ve publicly committed themselves to in your presence. The implication there is to ask people to state their priorities, their commitments, the features of the situation that they think are most important, and then align your requests or proposals with those things. The rule for consistency will cause them to want to say yes to what they’ve already told you that they will do or what they do value.
3. Social Proof - People will be likely to say yes to your request if you give them evidence that people just like them have been saying yes to it, too.
4. Liking - No surprise that people prefer to say yes to a request to the degree that they know and like the requester. No surprise, but at the same time it’s a simple way to make things happen in your direction is to uncover genuine similarities or parallels that exist between you and the person you want to influence, and then raise them to the surface. That increases rapport.
5. Authority - Authority refers to the tendency of people to be persuaded in your direction when they see you as having knowledge and credibility on the topic. What’s interesting is how many people fail to properly inform their audience of their genuine credentials before launching into an influence attempt. It’s a big mistake.
6. Scarcity - People will try to seize those opportunities that you offer them that are rare or scarce, dwindling in availability. That’s an important reminder that we need to differentiate what we have to offer that is different from our rivals or competitors. That way we can tell people honestly, “You can only get this aspect, or this feature, or this combination of advantages by moving in the direction that I’m recommending.”

Continue reading here to find out what Dr. Cialdini says is the most common mistake people make when they are trying to influence another as well as the full text of his interview with the Business Insider.

(jbl).

Canadian Courts May Cut and Paste Their Opinions

[The  Canadian Supreme Court] upheld portions of a $4-million award in a medical malpractice lawsuit, concluding the trial judge had not tainted his reasoning by importing large portions of the plaintiff’s written arguments. . . .

The decision provided an emphatic response to an increasingly contentious issue in the legal world – material from other sources that is pasted into decisions. Concern is rising at all levels of courts about passages copied from other documents and decisions, often without a trace of attribution.

The B.C. Court of Appeal had earlier reversed the finding in the malpractice lawsuit largely because the trial judge copied, and failed to attribute, significant portions from the plaintiff’s closing arguments.

The high court stated that judges may incorporate external material into decisions provided they have applied themselves diligently to the legal issues in the case.

You can read more here.

The issue surprises me. Long ago, in my law school days, a fellow student discovered that a judge had incorporated a large part of the student’s law review note into an opinion without giving credit. We thought this bad manners, but otherwise no big deal.

(ljs)

 

 

Disturbing Article on Lawyer Suicides

There is a disturbing article on a rash of lawyer suicides in my hometown paper, the Courier Journal.  You can find the article here.

(Scott Fruehwald)

"Beyond Skills Training, Revisited: Spiraling the Pyramid of Clinical Education"

This article is by Professor Carolyn Grose (William Mitchell) and available at 19 Clinical L. Rev. 489  (2013) and SSRN here.  From the abstract:

As I engaged in the planning process for the 2011 AALS Clinical Conference, and also in the work of curricular reform at my own law school, I found myself spiraling around questions about the essence of clinical pedagogy. What is it? What are its goals? What are its methods? Which, if any, of these goals and methods are unique to what has come to be considered “pure” clinical pedagogy, and therefore best (if not exclusively) used in “pure” clinical courses?

My journey up the spiral forms the basis for this article. Part One explores what consensus exists about the goals and methods of clinical pedagogy. Part Two describes my own pedagogy in a traditional “doctrinal” course (Estates and Trusts), identifying my dominant goals and methods and their overlap with those identified in Part One as “clinical.” Part Three identifies those goals and methods that remain “purely” clinical – those that really cannot be used effectively in anything but a traditional clinic course. And the piece concludes with proposed answers to the questions raised above, and a description of what this analysis might mean for the future of clinical pedagogy and the broader law school curriculum.

(jbl).

Writing Tips from the Original “Mad Man”

David Ogilvy was the iconic advertising executive. His “Confessions of an Advertising Man” remains a classic. In 1982, he offered this advice on writing to his employees. Much of the advice applies to legal writers.

The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well.

Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.

David

Thnx to Brain Pickings.

(ljs)

 

List of schools doing the best job teaching students law practice technology skills

This is about which schools are teaching students how to use technology to practice law, not about teaching students the legal issues connected to technology use.  From the Lawyering Blog with a hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog for compiling the list of thirteen schools that were deemed to be doing the best job at imparting these skills.

13 Top Law Schools Teaching Law Practice Technology

The eLawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA was created in 2000 . . . .

By "law practice technology" the Task Force does not mean technology and law courses such as Intellectual property courses, patent law courses, courses in copyright, etc.

Instead the Task Force means the intersection of internet technologies and the practice of law.  It is no longer possible to teach law practice management without taking into account the impact of information technology on law practice. We include within this category courses that train law students in document automation, legal expert systems, and other course work that has an impact on the nature, productivity and profitability of law firms.

The Task members believe that to educate law students to be "practice ready",  particularly for law schools where the majority of graduates will end up in solo and small law firm practice, understanding the principles of law practice technology are essential.

. . . .

The criteria for inclusion on the list is:

 

1. A full-time faculty member dedicated to teaching and coordinating a program in law practice technology.  This subject matter should be the focus of serious research, including the development of innovations in law practice.

2. At least two credit courses in this subject matter such as law practice management, law practice technology, ediscovery and big data, outcome prediction,  legal project management, virtual lawyering,  expert legal systems development, document automation, and/or other coursework which deal with innovation in the delivery of legal services and law practice.

3. Non-credit courses taught by adjunct instructors don't quality.

4. Law schools sponsoring incubator programs are interesting, but these programs involve lawyers who have already graduated, not law students.

And the top schools are (in alphabetical order):

• Brigham Young University Law School
• Chicago Kent Law School
• Columbia University School of Law
• Georgetown Law School
• Indiana University Maurer School of Law 
• Michigan State Law School
• New York Law School
• Stanford Law School
• Suffolk Law School
• University of Miami Law School
• University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law
• Vermont Law School

Continue reading here.

(jbl).

Should Law Schools Have “Intruder Drills”

In the wake of violent intruders in schools, for example, the intruder in the Newtown school tragedy, some states are starting to require schools to prepare for the worst by holding mock intruder drills.

• In April, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, signed a measure that requires additional "intruder" drills in schools and speeds up the deadline for when schools must conduct their first fire drills each school year.

• Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, also a Republican, approved a bill in March to add two lockdown drills to the slate of safety exercises schools already conduct.

• Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, approved legislation in April that requires four annual lockdown drills instead of one in Washington state schools, plus an additional drill of schools' choice.

Proposals whose fates were undecided as of last week include a Missouri bill that would require all school personnel to participate in simulated active-shooter and intruder-response drills conducted by law enforcement.

A Louisiana bill still being considered would require principals to review their crisis-management plans and response every year, and consider the thoughts of students, parents, teachers, other school employees, community leaders, and public safety officials.

An Illinois bill that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has indicated he would support would require shooting drills at all schools.

The question arises whether the drills would help prevent harm when and if an actual intruder threatens a school. You can read more here at Education Week..

 Should law schools look into this procedure? Law schools do not test potential students for emotional stability, and colleges often don’t pass on their information about questionable students. Questionable students then enter the law school world where high levels of stress are often prevalent and disappointment with grades can trigger violent conduct.

(ljs)

Using Student Evaluation Data to Examine and Improve Your Program

Most of the time student evaluations end up in storage after the professors have read them.  However, David Thomson has used student evaluations to study and improve his school's Lawyering Process Program.

Using Student Evaluation Data to Examine and Improve Your Program.

Abstract: This article describes a study of five years of student evaluation data for the Lawyering Process Program at the University of Denver. The purpose of the study was to look at that aspect of student evaluation data that we might prefer not look at: the students who are unhappy for some reason. The hope was that we would, over time, see a reduction in the number of negative responses to relevant evaluation questions. As the program grew and matured over the five year period of the study, indeed we did see that reduction, which we took to mean that our program had improved over that period. Further, we used the data to examine the question of classroom size and its relationship to negative responses to evaluation questions. We discovered that there is a correlation between small classrooms and fewer negative responses to our evaluation.

(Scott Fruehwald) 

Teaching a course to law students in legal "compliance" skills

In a previous post, we noted how one law school administrator is advising students to seek jobs doing legal compliance work since that's where some of the action is these days (at least in comparison to pursuing the traditional law firm route which is a dead letter for many).  OK, but that means schools need to start offering a course that teaches students how to do that sort of work.  Over at Law.com's corporate counsel blog, Morgan Lewis partner Ryan McConnell describes the new legal compliance course he and another just finished teaching at the U. Houston Law Center.  Remember to take good notes.

Teaching Compliance: How Law Schools Can Fight Unemployment

Most U.S. law schools have been slow to respond in adding courses to meet this demand. Jay Martin (chief compliance officer at Baker Hughes) and I came up with the compliance class after we held a successful symposium on the topic at UHLC in 2012. Our goal was to organize a course that focused on systems and processes over a particular subject matter. We organized the class around basic building blocks for a compliance program:

1. Leadership
2. Standards and controls
3. Risk assessment (and forecasting)
4. Communication
5. Training
6. Monitoring and response

We drew these from the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, settlement agreements between companies and the U.S. Justice Department (so called deferred and non-prosecution agreements), guidance from the OECD, the recent DOJ/SEC FCPA Guidance, and the U.K. Ministry of Justice’s Adequate Procedures Guidance. We also drew on material risk-based programs (what we called the Moneyball approach to compliance) that I put together with Daniel Trujillo (an innovative chief compliance officer who now works at Walmart).

The first thing we did was agree that the course would not emphasize any particular compliance subject matter. It could not be a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act class or a class focused on trade controls. It had to focus on processes that were applicable to any compliance risk and use subject matter (such as the FCPA) to apply the processes. The course focused on teaching students how to design a program by mapping the risk areas to these key elements. For some companies the risk areas may be international, for others they may be purely domestic. The approach to assessing and mitigating compliance risk (or the risk-based approach) was designed to Bayesian—examining probabilities for different types compliance events based on known historical data and the potential for compliance failures, and the risk of a specific compliance failure for a particular compliance risk. The main course book was Nate Silver’s The Signal and The Noise. Students were able to hear from different in-house lawyers who came in as guest speakers to discuss their compliance program and challenges.

Class discussion included not only the subject matters that are most often associated with compliance, such as the FCPA and internal investigations, but such topics as whether compliance officers should be lawyers, whether compliance advice was privileged (and when), how to build a compliance program into a business, and how to make online training effective. The students tested our views on how to make a compliance program effective and the best internal communication methods. Although the course was only offered as a test class by the law school, next year it will be a full semester, three-hour course, with a number of class sessions devoted to making predictions about future compliance failures.

Continue reading here.

(jbl).

The One-Page Primer on Writing an Appellate Brief

The One-Page Primer on Writing an Appellate Brief

In Probate & Property, the magazine of the ABA Section on Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law, Professor B. Taylor Mattis offers a one page primer on writing appellate briefs for transactional lawyers, lawyers who often have only limited experience in crafting these documents. The advice also might be helpful to the novice student.

(ljs)

USNWR ranks law schools based on "best bang for the buck."

From Bob Morse's Inside the College Rankings column at the USNWR blog.  Included below are the top 10 schools under Mr. Morse's new "efficiency" ranking.

Which Highly Ranked Law Schools Operate Most Efficiently?

U.S. News has developed a new, exclusive list showing which law schools are able to produce the highest educational quality, as determined by their place in our Best Law Schools rankings, but spend relatively less money to achieve that quality.

. . . .

U.S. News measures financial resources in part by taking into account how much a law school spends per student on instruction, including faculty and staff salaries, library, supporting services and other expenditures, such as financial aid. The financial resources ranking factor is a direct measure of the size of each law school's yearly budget expenditures per student compared with other law schools, and it has an 11.25 percent weight in the Best Law Schools rankings methodology.

The new list is based on the concept of operating efficiency, defined as a law school's total budget expenditures per student divided by its overall score – which U.S. News uses to determine its overall numerical rank – in the 2014 Best Law Schools rankings. This calculation reveals how much each law school is spending for each point in its overall score and thus, its position in the rankings.

The less a law school spends relative to other schools as correlated to its overall U.S. News rank, the more efficient it is in producing a quality education compared with other schools.

Law school (name) (state)	U.S. News 2014 Best Law Schools rank	Total fiscal year 2012 spending per student	Spending per student for each point in the U.S. News overall score
University of Louisville (Brandeis) (KY)	68	$28,151	$654.67
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey–Camden	91	$26,858	$688.67
George Mason University (VA)	41	$38,684	$703.35
University of Wisconsin—Madison	33	$42,415	$731.29
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey—Newark	86	$30,236	$755.90
College of William and Mary (Marshall-Wythe) (VA)	33	$44,104	$760.41
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill	31	$45,232	$766.64
University of Tennessee—Knoxville	61	$34,792	$773.16
University of Nebraska—Lincoln	61	$35,228	$782.84
University of Kentucky	58	$36,407	$791.46

Click here to see the rest of the schools that made the list.

(jbl).

Mayor Cory Booker Addresses a Graduating Class

Recently, lawyer and Newark Mayor Cory Booker addressed the graduating class at Yale. Here is an excerpt:

I promise you, you will have mornings where you wake up and feel this weight of shame weighing you down in your bed so you don’t want to get up,” Booker said. “I tell you, you will have days like this, where [you will feel] fear, or pain, or sorrow, or even the stinking malaise of depression — where you can’t even find your enthusiasms. And I’ve come to realize that in life, real courage is not giving a speech or running into a burning building … Real courage is holding on to a still voice in your head that says ‘I must keep going.’ It’s that voice that says nothing is a failure if it is not final — that voice that says to you: ‘Get out of bed. Keep going. I will not quit. I will not give up no matter how dark the days, no matter how big my failure. I won’t lose lessons that I could gather while on my knees. I won’t lose the lessons I can find in my lowest pits of despair, because when I emerge, it’s those lessons that will define my being.

 He continued:

 As you put your sights on your goals — no matter how great and compelling they are — as you look into the distance, don’t forget what is right in front of you today. No matter how great your dreams, no matter how great your destiny, the biggest thing you can do in any day is a small act of kindness.

Booker told the seniors that often those small acts are “the least glamorous things,” such as helping a child improve his or her reading, or helping someone fill out an application for food stamps.

“Be love, be kindness, be justice,” urged Booker. “Don’t let it be something you seek; let it be something you embody.”

The full account of his speech is here.

(ljs)

 

Will an LL.M. help you get a job?

The conventional wisdom, at least prior to the current law school "crisis," was that an LL.M., especially in tax, was a very good investment in terms of increasing one's job prospects.  That was especially true for grads from lower ranked schools who might be able to leverage an LL.M. from a top program like NYU's into a BigLaw job or a really good government position.  But more recently, some are claiming that most LL.M's, like the J.D., merely exploits the hopes of young people facing a bleak job market with few alternatives.  "Lawyers losing money" is what Professor Paul Campos calls the LL.M. 

On the other side of the coin is this report from a 2012 LL.M graduate who says that for him and others he knows who obtained an advanced degree in taxation, the investment was definitely worth it.  From Law.com

Does a Graduate Law Degree Increase a Lawyer's Value?

. . . .

The 24 credit hours spent in the classroom while obtaining an LL.M. will surely provide you with an in-depth understanding of the law in a specialized area, but will it help you get a job in this specialized area?

Based on my personal experience, the answer is a resounding "yes"; I would not be where I am in my career without the degree.

. . . .

I was curious to determine whether other LL.M. recipients shared similar experiences as I, and did those additional three letters after a J.D. really make much of a difference? Brittany Horn Cook, a fellow J.D. LL.M., stated that her LL.M. helped set her apart and gave her a better opportunity to get interviews within the appropriate practice areas. Cook claims she "definitely saw an uptick in responses to applications" once she was simply admitted to the LL.M. program. Cook began her LL.M. study immediately after completing her J.D. in 2010, on the heels of a barren job market. While attending her first semester in the LL.M. program, Cook happened upon a fellow LL.M. student who was working as a trust administrator for a large bank. This student, upon hearing of Cook's job search, offered to pass Cook's resume along to her boss. And thus, Cook entered into the world of trust administration; she now works for a prestigious trust company in Wilmington, Del. Her current job boasts eight employees in its Delaware office — four of whom hold LL.M. degrees.

. . . .

An LL.M. in taxation is seemingly exalted, but other specialization in this degree should also be discussed. Young attorney Danielle Holander received her LL.M. in intellectual property from Yeshiva University in 2010 and is currently unemployed. Holander nonetheless states the experience of obtaining her LL.M. was extremely rewarding intellectually. She does admit that the degree itself has unfortunately not yet produced any practical rewards, financially or otherwise, and in hindsight may not have been the best investment. Then again, the trial advocacy program at Temple Law, which has consistently been ranked in the top two by U.S. News & World Report for trial advocacy, boasts supreme alumni who are top litigators and criminal defenders in the area.

So dear reader, as a young lawyer gazing across the bleak landscape of a weary job market and wondering if going back to school for your LL.M. will help you finally land a gig — the answer is a resounding ... probably not, unless you have an interest in taxation (which is probably a long shot). Then again, if you are enjoying your education, and you are passionate about a particular area of the law, go for it. If nothing else, it will introduce you to other practitioners in the area, and like Cook, that may be the start of your career in a field you would not have otherwise considered.

Continue reading here.

(jbl).

Learning to Pay Attention: A Fundamental Legal Skill

One of the biggest problems that law teachers face with the current generation of law students is getting them to pay attention.  R. Lisle Baker & Daniel P. Brown have just posted an excellent article on this topic:

On Engagement: Learning to Pay Attention.

Abstract: In an age of electronic and mental distraction, the ability to pay attention is a fundamental legal skill increasingly important for law students and the lawyers and judges they will become, not only for professional effectiveness, but also to avoid error resulting from distraction. Far from being immutable, engaged attention can be learned. More specifically, with an understanding of how the attention system of the brain works, carefully designed mental practice can over time enhance an individual’s capacity for focused attention, not only psychologically but also over time apparently altering the physical structure within the brain itself. The result can be improved ability for law students to focus attention, to stay calmly on what is intended, without being distracted by irrelevant thought or sense experience, avoiding wasting scarce time and energy otherwise lost to internal or external distraction. Ironically, learning this attentional skill requires temporarily quieting the active process of elaborated thought that law students, lawyers and judges pride themselves on having developed as part of their legal education. In the process, however, a collateral benefit of this practice is also an enhanced ability to be self-aware, hopefully providing law students, lawyers and judges an increased capacity to respond, rather than just react, to legal problems and the human thoughts and emotions that come with them when they arise.

(Scott Fruehwald)

Dealing With Writer's Block

The AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning & Research Newsletter is Out

The Spring 2013 edition is available here, full of news and photos. And here’s the Table of Contents:

Chair’s letter	1
Section Awards	2
Blackwell Award	4
Darby Dickerson Award	5
Golden Pen Award	6
Mary Lawrence Award	7
Section Programs	8
Section Committees	11
Member News	14
Section Posters	15
Other Conferences	26
Twins Who Teach	27
Workshop for Be-ginning Teachers	29
Section Leadership (ljs)	30

 

Tips for using LinkedIn more effectively.

I can't say whether many of my students have actually found jobs through LinkedIn but I can say that the site seems to be growing very quickly in popularity given the number of networking requests I've received from students over the past several months.  Apparently LinkedIn has added some new features that will enable students to connect more efficiently with alumni from their schools.  Adrian Dayton at The National Law Journal's "Connected Lawyer" column explains.

Three Simple Ways to Connect

. . . LinkedIn has introduced some features that give users more opportunities to gain visibility and business.

The first thing is to tap into your alumni network from law school and undergraduate days. We all have relationships that we should have maintained but didn't, and now LinkedIn has developed a search tool that helps you reconnect with your classmates. You just go to the "Contacts" pull-down menu and select your alma mater. Up pops a list of people who also studied there at the same time as you. You can break this list down by city, company name or industry.

. . . .

You obviously won't know everyone who ever attended your college, and yet there remains an advantage to reaching out to them over total strangers. They share with you something that Malcolm Gladwell called "weak ties." These aren't strong enough to convince someone to go out of their way, but you have something in common that makes them more likely to open your message and maybe even have a telephone conversation. And if you actually knew this person, your job becomes much easier.

 . . . .

The purpose of every online interaction is to arrange a meeting. The purpose of every first meeting is to arrange a second. So how do we get more meetings? By personalizing our messages. How does it make you feel to reconnect with a long-lost friend? Great, right? Compare that to how you would feel if that same friend sent you a generic message on LinkedIn: "Since you are a person I trust, I would like to add you to my network." Personalize your messages. Show real interest in your old friends' careers and where life has taken them.

Read the rest of Mr. Dayton's column here.

(jbl).

Tips on handling criticism constructively

Good advice for law students heading into their summer jobs and to keep in mind when reviewing feedback from professors next fall.  From The Business Insider (footnotes omitted):

• Listen up. Figure out whether the criticism is constructive or simply rude. You may feel hurt when your partner says you’re controlling, but having him point out this flaw may help you change and ultimately save the relationship. If criticism could be helpful, lend all ears and try to learn from it instead of getting defensive.

• Respond calmly. Be respectful no matter what, and thank someone if the feedback is useful. If the critique is uncalled for (that story you wrote was crap!), kill em with kindness. A simple smile makes you the bigger person.

• Don’t take it personally. Try to remove yourself from the situation and focus on what’s being critiqued. That C+ midterm doesn’t reflect your A+ personality! Instead, it’s a reminder to study a little harder next time, skip all that partying the night before, or realize that calculus simply isn’t your biggest strength.

• Manage stress. When we’re constantly on edge, we can feel out of control and unable to respond to criticism with a clear head. So take a deeeep breath to keep those stress levels in check.

• Keep on keepin on’. Remember that the criticism represents just one person’s point of view. Know what your strengths are and don’t let other people’s opinions keep you from working hard towards a goal. If somebody says you’re too short to be a power forward, start working on that jump shot!

(jbl).