Law School Academic Support Blog

Was It Enough?

A golfer is staring down a putt to win the tournament.  His mind races to everything he could have done to prepare for that moment.  He wonders, "did I do enough?"  Moments before the gun sounds, the sprinter's mind wanders "did I prepare hard enough?"  The list could be endless.  Notable sports psychologists say one of the top fears of athletes is the fear of not doing enough and not being good enough.  The fear permeates minds moments before an event and can distract from performance.  

Athletes aren't alone.  Law students fear the same thing every November/December and April/May.  They wonder if they read enough, studied enough, or completed enough practice problems.  Some wonder if they met with professors enough.  Enough becomes the amorphous standard to measure past actions mere moments before performance.

The enough standard poses a few problems.  The standard is too vague to reasonably measure, and it is different for every person.  Students then proceed to say last semester's actions were or were not enough based on final grades.  Grades are a poor measure of "enough."  Enough connotes quantity, and sometimes, students do study enough.  They just studied the wrong way or wrong material.

The more significant problem with enough is it breeds perfectionism.  Athletes don't know whether they are training enough while training, and without that feedback, they could always do more.  The golfer could practice 100 more 5 foot putts, and the 5 footer to win would be easier.  The swimmer could stay in the pool an hour longer or lift weights 1 more time.  One mistake and they didn't do enough.  Perfectionism and drive produces elite athletes.  Google athlete quotes and you will be inundated with statements about working harder than everyone else.  I highly encourage working hard, but perfectionism significantly increases mental health problems.  Britain's "Victoria Pendleton (Britain’s most successful female Olympian), middle-distance runner Kelly Holmes (double gold winner at the Athens Olympics), boxer Frank Bruno (heavyweight champion of the world) and cricketer Marcus Trescothick (hero of the 2005 Ashes)" all suffered from depression.¹  Their mental health deteriorated from perfectionism. 

The same phenomenon happens to law students.  They worry about every mistake and whether the semester was enough.  We can continue to help students worrying whether they did enough.

The same phenomenon happens to ASPers as well.  Maybe it was just me, but my mind raced last week at the bar exam.  Did I hold enough programs?  Did I contact students enough?  Did I do as much as I could in a virtual environment?  Did I respond to email quickly enough?  I cheered on students while worrying if I could have prepared them better.

Enough is a terrible standard for all of us.  I want all of us to help both law students and each other overcome the worry of doing "enough."  I tell my students that all I care about is whether they can walk out of the exam and say they did everything they could reasonably do in their circumstances.  Everyone's circumstances are different, and I only want them to do what they reasonably can.  I want to tell all ASPers the same thing during this trying time.  Enough is doing what you reasonably can in your circumstances.  Don't let it reach perfectionism.

 

^{1 https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/depression-in-sport.htm}

ASP Position at Western State College of Law

Western State College of Law (WSCL) at Westcliff University invites applications from candidates for a long-term contract-track position in the Academic Support Program beginning July 1, 2021.  We seek candidates with prior experience in teaching academic support or bar preparation, strong academic backgrounds, a commitment to teaching excellence, and demonstrated potential for productive scholarship.

WSCL is located in the city of Irvine, California – close to miles of famous beaches, parks, recreation facilities and outdoor activities as well as the many museums, music venues, and diverse cultural and social experiences of greater Los Angeles.

Founded in 1966, WSCL is the oldest law school in Orange County, California, and is a fully ABA approved for-profit, private law school. Noted for small classes and personal attention from an accessible faculty focused on student success, WSCL is proud that our student body is among the most diverse in the nation. Our 11,000+ alumni are well represented across public and private sector legal practice areas, including 150 California judges and about 15% of Orange County’s Deputy Public Defenders and District Attorneys.

WSCL is committed to providing workplaces and learning environments free from discrimination on the basis of any protected classification including, but not limited to race, sex, gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, veteran status, genetic marker or on any other basis protected by law.

Confidential review of applications will begin immediately. Applications (including a cover letter, complete CV, teaching evaluations (if available), a diversity statement addressing your contributions to our goal of creating a diverse faculty. and names/email addresses of three references) should be emailed to Professor Todd Brower, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee: [email protected]  For more information about WSCL, visit: wsulaw.edu

See or Seen

Sometimes I wonder if being a teacher is a bit of an act.  If so, or at least if that's how I am playing my role in academic support, I might not be doing it quite right.  I might not be really serving my students but myself instead.

You see, I love to be seen.  In fact, when working with students, I find myself too often trying to mold them to think like me, to work through problems like me, to learn like me.  In short, to watch me.  But, that's a big problem because none of them - not one - is like me.  We are all remarkably and marvelous and wonderfully different.

That means that my job is really not to be seen but to see, to observe, to listen, and to respond to my students.  In short, I'm not the star; they are.  And that makes a world of difference in how I approach academic support as a teacher, a coach, a facilitator, a mentor, and an encourager.  

To put an emphasis on it, if I am only wanting to be seen, then I'm falling up short in my obligations to my students as an academic support professional.  But if I am seeing them, like much in life, that's the beginning of understanding, learning, and growth, for my students and for myself. 

Let's make this honest.  Too often I do all of the talking, teaching, and coaching that I end up crowding out much of the learning.  

To be frank, that's because I have "relationship" issues.  I'm not confident enough in my abilities to actually help them, to listen to them, to respond with them.  

But, as many have pointed out, the best solutions for overcoming learning difficulties come from within not without.  So, as I move forward in my role as an academic support professional, I find myself trying to move a little out of the way so that my students can take center stage.  

After all, it's for them that I serve.  It's for them that we serve.  (Scott Johns).

Best Practices for Online Bar Exam Administration

This week the Association for Academic Support Educators ("AASE") published Best Practices for Online Bar Exam Administration. AASE President, DeShun Harris, says that the best practices advocate for "procedures that ensure a fairer test for online test takers." The organization, established in 2014, urges state high courts and bar examiners to adopt these procedures.  The AASE Bar Advocacy Chair, Marsha Griggs, says "many of the best practices that we identified are things that bar examiners are already doing." Yolonda Sewell, Vice President for Diversity, adds that in addition to the great strides that bar examiners have made in deploying an online exam, we seek to make sure that the online administration does not unfairly disadvantage any bar applicant on the basis of skin tone, race, gender orientation, biophysical conditions, disability, need for test accommodations, or socio-economic resources. The Best Practices are aimed to level the playing field, both among applicants of varied backgrounds, and between the online and in-person versions of the exam."

One of several effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, was that bar examiners and bar applicants questioned the wisdom and feasibility of administering in-person exams in the traditional large group format. In response to COVID-19 limitations, the first online bar examinations in the United States were administered between July and October 2020. 

With but a few exceptions, the online exams were remotely proctored using artificial intelligence technology provided by a commercial vendor. As the exam dates approached many issues surfaced surrounding the use of facial recognition software and remote proctoring. One prominent issue was the number of complaints voiced from students who are people of color, asserting that the software did not recognize them. During and after the exam, other complaints sounded, ranging from data breaches, and poor technical support, to "flagging" hundreds or thousands of applicants for alleged cheating or "testing irregularities." At the extreme, some applicants reported having to sit in their own waste—as the exam instructions warned applicants about being out of view of the camera except during scheduled breaks—for fear of failing the exam. Additionally, there were reported issues with the technical delivery, submission, and scoring of the Multistate Performance Test,  and jurisdictional scoring errors that wrongly identified applicants who earned passing scores as exam failures, and falsely notifying others who failed the exam that they had passed.

AASE lauds the efforts of bar examiners at the local and national levels for their flexibility and willingness to provide options for remote administration. While we defer to the proven expertise of the test-makers in determining matters related to exam content, scoring, accommodations and character and fitness eligibility, we add our collective expertise in assessment delivery, performance application, and enhancement pedagogies for non-traditional test takers. We recognize that online bar exam delivery will outlive the pandemic and current circumstances. We also believe all who play roles in the process of creating and delivering a bar exam, want the exam to be fair and effective. In light of those dual goals, we think the time is ripe for adoption of additional policies that are more than performative gestures toward a more diverse legal profession.

(Association of Academic Support Educators)

Online & Hybrid Learning: Toward Defining Best Practices in Legal Education (Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2021)

Building on the overwhelming success of the 2019 conference, the biannual Online & Hybrid Learning Conference returns in 2021. The COVID-19 crisis proved a powerful accelerant of the trends that were identified at the 2019 conference, and much has been learned in the process. This conference seeks to bring together research derived from the Emergency Remote Teaching phase (Mid-March to June, 2020) and the more measured and planned Academic Year 2020-21, and use the data to identify emerging best practices.

Distance education and other modern learning tools are at work in legal education and have now been applied across a broad sampling of schools. Outcomes-oriented design, integrated formative and summative assessment, online simulations, asynchronous learning, and other hallmarks of distance education have demonstrated efficacy in law teaching for 20 years (though a robust empirical research agenda has yet to develop). The interesting questions continue to center around how and where these modern learning tools and disciplines can be used to best advantage in the law school curriculum. Expertise now abounds among the academy, and this conference aims to collect and share it.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

• Evidence-Based Pedagogy in Online or Hybrid Teaching Environments
• Pedagogy in Practice
• Instructional Design – What We’ve Learned by Working with ID
• Achieving Professional Identity Formation Outcomes via Online and Hybrid Teaching
• Using Assessment Data in Evolving Online and Hybrid Teaching Environments
• Making our Hybrid and Online learning Environments Inclusive and Supportive of all Students
• Which Parts Go Where: Design Thinking Applied to Hybrid Legal Education
• Micro-credentials and Stacking of Credentials - Developing Program Outcomes
• Permeability of the Bricks and Mortar Building; Beyond Traditional Thinking
• What Student Can Tell Us -- Now

If you’re interested in presenting, please send a one-to-two-page proposal to David Thomson, John C. Dwan Professor for Online Learning, University of Denver, 2255 E. Evans Avenue, Denver, Colorado 80208 ([email protected]) in Microsoft Word (or the equivalent). The deadline for proposals is Monday, March 22, 2021.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Legal Writing and Academic Success at Brooklyn Law School

Brooklyn Law School’s legal writing and academic success programs are hiring a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2021-2022 academic year. A professor in this position likely would teach one section of students in our year-long 1L legal writing program (approximately 20 students) and a combination of 1L and upper-division academic success intervention courses. The position will report to the Director of Legal Writing, Professor Heidi Brown, and to the Director of Academic Success, Professor Shane Dizon. 

To provide applicants with background about our legal writing program, last year, Brooklyn Law School launched our new seven-credit 1L legal writing curriculum, a change from our prior four-credit program. Our fall semester course (which increased from two to three credits) introduces students to the fundamentals of legal research and writing, focusing on objective legal analysis. 

Last spring, we launched our brand new 1L legal writing course called Gateway to Lawyering. We offer four subject-matter “Gateways”: (1) Law and Business, (2) Law and Information, (3) Law and Social Justice, and (4) Law and Individual Life. We endeavor to place incoming students in their subject-matter area of preference. Each legal writing professor teaches one of the four Gateway courses. All four “Gateways” follow a similar syllabus progression and assignment/grading model, and offer consistent learning objectives. Teams of legal writing professors within each Gateway choose a statutory framework within the particular subject matter area that students work with throughout the semester. In the spring course, students produce three written works (descriptive, transactional, and persuasive) to advance a client’s interests. Students also learn and develop oral communication skills, including persuasive advocacy. 

Brooklyn Law School’s academic success program is one of the oldest at any U.S. law school. It encompasses a pre-orientation program, Summer Legal Process (specifically geared towards students traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession), as well as orientation sessions, voluntary weekly skills workshops, one-on-one meetings, and guided final exam practice. Academic success professors also teach intervention courses required in the spring of 1L year, the fall of 2L year, and both semesters of 3L year for students below certain GPA cutoffs. Finally, the office provides skills workshops and individual assistance for graduates taking the February and July bar exams. 

We welcome entry-level and experienced teachers to apply. Applicants must have a J.D., at least three years of legal practice experience, and experience reviewing and providing written and oral feedback on the legal work of students or junior attorneys. We are looking for innovative, collaborative, and creative educators to join our legal writing and academic success teams. As this is a newly created position, we welcome questions! 

To apply, please submit a cover letter, résumé, and a list of three professional references to Professor Shane Dizon at [email protected] by Friday, March 5, 2021. 

Associate Professor of Law for Academic Success at Southwestern Law School

SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL
ACADEMIC SUCCESS AND BAR PREPARATION
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW

Southwestern Law School invites applicants for an associate professor position for administration, counseling and teaching in the Academic Success and Bar Preparation Office to commence immediately. In this position, the chosen applicant will work closely with Assistant Dean for Academic Success, Natalie Rodriguez and Assistant Dean for Bar Preparation, Mary Basick primarily in the creation, administration, implementation and teaching of programs and courses as part of the academic support and bar preparation course curriculum.
Duties and responsibilities may include but are not limited to any of the following:

-Working with the Faculty of Academic Success and Bar Preparation Office to research, design, implement and manage academic and bar support programs, including pre-matriculation programs, first-year programs and pre and post-graduation bar preparation programs
-Teaching in the academic and bar support programs and courses
-Meeting with students individually and in small groups regarding academic and bar performance issues. This includes identifying and/or creating additional materials that would support a student’s individualized academic or bar improvement plan.
-Supervising student teaching and research assistants
-Assisting with additional services to enhance the academic and bar success of students
-Identify additional opportunities to support or enhance the Office’s offerings and/or developing materials

Required Qualifications:
-J.D. from an ABA accredited law school
-Bar admission, admission to the California Bar preferred
-Experience in academic support and bar preparation preferred. Other teaching experience such as legal writing instruction will be considered
-Ability to work with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds, including students, staff and faculty
-Ability to counsel, critique and guide students to self-improvement through a professional, rigorous, respectful, supportive and reliable commitment to them, including creating individualized materials
-Ability to work as part of a collaborative team of faculty in the Academic Success and Bar Preparation Office while having the ability to be a self-starter and self-manage individual work product
-Availability to teach and/or meet with students in the evening and occasional weekend, especially during bar preparation seasons
-Imagination, innovation and desire to grow into responsibilities in areas of mutual interest and need
-Understanding of, and ability to work for, the mission and goals of Southwestern Law School
-Professionalism and ability to work with confidential information

This is a full-time, year-round position with faculty voting rights. The salary is competitive. The successful applicant will also receive a competitive benefits package provided by Southwestern Law School.
Applicants should submit the following:
-A one page statement describing (a) prior teaching experience; (b) other relevant experience; and (c) aspirations for future legal education work
-A resume
-Contact information for three professional references

Applications should be addressed to Assistant Dean Natalie Rodriguez and Assistant Dean Mary Basick and emailed to [email protected].

Walking Towards Success

Like many of you, this week's been hectic, filled with chats and jam sessions to help graduates finish strong in preparation for next week's bar exam.  

Most look tired, really tired.  Me too.  

So we took a break from consideration and equal protection and secured transactions to talk about steps we might take to provide refreshment to rejuvenate our battle-worn minds.

I don't know what possessed me, but I asked our students if they had time to take a break, a walk, or a little excursion from bar prep.  But before they could answer "no", I answered for them.  Simply put, I blurted out - like an excited utterance - that "you can't afford NOT to take a break!"

Here's why:  

As reporter Betsy Morris explains:

"Spending times in the woods - a practice the Japanese call 'forest bathing' - is strongly linked to lower blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormones and decreased anxiety, depression and fatigue." Morris, B., "For Better Health, Just Head Outdoors," Wall Street Journal (Feb. 16, 2021).   And, with respect to cognition, as Dr. Gretchen Daily observes based on research at Stanford University, "A 45-minute walk in nature can make a world of difference to mood, creativity, [and] the ability to use your working memory." Id.   

In short, all work and no play is a recipe for disaster not success.  Simply put, it doesn't work.

So, as you meet with bar takers for last moment tune-ups and encouragement, let them know that it's okay to take breaks, to put on a cap and gloves and hit a local park for a wintry walk.  Along the way, they'll be not just feeding their spirits but also strengthening their minds.  Now that's a great way to prepare for success, whether it's on the bar exam or in life.  (Scott Johns).

Academic and Bar Support Scholarship Spotlight

New Scholarship:

Lisa M. Blasser, Nine Steps to Law School Success:  A Scientifically Proven Study Process for Success in Law School (Carolina Academic Press, 2021).

From the publisher's description:

Nine Steps to Law School Success is the first scientifically proven study process for success in law school. Synthesized from the study processes of other successful law students, this book provides a straightforward, linear, and chronological study process for students to follow from the beginning of the semester up to their final examination.  Students will learn how to complete each step, how each step leads to a deep understanding of course material, and how each step ultimately leads to success in their courses. Students will also learn how to incorporate Nine Steps into their weekly schedules during the semester.

Foundational ASP Scholarship:

Michael Hunter Schwartz, Teaching Law Students to Be Self-Regulated Learners, 2003 Mich. St. DCL L. Rev. 447 (2003).

From the abstract:

This article articulates a model of self-regulated learning for law students and lawyers, explains why law schools should aspire to teach their students to be self-regulated learners and details a curriculum designed to accomplish that goal.

The first section of the article explains self-regulated learning. Self-regulated learning is a cyclical model of the learning process. In fact, all learners self-regulate, although many new law students are novice self-regulated learners. Self-regulation involves three phases. In the planning phase, learners decide what they want to learn and how they will learn it. Expert self-regulated learners are more likely to strive for mastery, to consciously make strategic choices in deciding how to study, and to consciously plan when and where they will study. In the second phase, expert learners implement their adopted strategies while monitoring whether they are learning and maintaining attention, and they quickly act to rectify confusion or distraction. In the reflection phase, expert learners evaluate their learning process to determine whether it was as effective and efficient as possible, attribute successes to personal competence and effort and failures to specific strategic choice errors, and plan how they will approach similar tasks in the future.

The second section argues that law schools should include self-regulated learning skills among the skills they teach. This section details education studies from within and outside of legal education that show that expert self-regulated learners learn more, learn it better and enjoy the learning process more than their novice peers.

The final section describes a curriculum designed to teach law students to be self-regulated learners. The curriculum, designed to replace law schools' traditional orientation programs, provides concrete ideas for teaching these skills and for reinforcing that instruction in students' first-year courses.

(Louis N. Schulze, Jr., FIU Law)

NECASP Call for Proposals

The New England Consortium of Academic Support Professionals (NECASP) will be holding its annual conference virtually on March 26, 2021 at 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM EST. They are currently seeking presentation proposals from our larger community for this conference! 

This year's conference theme is "'A Year in the Life:' Delivering ASP and Bar Support in our Ever Evolving Circumstances." It's hard to believe we have been remote for about a year now, and this conference will be centered on what worked, what didn't, and any related topic regarding this new normal. 

Please submit a proposal by February 26. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected]. 

Lessons From Surgeons for the Last Two Weeks of Prep until the Feb 2021 Bar Exam

Wow; do I ever get distracted...with emails...incoming snapchats....Facebook posts....and just the overall buzz of the omnipresent internet.  There is so much NOISE that takes up so much of my TIME that I seem to get so LITTLE done.  That's particularly true for me in preparing for big exams because, to be honest, I am a big-time procrastinator...with a CAPITAL P!

In fact, I was just fretting about how much I had to do (which, of course, is related to my procrastination issues) when I came across an article by Lucette Lugando describing how surgeons stay focused during organ transplants.

Hum...That's what I need.  To Focus. To Stay on Task.  To Just Get Something Meaningful Done Today!   http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-surgeons-stay-focused-for-hours-1479310052  

So, here are a few thoughts that I gleaned from Lugando's article that might be especially handy for law graduates preparing for the Feb 2021 bar exam (and for people like me who live to procrastinate):

First, put away my cellphone.  Turn it off.  Hide it.  Ditch it.

As detailed in Lugando's article, "Transplant surgeons, whose work includes stitching minuscule blood vessels together, minimize their distractions. No one checks cellphones in the operating room during surgery."  

No one checks their phones?  Really?  Are you kidding?  Of course not, at least not during surgery.  And, bar exam preparation requires us to do surgery, so to speak, on our study tools and on loads of practice exams.  

Thus, as I create study tools or as I learn by taking practice exams, I can help myself mightily by placing my focus on my work at hand... rather than the cellphone that is so often in my hand...by removing the "cellphone temptation" out of my grasp.  Who knows?  It might even lower my anxiety to stop looking at it constantly.

Second, sharpen my field of vision to just the essentials (working on my study tools, practicing lots of exam questions, and looping the lessons learned from my practice problems back into my study tools) by creating an environment that is free of my own personal distractions...so that I focus on learning rather than the noise that is so often around me.

As Lugando points out, "The surgeons often wear loupes mounted on eye glasses to magnify their work, which limits their field of vision to a few inches."  

In other words, with respect to bar exam preparation, maybe I need to limit my field of vision to the "few" essentials, namely, creating study tools, testing my study tools out through practice exams, and then editing my study tools to incorporate what I learned about problem-solving through the practice exams.  

There's a saying, apparently by Winston Churchill, that says: "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."  Or, as Bruce Lee put it, "The successful warrior is the average [person] with a laser-like focus."

So, instead of having the cellphone bark at you constantly, you might just try out what surgeons do...and turn your focus into a laser by getting rid of distractions during the final two weeks of bar prep as you create your study tools and practice lots and lots of bar exam problems.  

In the process, you'll become, to paraphrase Bruce Lee, a bar exam champion.  (Scott Johns).

12 Days Before the Bar Exam - What Now?

I’ve had multiple students ask me this week “What should I do with the remaining 12 days before the Bar Exam?” so I thought I’d share my advice with anyone else that may be wondering.

First, 12 days is more than you think. I promise.

Second, remember that the goal is NOT to memorize everything. It’s not possible. So, if you don’t feel like you know every last piece of law ever that can possibly be tested on the exam, you are not alone. It’s a normal feeling!

So, what CAN you do?

Practice. Between now and the 19^th or so, this is the last big push where you can practice. Make sure you’ve practice MBE sets in 100, and timed. Make sure you’ve written more than one essay at a time. Now might be the time two take 90 minutes and write 3 essays, or take 3 hours and write 2 MPTs! It’s one thing to write one essay in 30 minutes, it’s an entirely different thing to get through 6 at a time! It’s hard, it’s tiring, and it’s easy to lose focus. So, the only want to work on your stamina and timing is to practice. This upcoming weekend and week is the perfect time to get that in, and really make sure you are practicing in test like conditions, or as close as possible.

Start to work on memory and recall. Yes, there are things you just NEED to remember. This week, and until the day of the exam, take 5-10 minute chunks to work on memory. See this post for more on memory: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/academic_support/2021/02/memorization-v-understanding.html

Finally the days leading up to the exam, the weekend before, take some time to relax. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s important.

Here is a little timeline to help:

Four Days Before the Bar Exam

This should be your last day of “heavy lifting” activities. Complete a set of 50 timed MBE questions. Complete a set of three MEE questions, timed. Complete a full-length timed MPT. Do not pick and choose between these – do all of them. This is the last day you will do practice that improves your stamina and timing. Remember, you should be doing these things all week, but four days before the exam is your cut off point.

Three Days Before the Bar Exam

In terms of bar exam preparation, today you should complete 15 to 20 MBE questions, complete one timed MEE question, outline three to five additional MEE questions, and complete one full-length timed MPT. You are tapering off. This isn’t an exact science – the point is that you are practicing, so you will feel prepared, but you aren’t tiring yourself out.

This is also the day to do something relaxing for yourself – watch a movie, go on a run. Do something that is going to make you feel less stressed. You should also be sure to go to bed early and eat well. Yes, that sounds like “mothering” but it’s good advice. On the days of the exam you will NEED to be well rested and refreshed.

Two Days Before the Bar Exam

Rinse and repeat yesterday. Today you should complete 15 to 20 MBE questions, complete one timed MEE question, outline three to five additional MEE questions, and complete one full-length timed MPT.

Take some more time to do something relaxing for yourself to help relieve some of that bar exam stress. And again - you should be sure to go to bed early and eat well.

Also, when I say do something relaxing for yourself, that can be almost anything that makes you happy. The point is to get out of your head a bit, and give yourself a break. I realize it might seem like the worst time to take a break, but it’s not. Your brain needs to feel “fresh” on exam days. Think of it like running a marathon – you don’t run 26.2 miles, or even 13 miles, the day before the marathon. You’d be exhausted. The days leading up to the actual marathon you might run 1-5 miles and stretch, and relax, and eat pasta. This is your mental marathon, so treat your brain accordingly.

One Day Before the Bar Exam

Today you should lighten the mental lift even more. Review your flashcards and other memory devices. Outline three to five MEE questions. Do five MBE questions to keep your brain in the practice of thinking through MBE questions without overly taxing it.

You also want to make sure you have everything ready for tomorrow. What types of ID do you need? What are you allowed to bring in with you to the exam? Make sure to have all those items pulled together and ready to go. Make sure your laptop is fully charged. And as silly as it sounds, map out how you will get to the exam location (if you are going to a location). Do you need to worry about parking? Are you taking a train? Do not leave anything to chance. Most of you, but not all, are currently looking at virtual exams. So do you have a good space to take the exam? Do you know how you will log in? What the timing is? Etc?

Finally, relax. You’ve put in so many hours, weeks, months of preparation – you’ve got this. Take some time to relax and unwind before bed. Eat a simple meal that will sit well with your potentially uneasy stomach. Lastly, head to bed a bit earlier than usual to account for nerves keeping you awake.

Day One of the Bar Exam

Today is the day. Make sure you are on time for check in and have everything with you. Today is filled with the MPT and MEE. At the lunch break and after the day of testing ends, do not talk with others about the contents of the exam. Invariably, one of you will think you saw a subject the other did not spot – and you won’t know who was right or wrong until you get your final bar results, so there is no benefit to discussing such matters now. Doing so will only freak you out and add to your anxiety.

After the testing day is complete, eat dinner and mentally decompress. If you must, review a few flashcards – perhaps the ones you still struggle with and want just one more run at. But this is not the time to do any serious review or learning because your brain is tired from today and needs to rest up for tomorrow. What is there is there. Have confidence that your hard work will pay off tomorrow!

Day Two of the Bar Exam

It is almost over! Today you will tackle the MBE and then – be done! After the testing day is over, just like yesterday – do not talk about the exam! Instead, relax, take a nap, celebrate!

(Melissa Hale)

Predictions Are Hard, Especially About the Future

Here it is, Tuesday evening, and I am finally settling down to write another blogfest – this, like many weeks, despite having specifically placed this high enough up on my to-do list that I genuinely expected to be starting in the early afternoon. The problem – one I am sure we are all familiar with – is not the writing, but all the other things I had planned to finish beforehand, which took far longer than I had originally estimated they would. Fortunately, such difficulties are illustrative of this week’s topic of discussion – the planning fallacy and how to counteract it.

The planning fallacy is a simple psychological phenomenon: human beings’ predictions about the time needed to complete a future task are usually significant underestimations. In some cases, wild underestimations: for example, when construction began on the Sydney Opera House in 1959, it was expected to be completed by 1963, but the site was not actually finished until 1973. Daniel Kahneman and his partner Amos Tversky were the first to describe this phenomenon, more than forty years ago, and Kahneman writes about it in his wonderful book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. He explains it as a kind of optimism bias, a tendency of people to adopt the rosiest scenarios as they imagine how a task will proceed.  Later scholars added other nuances to this explanation.  One reason for this apparent optimism bias, for example, might be the self-serving human tendency, when considering similar past situations, to take personal credit for all the things that went right (and thus assume they will go right again in the future), but to attribute errors and delays to outside forces that they presume will not occur again.¹  Nassem Taleb, in his book Antifragile, suggests it may not only be a psychological phenomenon, but also a consequence of a natural asymmetry: whenever circumstances or events cause a deviation from a well-laid-out plan, chances are far greater that the disruption will lead to delay than to expedition, so that the sum total of all deviations would always be expected to be postponement.

How many times have we seen the planning fallacy in action amongst our students? Just in the past month, I have met with returning students, vowing to perform better in this coming spring semester, who base this determination on unaccountably confident projections of all the steps they will complete to do so.  I have worked with February bar examinees, noses to the grindstone, who despite their genuine efforts are finding themselves slipping behind their intended schedules.  Not every student suffers from this bias, of course, and many of those who experience the bias don't actually suffer for it, either because they start with ambitious goals that leave plenty of leeway or because they find the extra time and energy to offset their underestimated projections.  Still, every year brings a significant crop of students who do not perform as well as they might have, because they seriously underestimate how long it will take them to complete an essay test question, compile a useful outline, learn the rules governing a specific legal topic, research, draft, and edit a significant writing assignment, or attend to the demands of student organizations.

Fortunately, the psychologists and scientists who have studied the planning fallacy have suggested a few strategies that can be used to counteract it, and these strategies are easily adoptable -- or correspond to techniques already used -- by academic support professionals.  In his book, Kahneman suggests the use of reference class forecasting -- that is, making predictions of the time needed to complete a task based not on a person's (or an entity's) internal sense of how long it should take them, but on observations of actual outcomes in prior similar situations.  In other words, if I were going to build an opera house, I might start off by assuming I could get it done in a few years, but if I considered how long it took to build the one in Sydney (and of course in other locations), I should understand that it is likely to take more than a decade.  Many of us do something at least adjacent to this with our students already -- providing them with estimates about how long they should expect to take to complete a case brief, for example, or to study for the MPRE -- but the idea of reference class forecasting suggests that it might be even more powerful to refer specifically to prior performances by other students.  Instead of saying, "You should devote at least 24 hours," it might be more effective to say, "Last year, every student who devoted 4 hours a day, every Saturday and Sunday, for three weeks, completed this successfully."

Another suggestion is the use of the segmentation effect. It has been observed that a person's estimate of the total time it will take to complete a task will be longer -- and thus likely more accurate -- if they are asked to segment the task (break the task down into a number of sub-tasks), to estimate the time it will take to complete each sub-task, and then to add all those times together to come up with the total time.²  However, there is a cognitive cost to being mindful and particular enough to break complex tasks down into numerous sub-tasks, and, without help, this kind of approach may be hard to learn and sustain.  Fortunately, this is just the kind of help we can give, especially to inexperienced students who may not be able to envision how a long-term task can be broken down, or even what all the steps involved might be.  By providing students with a framework of what to expect, and encouraging them to think realistically about what it will take to build each part of that framework, we can help them to stay on track, or at least in the general vicinity of the track, by using the segmentation effect.

Finally, another tool that has been suggested to combat the planning fallacy is the implementation intention, a term coined by Peter Gollwitzer for a particular model of thinking about future actions.  Encouraging people to think specifically about when, where, and how they will act towards their goal tends to make them more likely to move forward steadily, and in a timely way, towards them.  For example, people who received a telephone call in which someone asked them what time they planned to vote, from where they would be heading to the polling place, and what they would be doing just before they left to vote -- all questions designed to prompt them to think about when, where, and how they would vote -- were more likely to vote than those who did not receive the phone call.³  The mental IF-->THEN statement (as in, "If I am aiming to take a practice exam, then I should get a copy of an old exam from the library on Friday") is the implementation intention that moves people apace towards their goals.  This, too, is something that academic support professionals do, or can do.  By querying students about the specifics of how they expect to achieve their long-term goals, we can induce them to map out their plans in advance, changing vague ambitions about what they would like to achieve into articulable steps (the implementation intentions) that they can follow methodically to their desired ends within the time they have available.

It is a natural human tendency to overestimate what can be done in a given period of time. By helping our students account for this tendency, even if we cannot help them complete everything, we can at least help them get in a position where they've done enough to succeed. 

[Bill MacDonald]

¹Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin & Michael Ross (1995) It's About Time: Optimistic Predictions in Work and Love, European Review of Social Psychology, 6:1, 1-32, DOI: 10.1080/14792779343000112.

²Forsyth, D.K., Burt, C.D.B. Allocating time to future tasks: The effect of task segmentation on planning fallacy bias. Memory & Cognition 36, 791–798 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.4.791

³Nickerson, D. W., & Rogers, T. (2010). Do You Have a Voting Plan?: Implementation Intentions, Voter Turnout, and Organic Plan Making. Psychological Science , 21 (2), 194-199.

Save the Date: Teaching Multicultural Lawyering Conference

WMU-Cooley Law School is pleased to announce the online conference Teaching Multicultural Lawyering:  Development, Integration and Conversation.  There is no charge to attend.

The conference, and a recently completed textbook Multicultural Lawyering:  Navigating the Culture of the Law, the Lawyer, and the Client (https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531020415/Multicultural-Lawyering) was born from their course Multicultural Lawyering.

The conference will focus on teaching stand-alone courses in the topic, infusing multicultural lawyering throughout the curriculum, teaching multicultural instruction within professional identity programs, and developing learning outcomes for the topic.  Some of the sessions will have break-out groups to facilitate small, in-depth discussions.  There will be a keynote panel sharing the experiences of faculty who have been teaching these topics for many years, with an opportunity for discussion with them as well.

The online conference will take place on Thursday, March 11 (from Noon-3:30 p.m. EST) and Friday, March 12, 2021 (11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST).

The conference agenda is designed to accommodate the many demands on your time by focusing on two afternoons with two sessions each day and a keynote panel discussion on Friday.

Please contact us at [email protected] with questions and if you would like to be added to our interest list to receive updates about conference registration and other details as they become available.

Hamilton Song for Law Students

Hat Tip to the Legal Writing Prof Blog for posting an awesome law school version of "You'll Be Back" by the faculty and staff of UIC John Marshall Law School.  If you haven't seen it, check out the video here.

(Steven Foster)

Professor of Practice at Nova Southeastern

Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law is hiring a Professor of Practice for the Academic Success and Professionalism Program. You can find the position description, as well as instructions for applying, here: https://nsucareers.nova.edu/en-us/job/499431/academic-success-professionalism-program-instructor-995032.

The ASP Department at NSU Law is a large and collegial department. In addition to myself, there are a total of 5 Professors of Practice and two administrative support staff. Professors of Practice are not faculty, although they attend and can participate in faculty meetings. The ASP Department is highly prioritized in the law school and receives significant support from the Dean of the law school.

Members of the department collaborate on a variety of projects and usually team teach ASP and bar-related courses. In the past year, we have created an innovative asynchronous online Orientation program, which we hope to expand for this Fall's entering class. We offer support to students using a variety of different strategies: online Canvas resources pages for ASP and bar success, a set of required ASP and bar courses, and a robust bar support program for our graduates called Raising the Bar. There is significant opportunity and support for professional development and creativity. We work with an incredibly diverse group of students, and that work is extremely rewarding. Plus, we are doing it in sunny South Florida! 

ASP Writer's Block Reminder

Spring Semester ASP Writer's Block Sessions start Friday, February 5th!  As a reminder, these are times to carve out to work independently yet together on the kind of work that nurtures us, yet tends to end up on the bottom of an urgent to-do list. We meet together for two pomodoro work cycles of 25 minutes each, and some recap/mutual support at the end. Folks have used this time to read, research or draft scholarship, make journal entries, read poetry, or complete some mundane tasks in the company of friends. To accommodate our demanding schedules and varying time zones we have been meeting on Fridays at 11 am est/8am pst. For this semester, please mark your calendars for:

• Friday, February 5^th
• Friday, March 5^th
• Friday, April 9^th

Memorization v Understanding

If you are taking the February Bar Exam, you might be currently feeling the panic of how much you have to memorize. Well, don't! I know, easier said than done, so let me give you some tips.

Full disclosure - this is from an upcoming book, The Ultimate Guide to the UBE,  written with my co-authors Toni Miceli and Tania Shah. (I have edited it slightly for brevity)

So hopefully this helps you tackle all the memorizing you need to do. And remember, it doesn't feel like you have much time, but you DO, just use it wisely!

Why Not Just Memorize?

First of all, memorization is a bad word. We hate it. We want you to remember, or recall, but not memorize. Why do we make such a big deal about this? Well, for a couple reasons:

First, our brain is awful at memorization. Briefly, we have short term memory, long term memory, and memory retrieval. Short term memory can also be called working memory. It’s like a short picture that only lasts a few minutes. Next is long term memory, where memories are stored for – you guessed it – the long term. And finally, memory retrieval, or the ability to pull that information out of long-term storage so you can actually use it. This is the piece you are concerned with for the bar exam and it is also the most difficult to achieve.

So, your aim isn’t really to “memorize” – that is just putting information into storage, perhaps without understanding what it even means or how to apply it. Your aim is to remember the information and be able to recall it when you need it on the exam. Recall means that you can remember a concept AND remember how to apply that concept. If you have only memorized the law, but don’t sufficiently understand it, you won’t be able to effectively apply the law. 

Also, if you focus on memorization, instead of learning, you will get overwhelmed and stressed.  It is pretty much not humanly possible to memorize ALL the law that is tested on the bar exam, so if you are striving for memorization, you are already fighting a losing battle. Striving to memorize that much law verbatim is a stressor you just don’t need.

Conversely, if you work to understand the law, meaning you have a general understanding of the concepts, the recall part comes naturally, without the struggle. We once had a student who had taken the bar 13 times before he met us. After working with him, we realized he had memorized all of the rules, and we mean verbatim. He could tell you the rule number, and the exact wording. But he kept failing because he didn’t know how to apply the rules he memorized to the question. We want more for you – so stick with us and learn just how to get to that magical recall stage!

Okay – So There Is Some Memorization Involved

Even though we stress that recall and understanding is better than memorization, there ARE some things you will need to memorize. After all, whether it’s an essay or MBE question, you need a rule before you can start to do your analysis. In addition, there are some rules where it is important to know it verbatim, such as the various standards of review in constitutional law. So, what CAN you do to make that memorization process a little easier?

1. The Power of Story and Emotion

Let’s start with a story. Memory is often tied to stories, and strong emotions. That is why our autobiographical information is easy to recall. We might smell a certain food, and fondly remember a lovely family celebration we had as a child. These memories are typically vivid and strong. That’s because we process them as stories, not facts. If you are at a party, you don’t focus on individual details to remember, like the color of the walls, or the music playing, and consciously try to memorize it. You remember it because it’s happening to you – it’s a story. In addition, you are more likely to have a vivid memory of that party if you are feeling a strong emotion, usually intense happiness.

So, how do you make this work for bar review? The act of studying doesn’t make for a good story, and you aren’t likely to feel very strong emotions (at least not about the material you are studying). You may be feeling frustration, or stress, but those feelings actually have a counterproductive impact on memory.

That means it’s up to you to manufacture stories and happiness for the bar exam. Don’t just stare at outlines, or black letter law. Instead, complete more and more practice questions, which are, themselves, stories. Or, even better, make up new hypotheticals of your own – the more ridiculous the better. If you’ve seen any of us lecture on any bar topic, you know we love crazy stories. We are sure our students often roll their eyes and wonder why we are being ridiculous. But it’s to help with memory. The more absurd or ridiculous our examples, the more likely you are to remember the law!

Also, manufacture happiness, as much as you can. Studies have shown that people who are placed in a room with simple smiling faces do better on memory tasks. So, surround yourself with happy photos or pictures of your pets. Call one another on zoom and make up ridiculous hypotheticals until you are all laughing. You don’t have to be happy about taking the bar exam to manufacture happiness that will help you be properly prepared for the bar exam.

2. Practice

Remember how we mentioned that practice questions are actually stories? That means that each MBE fact pattern you read, and each essay hypothetical you mark up, are stories that you can hold onto! So, not only will practice questions make you better at tackling the actual essays or MBE questions on your bar exam, but practice questions give your brain stories to hold on to, which also helps your memory! For instance, if you are trying to memorize the rule for parol evidence, completing 10 MBE questions on parol evidence, and then really reviewing the answer and explanation for each question and learning from each question, will serve you much more than just reviewing your outline over and over again. Actively engaging with the material trumps passive reading and re-reading of the material every time.

3. Chunking

In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which a larger unit of information is broken down into smaller units (or chunks) of information, that are easier to retain in your memory. Research shows that your brain can typically only remember 7 items at once. By chunking related items together into these smaller chunks, you are reducing the number of items your brain has to remember.

So, what does chunking information mean for you and your bar exam preparation? The short answer is that chunking is going to help you memorize learn the law you need for the bar exam, and help you group it in ways that will assist you in both recalling and applying it, as needed.  So, the first step in chunking is to think not just about how the pieces of information relate to each other, but also about how you will need to use the information. This is one reason we place practice so highly. When you go to memorize the law, you can’t memorize it in a vacuum.

Spacing It Out So You Don’t Space Out

Your brain learns more effectively when you space out information. Think of it like this: If you are building a brick wall, you need to let the mortar in between the bricks dry before you stack even more bricks on top, or the wall will topple. Similarly, you let one coat of paint dry before you put on another. The same is true with memory. By taking strategically placed breaks between study, we can improve our memory of that material. So how does this work? Read on!

1. Let’s Begin with the Forgetting Curve

It is almost universally accepted that memories decay over time. The good news is that researchers have discovered that we can predict when those memories will begin to decay. This is known as the forgetting curve.  In 1885, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that beginning just after a person learns new information, their ability to remember that information (or recall it) starts to decay. He tracked how much information his subjects could recall over time, and discovered that the greater the period of time in between the subject taking in the new information and being asked to recall it, the smaller amount of that information the subjects were able to recall. However, Ebbinghaus also discovered that while the initial rate of decline in recall is fairly steep, the rate of decay declines with time. This means that memories that “survive” become less likely to be lost over time. This also means that the longer you are able to retain a memory in the initial stage, the slower the information will decay over time

2. The Spacing Effect

So, how do you slow down this memory loss, or memory decay? The answer lies in spacing out your study. Spacing out learning and review helps adjust the forgetting curve. If you allow longer periods of time in between review sessions, you’ll improve memory.

Now, the trouble with the spacing effect for purposes of your bar exam preparation is that you really have too much learn, and not enough time to learn it in! So, what can you do instead? You can still apply the concept of spacing but pair it with something called interleaving.

Interleaving is mixing subjects up as you study. So, while normal, or “blocked”, practice is the idea that you will study one concept, or topic, until you feel comfortable and then move on, interleaving is the mixing of those subjects. Interleaving has been shown to be more effective than blocked practice for developing problem solving skills, and also leads to long term memory retention – both things useful for the bar exam!

Interleaving also forces the brain to continually retrieve information, which is also something you need for the bar exam because each MBE or essay prompt is different from the last, which means your short term memory won’t help you. Interleaving also improves the brain’s ability to differentiate between concepts. Again, something you need for the bar exam!

So what is the catch? Well, because interleaving involves retrieval practice, it feels more difficult than blocked practice. So, it’s going to feel worse. It’s going to feel like you aren’t understanding concepts. So, it’s important to remind yourself that while this style of studying feels worse, it has better long-term results. Think of interleaving like working out; you know it’s working when you are sore the next morning.

So, each day during your bar exam preparation study a variety of topics. Yes, there will be instances where it makes more sense to focus on one topic for a few hours. But if you are looking to increase your ability to recall the information, make sure you are switching in between torts and contracts, and then civil procedure, and then property, and so forth.

Another version of interleaving, which isn’t quite as effective, but is still helpful, is to change how or what you are studying. Don’t spend one full day practicing MBE questions, and then another full day practicing essays. Similarly, don’t spend one day completely listening to videos, or reviewing outlines. Instead, complete 15 MBE questions, and then write out one essay, and then review some flashcards, and so forth. The more you are making your brain jump between topics and activities, the more your brain has to work, and that means your brain is more likely to recall the information you are studying. You are also less likely to lose focus or get bored, which again, means you are more likely to recall the information.

3. The Testing Effect

Finally, to our favorite part of the puzzle – the testing effect. We mentioned before that practice increases memory. We regularly hear students stress over getting questions wrong during practice and review. While we understand why they might get frustrated, they are missing the point of the practice – by testing yourself, you are actually increasing the odds that you will remember that concept the next time it appears before you.

Basically, people recall previously-learned information at a higher rate when they have tested themselves, versus just passively observing or reading the information. This is why we encourage you to complete more practice questions instead of merely reviewing your outline. There is a time and place for passive review, but your memory really gets better each time you actively engage with the material by testing yourself on it.

In addition, while testing without feedback will help with recall, the effect is even stronger when the testing is associated with meaningful feedback. So, what does this mean for you? Make sure to fully review each and every answer and explanation, whether it is an MBE question or an essay question! In fact, that is one of the purposes of this book: reviewing with meaningful reflection and feedback. 

Finally, as you practice bar exam questions, don’t think of doing practice questions as assessment, or as an indicator of how much you know. While practice questions can be both of those things, we want you to start thinking of practice questions as a way to increase long term memory!

Studies show that self-testing even a single time can be as effective as reviewing information five times. One study gave students a schedule to learn vocabulary words, some including testing and some including studying. A week later, the students who did the testing remembered 80% of the vocabulary words, while non-testing students only remembered 35% of the vocabulary words. Now, first, we should point out that memorizing vocabulary words is easier than memorizing legal concepts. In addition, the bar exam is asking you to APPLY those legal concepts, which you can’t do with memory alone. So think about it – do you want to do one multiple choice question, or review your flash card five times? We think the answer is pretty clear.

So – what’s the takeaway from this chapter? Well, practice definitely makes prepared because it helps your memory and your recall. And again – breaks are still a good idea!

 

(Melissa Hale)

 

Academic and Bar Support Scholarship Spotlight

New Scholarship:

Sarah Schendel, Listen! Amplifying the Experiences of Black Law School Graduates in 2020, __ Nebraska L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2021).

From the abstract:

Law students graduating in 2020 faced a number of unusual challenges. However, perhaps no students faced more emotional, psychological, logistical, and financial challenges than Black law school graduates in 2020. In addition to changes in the administration of the bar exam (including the use of technology that struggled to recognize Black faces) and delays in the administration of the exam that led to anxiety and increased financial instability, Black communities were concurrently being disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to increased care-taking responsibilities for many, concerns over the health of family members, and a lack of quiet and reliable space to study. Black law school graduates already struggling to juggle these challenges were also confronted with a rise in anti-Black police brutality, and the racist words and actions of politicians. As a result of this unprecedented series of stressors, many Black law graduates struggled to focus on studying for the bar, with some choosing to delay or abandon sitting for the bar altogether. Many expressed anger, disappointment, and betrayal at the profession they have worked so hard to enter. This Article summarizes the survey responses of over 120 Black law students who graduated in 2020 and were asked how the COVID pandemic and increased anti-Black violence impacted their health, education, and career aspirations. It seems likely that the impact of 2020 on the presence and wellbeing of Black lawyers in the legal profession will be felt for years to come. As professors, deans, lawyers, and policymakers reexamine the function of the bar exam and confront inequalities in legal education, we need to listen to these graduates’ experiences.

Foundational ASP Scholarship:  

Paula Lustbader, From Dreams to Reality: The Emerging Role of Law School Academic Support Programs, 31 U.S.F. L. Rev. 839 (1997)

From the abstract:

Reviews the history, rationale, development, and different program structures of Law School Academic Support Programs; briefly summarizes learning theory and explains how ASP can implement those theories to teach academic skills; and suggests that notwithstanding the significance of helping students develop solid academic skills, probably the most important work that ASP professionals do is to provide the non-academic support by making the human connection to students and believing in them.

 

(Louis N. Schulze, Jr., FIU Law)

Redefining Success

Success is a matter of perspective. For some, success means money, power, and prestige. In truth, money, power, and prestige (and the never-ending pursuit of them) often do not bring lasting fulfillment or personal satisfaction because there is always someone who has more—more money, more power, more prestige.

In the law school context, high grades are considered a precursor for these common measures of success, which can lead some law students to define success in law school solely in terms of grades. As a metric, it is true that grades are important . . . and, as a law student, you should work hard (and smart) on what’s important. But what fulfillment or personal satisfaction do you really gain by framing success solely in terms of grades? Each achievement becomes transactional, with a fleeting moment of satisfaction followed by the swift return of a desire for “more.”

I read an interesting article recently that framed the relentless pursuit of success as people choosing being “special” over being happy. The author notes that, in pursuit of success, we may choose to sacrifice our relationships or even our own well-being. Despite such sacrifice, we do not feel sated . . . fated instead to feeling we are not successful “enough” and chasing the next success high.

As I read the article, I felt attacked thought about my time as a law student and how I defined success. Back then, for me, being successful meant having the highest grades and achieving all the things people told me were indicative of a successful law student (top grades, law review, judicial clerkship, etc.). I also wanted those things for myself but, at the time, I was more focused on why other people said I should have them (and what they would think if I did not). With each achievement came a hunger for the next one, and with each setback came devastating self-doubt and internal criticism. It was not until I was a bit older (and wiser) that I began to rethink how I defined success and prioritize what I needed to feel happy and fulfilled.

To the law students who may be reading this, if you see some part of yourselves in this post, I encourage you to think now about how you define success and to develop metrics for success that are meaningful to you. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of law student do you want to be? What opportunities in law school align with your goals, needs, and interests? Begin the journey now of releasing yourself from the judgment and expectations of others and focus instead on what you need to feel fulfilled.

To the ASPers who may be reading this, if you see some part of yourselves in this post, I encourage you to revisit the metrics you associate with success on a personal and professional level. How do you define success for yourself? How do you define success for students? How might your definition of success affect the way you interact with students? Consider how redefining your definition(s) of success can increase your personal satisfaction and enhance your relationships with students.

(Victoria McCoy Dunkley)

References:

Arthur C. Brooks, ‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy, The Atlantic (July 30, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/why-success-wont-make-you-happy/614731/.

Sarah Lahlou-Amine, Defining Success in Terms of Satisfaction Starts in Law School, ABA Student Lawyer Blog (Oct. 11, 2019), https://abaforlawstudents.com/2019/10/11/defining-success-in-terms-of-satisfaction-starts-in-law-school/.