In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews How I Lawyer podcast host Jonah Perlin on some of the many differences between college and law school, from cold calls to being graded on a curve to the nature of attending a professional school and more.
Links to other resources:
- How I Lawyer Podcast with Jonah Perlin
- How I Lawyer #134: Mike Spivey - On Law School Rankings, Admissions, and Mental Health (Mike's episode on Jonah's podcast)
- Dear 1L: The Book by Amanda Haverstick (book mentioned in the episode)
- Dear 1L with Amanda Haverstick (Status Check episode with the author of the book mentioned in the episode)
- The Law of Law School: The Essential Guide for First-Year Law Students by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and Jonathan Yusef Newton (book mentioned by Jonah in the interview)
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Full Transcript:
Mike: Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. I'm Mike Spivey, the CEO and Founder of Spivey Consulting, and much more importantly, I'm joined today by Jonah Perlin, who is a Georgetown Law faculty member, legal writing instructor, and we're talking about something that, if you're about to go to law school, is not talked about enough: What is the difference between college and law school? There's a cultural difference, a pedagogical and classroom experience difference. There's a professional aspect; you're in a school to get a certain kind of job. So we have a lot to cover, and what I hope we do is not just cover the differences, but then, how can you now, knowing you're about to start law school in a month or two, form in your head some ideas of what these differences are going to be so that you're not unsettled and you're prepared when you walk in the door for orientation? That's the gist of our podcast. So I'm not going to go into much more detail. We may even do a second one if you all have questions and want more. But without further delay, here's me and Jonah.
Mike: Hey, Jonah. Good to see you!
Jonah: Thanks for having me, Mike. Excited for the conversation.
Mike: Okay. Other than being on your podcast, "How I Lawyer," what inspired me to reach out to you was I was on a flight and I was listening to this book, What Made Maddie Run, and they were talking about the transition of going from high school to college and how parents are blissfully thinking, "Oh my God, this is going to be the best four years of my child's life." What they're not doing is any kind of transitional preparation of how different college—and boy, do I remember—is from high school.
Jonah: Right.
Mike: And I was thinking, the difference between college and law school, in some sense, particularly pedagogically and academically, might even be more stark. And then I was like, well, I have the best expert on the planet to talk to about this. So again, as I say in the intro, without further delay, go for it, Jonah—how stark is that difference?
Jonah: I think it's an important question to ask, and I'm glad you're asking it, Mike, and I hope people who are listening to this are recognizing that it's a great question to which there's many answers and many levels of answers. And here's the things that I thought of when you brought up this topic to me: the transition from college to law school, for many students, they think it's going to be pretty straightforward, right? They've already done higher education. If they're going to law school, it means they've probably done pretty well in that higher education. And they've taken all the exams. They've chosen their chosen profession. And so they think they've set themselves up for success.
The challenge is the way we teach law—and this is not a new phenomenon, right?—the way we teach law in America, and have taught law in America since Christopher Columbus Langdell (if you don't know that name and you want to learn the history, go look it up), is a little bit different. And so, a new set of classes. Instead of taking 20th century sports history, you're taking a standard set of classes, words that frankly, when I started law school, I didn't even know what they meant. Torts, contracts, property. And you're also then taught those classes in a very different format. So most law school classes today—I can talk about how legal writing, which is the class that I teach, is typically a little bit different—is some version of the Socratic method. So you're taught by being asked questions. It's also using the casebook method, where you read cases to learn the law. So it's not just, "Here's the answers, take notes, and then regurgitate those answers," which is frankly common in some humanities disciplines. Even though they're very complicated, no one tells you what the rules are. You read cases to then derive the rules, and then you have to sort of connect all these rules. So that's a change.
Another change is most law schools are on some version of a curve, which is a really different way of being assessed. And as much as we like to say that assessment is not what we're focused on in school, I think students are obviously focused on how they're going to be assessed and judged against their peers.
And then finally, it's a professional school. And so the goal from day one is, "What job am I going to get?" Especially given the cost of law school today, the difficulty of getting into law school today, I don't think it's unfair for those students to be thinking about what jobs they want to get.
So those are just some of the changes that, even someone who has gone to a really good college, who's prepared them really well, that they're going to face the second they start in an American law school.
Mike: Thank you for the intro. Is there a book that you recommend? Like I read "1L," which makes no sense because I didn't go to law school, but I was intrigued. I think in "1L" they did talk a little bit about the history of teaching of law. Is there a #1 book that you always recommend to incoming students?
Jonah: There isn't. There probably should be. There's a whole sort of small industry of these books; the one I read 15 years ago, I think was called Law School Confidential, but I don't remember anything about it; I just remember reading it. But if you go to your local bookstore or Amazon, there's going to be a group of these books. There's also a book whose name I'm forgetting, but we can put it in the show notes, by Professor Andrew Ferguson, that's really good and helpful to 1Ls. And then there's a brand new book that just came out called Dear 1L by Amanda—
Mike: Oh yeah, by Amanda [Haverstick]!
Jonah: She just sent it to me and I look forward to reading it. I've been impressed with her posts. So there are different books that are helpful. I'll also add, schools are getting better at this, at least at the introduction to the differences part. There's a course out of Harvard Law School called 0L that sort of walks through some of these changes, like what is torts? What is the Socratic method? So there are tools out there.
Mike: We also have a summer program for—
Jonah: There you go!
Mike: Rob Cacace and Jordana Confino.
Jonah: Who are two of my favorite people. But I guess what I'm trying to answer your question, Mike, is to say there are a lot of tools out there to get you ready. And at the same time, once you start, the only way to really be ready is to do it.
Mike: There's no go-to, seminal, "this is the one."
Law school is a professional school. This is the only area I can contribute because I was a Dean of Career Services during the Great Recession. What does that mean to you? To me it means your professional career starts the first day of orientation. Everything is on record. Every social media post, every way you comport yourself. Don't wear the purple jacket in the biglaw interview, which literally kept a student of mine from getting a job. So to me, it means, of course learn the material, but the end game is "what do you want to do with your career?" and keep that front and center.
Jonah: Yeah, I think, to me, the fact that it's a professional school is less about some of those pieces, although I think that's an essential part of it, right? It's a professional school because you want to join the profession. The reality is the great part about getting a JD, is that you can do anything with it. It's also, frankly, I think one of the hardest parts about getting a JD is that you can do anything with it. When I say it's a professional school, it is teaching you a way to think and a way to communicate and a base set of both information and skills that everyone else who gets a JD, regardless of whether they ever practice as a lawyer or sit for the bar exam, you are a member of our profession.
And I'll end that answer by going from where you started, Mike, which is—I agree, the second that you start in law school, the rest of the world is going to treat you like a lawyer. An example that I have from one of my students was a student who said, "I came home for Thanksgiving, and the only thing that my family members wanted to talk to me about was they had all these legal questions. And then I said 'I'm just a 1L; I haven't even taken my exams yet.'" And it was a good reminder to this student—and then I tell this story to my students that came after—that even if you're just starting in the profession, the day you walk into law school, the rest of the world is going to start treating you like a lawyer. Now, she was smart enough that her first answer was, "I can't provide legal advice; I'm not a lawyer," but it is a profession. We don't have that white coat ceremony that my friends who did med school have, but functionally, the day you walk into law school, you should start figuring out what it means for you to act and think and be a lawyer.
Mike: There are a few schools, like Pepperdine rings a bell, that do have a similar to the white coat ceremony. What I always think about is, when I compare emails from college students who are emailing us, basically non-law school students, to my lawyer friends—particularly when i'm asked to be an expert witness and I'm dealing with lawyers about the case—my experience is, if you were to juxtapose "email from applicant" to "email from partner at biglaw," the amount of superfluous information from the partner is zero. It's not just because they're so busy; it's because superfluous information is dangerous in their world. The more they put out, the more they can be used against them.
Jonah: Yeah, I hope we have some biglaw partners who are listening to this who are saying, "Wow, this is the first time lawyer email has ever been said to be solid and strong." But no, seriously, I do think you're right. It is a way of communicating and a way of thinking. A common catchphrase you'll hear your first week of law school is, "You go to law school to think like a lawyer." And I sort of pushed back on that at first, both as a student and then as a young faculty member, but I actually think there's something there, how we learn something and how we communicate that back to another person is uniquely connected to our profession, even if different people do it differently.
Mike: Yeah. What were the other two areas? I can probably guess at number one, classroom experience.
Jonah: I do think the classroom experience is really different in law school from most undergrad experiences. That said, I don't think we can universalize undergrad experience either. I mean, one of the things that I've noticed—and I have a between 50 and 60 1Ls every single year, and this is my, starting my seventh year of full-time teaching—is, the way we teach law is actually in many ways more similar to the way they teach math and the hard sciences than it is to the way most universities—I was a humanities major—teach humanities students. Similar in this particular way: math and science are typically taught by showing you something that someone else has come up with, a set of rules, a proof, a principle, and you are tested in both of two ways. The first is to apply that to something you've never seen before, which is exactly how we test people on law school exams. Or the second is to say, what is the natural extension or next extension of that rule or that principle that has never been thought about before?
And so in some ways, it's actually more similar to our STEM students' experiences in undergrad than it is to our humanities students, who are typically taught, you read a book, and then you write a paper about your thoughts about that book with a thesis that's backed up. So the writing may be more similar, but the actual learning experience is different.
If you've never stepped foot in a law school classroom, and everybody does this a little bit differently, the foundational approach of the Socratic method is based on not giving you answers, but asking you questions and learning inductively, reading a text and saying, "What is the rule in that text?" and then being able to turn around and apply that rule to something you've never thought of and never heard of.
Mike: I was a philosophy major, and the number one major is political science, English is up there, philosophy is up there, etc. etc. Let's pretend it's day one of law school. Now, for the record, I took a 3L class and got the highest grade in the class—and tell me if this is cheating; I wrote down word for word everything the professor said, and on the final, which was 100% of the grade, I just said what they thought. I parsed out their thoughts from their statements. Is that doable these days? This was the Vice Chancellor who was also the General Counsel at Vanderbilt, so he was very busy, so I think his grading may have been different from your typical law professor.
Jonah: Yeah, don't think that's the best way to do it. I will say, though, that I do think sometimes students under-appreciate trying to understand what their professor is saying, just as a matter of exam prep. I do think trying to basically understand your professors' statements better than maybe they do by bringing in information that you've learned across the different classes makes sense, because they choose what topics they're testing on, and they're the one doing the assessment. So I think there's actually a grain of truth there, even if it's not 100%.
Mike: I think I got lucky and I got the right professor, but I also think there's a grain of truth in having the EQ of figuring people out.
Jonah: 100%.
Mike: Let's pretend I'm a 1L in your class. What's an example, and I'm sure you have hundreds, of a question you would ask me that's Socratic in nature? Because I think a lot of people say, "Oh, I hear Socratic method a ton, but I never hear anyone give me an example of what's about to happen in my life."
Jonah: And I'll give the caveat that because I teach a writing class, I don't use the formal Socratic method, although I do call on students to participate in class, which is halfway there.
But let's just take your classic casebook, doctrinal, podium class, right? I'll just go back to 2009, which was when I was a 1L, and I remember sitting in Con Law, and our first thing we had to do was read the famous case Marbury v. Madison. For this example, you do not need to know anything about that case. But ultimately you read a case in advance—that's a big difference from a lot of college students who are not used to doing detailed reading before class, but if you haven't read the class, there's no way that you can answer the question. And typically the first question a law school professor asks is, "Mr. Spivey, repeat the facts of the case." That's step one to the Socratic method is, what are the facts of the case? Now notice what the professor is not asking. "What does this case stand for? What does this case mean to you? Do you think the case was rightly decided? How was the case decided?" It's the facts of the case. Why do we start with the facts of the case, even if that's not where we're going to end up? Because the Socratic method is all about building the answer of what this case stands for, live in the moment, question by question, in a way that allows you to move from fact to law.
Mike: Two thoughts. One, in any scenario as "Mr. Spivey," do I have the option to say, "Professor Perlin, I opt out because I feel nervous. I've never had this experience before." What happens when that happens?
Jonah: It depends on the professor. There are some professors who consider that a key part of your class and you don't really have a choice. I think one of the things we have learned is that different people have different strengths, so typically there's a way to sort of move around it. In my classroom, I try not to accept the answer "I don't ever think I should be called on or answer a question in class," but I do think there's a way to help people prepare for it so they feel more ready.
And ultimately, remember, in most cases, you're not getting graded on your answer. If you're anxious, it's because you think, "Oh I'm being assessed on my ability to repeat the facts of Marbury v. Madison." And the reality is, you are not being assessed about that at all. This is the process of learning the law, which is just an answer of, "What is the rule that applies to future cases that is derived from the facts of this case?"
In some ways, "What are the facts of this case?" is actually the easiest question you can get, because it's the only question you can prepare for. The challenge of that, I think also, is that people therefore over-prepare on the facts. So as they're in law school longer, they realize they don't actually need to be the world's greatest expert; they just need to know enough. But you start with the facts. The professor then might ask you next, "Why did this case ever get to a court?" "What is the legal question that these facts are asking?" Then we might walk through what the different answers are, why this case stands for this proposition of law, then if there's a dissent, look at a dissent. But it's not like a science textbook that's gonna tell you, This is how photosynthesis works." Instead, you're gonna back into how photosynthesis works by watching a plant go through photosynthesis. I'm out of my depth, but that's the idea.
Mike: One thing you hit on, and I'm going to double-click on this big time, is: not only are you not being assessed from that faculty member, I don't think a lot of 1Ls realize this, that faculty member has been teaching 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, they honestly don't remember going home, "Oh my God, this student just totally didn't know the facts." They're talking to their spouse, they're playing with their dog. It is long gone from their memory. Not only are you not assessed by that faculty member; you're not being by your classmates who are sitting there thinking, "Oh my God, am I going to be called out next?"
I have certainly had high degrees of insecurity, some anxieties, certainly hyper-vigilance. I'm not sure if I've ever felt imposter syndrome—after we talk, Jonah, I'm going to the Eckhart Tolle foundation, which we just found out is 10 minutes from where I live, and I'm going to introduce myself and try to get Eckhart Tolle on our podcast.
But I think if you do have imposter syndrome, if you don't think you belong, the person on your left and right also don't think they belong. I think knowing that can take the anxiety down a notch.
Jonah: I hope it does. I hope if you take anything from listening to this, if you're the person who's about to be called on, it's exactly what you just talked about, Mike. It is lowering the temperature on the importance of this interaction and seeing it for its purpose. Its purpose is, we are communally identifying what the relevant law is, but we're also watching how that law was created in real time with facts, because that's how lawyers think. That is a keystone skill.
I just went to big national legal writing convention, and one of the big topics that kept coming up at sessions I went to is this idea of "metacognition," which again, I'm not an expert on, but this idea of learning the skills behind the skills. So the reason you're going through that exercise of going from fact to law is so that when you're sitting as a real lawyer a few years later, in an area of law that did not exist, with a set of facts that did not exist, you're able to sort of work from first principles to a general principle of law. That's the reason behind this whole exercise. It is not to assess you, to make you scared. This is not the movie The Paper Chase if you've seen that. And it's not exactly Legally Blonde, if you've seen that, either.
Mike: We've talked about, it's a professional school. We've talked some about the classroom experience. What else strikes you as, "Hey, person listening to this podcast. You're about to go to law school. Get ready for this."
Jonah: So two quick answers to that. One is the curve, and the second is how to get a job.
On the curve point, most law schools have a curve most; undergraduate institutions do not. The difference is pretty straightforward. In undergraduate institutions, you are given the grade that professors pseudo-objectively believe you earn. In many undergraduate institutions, from my understanding now, there's rampant grade inflation, and so everyone thinks they earn an A; that's for another podcast episode. In law schools—and this is true from the top law schools all the way down in terms of rankings, and we talked a lot about how rankings have issues; leave that aside, but—the way you are graded is on a curve. And all a curve means, if you've never experienced one, is instead of getting a grade based on where you sort of objectively land such that a whole class could get one grade, instead, when I get an exam of 60 students, I take all of my points, I line them up 1 to 60, and the curve tells me how many people get A's, how many people get A-'s, how many people get B+'s, etc. The curves are a little more what I would call "generous" than when I was in law school, meaning the sort of median grade has gone up, and I think that's true at most law schools, but it is still comparative. And I think that comparative nature, that "zero sum" nature of the curve often psychs new law students out, because they are constantly saying, "How am I stacking up against my fellow classmates?" and it can create an environment where everybody sees everyone else as a potential person that's going to be ahead of them on the curve.
Mike: Yeah.
Jonah: The reality is, it exists. I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time stressing out about it, because there's nothing you can do about it. You can only do the best you can, swim your race, and see where you end up.
Mike: How does it make you feel to put someone on that curve, or how did it make you feel the first time you had to do it?
Jonah: When you grade on a curve, as a professor, you have to take solace that the curve is there for a reason. One of the benefits of having a curve is, it does allow people to differentiate themselves and stand out in the things that they're good at. And when you take away a curve and everybody has the same grade, there's a tendency for the sort of people with the more privileged backgrounds—the rich get richer, right? Because there's no differentiating point. Whereas if you just do really well on that exam as compared to other people—my older daughter has become a big swimmer, and so I'm sort of thinking this in the swim metaphor, you can track your times as a swimmer against yourself, right? I got 29 seconds today, I got 28.9 seconds tomorrow, I win. But when you're swimming a race at the Olympics, your time doesn't matter anymore. It's just how fast you swim compared to the other people in the lane. And there are benefits and curses to both of those experiences. I just think frankly it's a little bit different than most people are used to, and so they need to think about, "How am I going to react, and how am I still going to keep my humanity and my empathy and my ability to build connection with fellow students when I know we're swimming against each other in a few months on the race?"
Mike: So we left one category open, which is jobs.
Jonah: Yes.
Mike: I certainly have thoughts as a former Dean of Career Services, but you're doing it—right?—you're on the ground right now. I'm not. What would be your advice as far as, you're a 1L, what should you be doing to secure your future employment?
Jonah: I think this area may be the one that has changed the most in the 15 years. I was telling you in the call before that I took the class 15 years ago in the very same classroom that I now teach in. And one of the big changes for my students that I didn't have is, the path to get a job is different and a little bit more challenging. We don't need to go through the history of what it was like for me to get a job, but what should you think about as a first year student? Obviously your grades matter. I'm not going to lie. I think that's the first thing that employers look at.
But you want to know what else the employers are going to look at, and employers are looking at your breadth and depth of experience, your ability to get opportunities to try things out. So what's your summer internship going to look like? Most people get their summer internships before they have that many grades, and that's something that you have control over.
And it's also learning about what kind of lawyer you want to be. And that, I think, we are actually in a better place than we were 15 years ago. When I started law school, I had no clue what kind of lawyer I wanted to be. I did well in the skills-based, litigation-based classes, so then I said, "Oh I guess I should be a litigator, even though I don't really know what litigators do besides what I saw in Law & Order," and I became a litigator. Now there's so much more information out there that's freely and easily accessible—I'll shout out my own podcast for that as well—of learning about what different lawyers can do and interacting with different lawyers and testing it out and saying, oh, look in the mirror and say to yourself, what do you think I want to wake up and do every day? And then try to find a career that fits what you want to do every day and what you're good at. And so I think you can start doing that as a 1L in a way that you couldn't, maybe, 15 years ago.
Mike: In our email, you mentioned the word "networking," and that's such a scary word for unnecessary reason. Your whole life you've been networking. Networking is just talking to other people about interesting things. I had to, for much of my early career as a Dean of Career Services, go blind meet managing partners and hiring partners of the biggest law firms in DC, New York, Chicago, Dallas, whatever. And I remember walking into—Greg Schumacher, I believe he was at Jones Day in DC; at the time they hired more students than anyone. And when I walked in, I saw a bunch of Notre Dame football helmets and basketballs around his office, and all we did was talk about Notre Dame football and basketball. And then he ended up hiring WashU students; that's what I was at WashU.
So one way to think about networking is—and the Journal of Human Resources backs this with meta studies—the sooner you can elevate it to what is relatable to the person you're talking to—
Jonah: Yes.
Mike: —then it's an enjoyable conversation. There's your golden star, you're networking.
Jonah: I couldn't agree more. Because I also think it's scary, and it often connotes standing in ballrooms with people who are more experienced than you, drinking cheap Chardonnay or feeling uncomfortable about that. I think it's much better to think of networking as community building, Finding people you have connection with and building community with them, either if it's a one time interaction over football or a long-term interaction over where you grew up or what your interests are or where your kids go to school or what you like to do in your free time. It could be any of those things. And you are going to be networking—if you're entering the legal profession—you're going to be networking for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not. It's a huge part of what it means to be a lawyer, because we're in a client-centered business. And so you're going to need to get clients, or if you are a client, people are going to need to get outside counsel. And I think something that people don't realize, which I have learned so much in the last 15 years, is your first legal network isn't going to be necessarily somebody you knew before law school. It's going to be the person sitting to your right and your left when you start. I kind of wish we could refilm that classic Paper Chase scene where he says, "Look to the left, look to the right, only one of you is going to survive this class," or some version of that. I would rather say on the first day, "Look to your left, look to your right—that's going to be your professional network for the rest of your career." Because it really does change the way you think about networking and make it, I think, more positive than negative.
Mike: And you're not the first person who I've heard say that. Your classmates are going to be your early professional network, and some of them will be for the rest of your life.
You are going to be in that atrium talking blindly. One way to think about that is, no one wants to be in there. I'm an extrovert; I don't like doing those things. The sooner you can elevate the conversation to what is interesting to the other person, the more enjoyable it's going to be, not just for them, but for you. I'm going to plug a book, How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie from in the 1940s. It is still the most relevant to what biglaw partners who are successful do: Talk to people about themselves. To your point, the biggest blind spot I've seen in law students, having been for years in law school administration, is your responsibility after you get out of here is to build a book of clients. You're in sales. You are in sales.
Jonah: Yeah, it's a challenge. And if you don't want to do that, there are paths to not do that, but absolutely right—in a client industry, very much of it is sales. I couldn't agree more. And I will say, for the folks who really find that very disconcerting, the idea that they're going to talk about themselves or bring up the things that they're interested in, the other thing that I've counseled students who have come back to me and have said it's helpful in those situations, is ask questions. Lawyers love talking about themselves. One trick for people who are really uncomfortable talking about themselves, or don't know what they would talk about, is have really good, interesting questions to ask. If you keep asking questions, that is a way to show the person that you're talking to that you really want to learn from that interaction. And it also gives you more surface area to find something that you can then talk about yourself. It has the ancillary benefit of also setting you up for success by asking questions.
Mike: When I was a high school student I had zero curiosity, much to my detriment, but I've become so curious as I've gotten older. And that's so beneficial in these kinds of situations. Be curious, but there's a limit to it. Don't take up a busy hiring partner's time.
What other areas of change or advice do you have for the person who's already been admitted? They're about to go to Georgetown Law or wherever, and they're listening to this podcast. Always when I leave my doctor's office, I have five questions I didn't ask, so what are the questions I didn't ask?
Jonah: Yeah, I would say the first question you didn't ask, which is the one I hear all the time, is "What should I do the summer before law school?" And my answer to that is, there's lots of tools out there if you feel uncomfortable. And so you need to look in the mirror and say, "Am I going to feel more prepared if I use some of those tools?" But at the same time, do not go out and buy a torts textbook and try to teach yourself torts in the summer. It's not a good use of your time. Get the other stuff in order. Take your car to the shop. Update your passport. Check in with your family. Take that last minute trip. Have that last minute breakfast. This is the time to do it. Because when you're doing something new, you can sort of lose track of those things. If you can build some good habits—I'll pitch a book that I'm a big fan of, James Clear's Atomic Habits, which has been on the New York Times bestseller for like, years—but he talks about how individual habits are what changed the difference between success and happiness and the opposites. Start building those habits. One thing I loved learning how to do when I was in law school was I learned how to cook, and it had the benefit of giving me a break from reading, it also had the benefit of the fact that I like to eat. And so if you're a good cook and you like to eat, that's a huge benefit, and it's something I'm still doing to this day. If you've fallen off on your exercise habit, this is a good time to sort of dial that in just so you're ready, because it's going to be hard. And most of all, get some sleep, because as we all know that sleep is one of the most important things, but unfortunately for too many of my students, it's the thing that they get rid of first. And so make that core to your being.
Mike: Yes, Clear's book is great. He starts with that British cyclist story, and I used to tell that before he wrote his book, so I swear to God he snuck a peek into one of my—
Clear's book is phenomenal, because—the funny thing is my doctoral research was on goal setting, and I think Clear rightfully so knocks down motivation as a muscle that tires, and your foundation needs to be habits, not willpower. I would highly recommend that before you go to law school. Highly recommend some of the things you said, which is, this might be the last time in your life you're going to get a real break. So many people listening are so eager to be law students and lawyers—it's coming anyways. I don't want to like just tell everyone "go to Europe," but if you can hike the Appalachian Trail, go to Europe, develop a new habit of cooking, now's a great time to do it. Do not overthink. Listen to podcasts like this because we're telling you what the change is going to be, but then don't over-stress about it, because everyone's in the same boat as you. It's not like David Goggins—there's a few people—but it's not like David Goggins who did SEAL training once, and then did it again, and then a third time. Very few people have been a 1L. Everyone's in that boat with you. And probably the who gave themselves two weeks off before starting orientation is a little bit better suited to be in that boat than the person that bought the Torts book.
Jonah: Yeah, and look, you can do both. You can look in the mirror and say, "What is going to make me feel more confident the day I walk into class?" And you can read that one book or listen to that one podcast or take that one course. What I'm counseling against, and I think you are too, Mike, is going to the opposite extreme and basically just starting law school early, psyching yourself out.
There's a reason there is rest that happens before the most effective athletic examples—right, the Olympics is about to start—you know that if you don't have the rest and you don't have the mental bandwidth ready to go, you're setting yourself up for failure, not for success.
The other thing I would add is, once you start—so this is different than sort of before you start—but once you start, is to really focus on the process and not the product. And we haven't talked about this yet, and I'm sort of remiss not to mention it. So I want to make sure we talk about it a little bit. One of the other challenges of how you're assessed in law school is, the vast majority of classes, not the writing class that I teach, but the vast majority of classes are graded one time 100% on an exam at the end of the semester, or maybe two exams during the course of the semester. You are not going to get feedback early on in your law school career.
Mike: Right.
Jonah: There's going to be no way to check yourself against—how am I doing? How am I understanding? You have to find a process that is authentic to you, that sets you up for success. Going back to the habits we were talking about, you have to set interim goals for yourself that are never going to be graded. So for me that would be, make sure that after every single class that you sit through—let's say it's a two-hour class—spend an hour going through your notes, figuring out what you don't understand, cleaning them up, making sure they make sense, so that when you sit down and study for your exam in eight or ten weeks, you have the best textbook possible available to you to study from. If you don't do that, and you focus—which a lot of students do, I think to their detriment—on being ready for that cold call that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, the "What are the facts of the case?" you're going to set yourself up for failure.
The classic example of this, I remember my first semester in law school, somebody came to the exam, and what they came to the exam with was a book of their summaries of each case. So they had spent the entire semester writing factual summaries of each case. So Marbury v. Madison, here's what happened. Next case, here's what happened. And the exam said, "Here's a hypothetical scenario you've never heard of. Use everything we've learned in class to figure out who wins and why." Those factual scenarios that look beautiful and are well organized are completely worthless to you on the exam. They were super helpful to learn what the rules were, but there was no effort to synthesize the rules, and therefore, there's no way to be able to apply those rules to new facts. Think about what your process is going to be and just lean into the process.
Mike: Yeah, we live in a society, the great social experiment of social media where intrinsic goals are now so much dwarfed by extrinsic goals. Let me give you an example. What is more outside of your control and extrinsic than how many Instagram likes did your post get? I mean, the human mind craves feedback. To the extent that you can create your own intrinsic checkpoints, am I learning? Because you're not going to be getting feedback or a grade.
Jonah: Absolutely. You have to be ready to find success in small ways that are only judged by what you do. And guess what, you're not going to be successful 100% of the time. If your goal is, at the end of the week I'm going to have reviewed all my notes, if you've reviewed 75% of your notes, you're crushing it. And you'll pick up the last 25% when you have to in the adrenaline's pumping. But if you've done zero because you've never set that goal for yourself, then when you sit down to study at Thanksgiving time, you're going to go crazy. I've seen it happen. It's not a good place to be in.
Mike: Life is about prioritization. So you can set a hundred goals and do the top 10 and be successful. And in fact, that's my every day. That would be my parting advice is, put together a list of things. Don't even call them goals, just things you want to accomplish. That might be staying mentally stable, because that's tough. Doing well to your best ability and not what some professor's grade is. But come up with a list of goals and prioritize those—keeping your high school or college friends, whatever—that's my parting final advice. Come up with a list of goals maybe the day before orientation, and then pin that somewhere, so you don't lose track of your personal intrinsic priorities. What would be your final parting advice?
Jonah: Yeah, I love that. I really love that. I think my final piece of advice is to not do things because everyone else is doing them, and run your own race, swim your own race, whatever you want. That's not to say you shouldn't look up to people. If you know a 2L or a 3L, you should absolutely have coffee with them this summer to get their experience and what worked for them. That's not what I mean by "Don't worry about everybody else," but don't constantly say, "Is this person a threat to my spot on the curve?" It is so easy to get into that competitive mindset. And in reality, as we've talked about, for so many reasons, you can only be the best you can be. And a rising tide does raise all ships. Having that person to ask the question of the night before the exam might be the most valuable thing you've done all semester, because you got to know them as a human being. And then 15 years down the line, they may be the one that gets you the job. So don't feel like you need to be like a social butterfly, but do recognize that the competitiveness that sometimes comes along with 1L is just not worth it.
Mike: Yeah, we're all faking it through life. Let me just away the great secret of all of us. Like, we all have our struggles, issues, challenges. We're all faking a little bit. So don't worry if the person next to you looks like they're super confident and ready. They're not.
Jonah: Yeah, and you'll see it. You'll see it. The people who are super confident and loud and raise their hand in the front row every single time in the first semester often get real quiet when grades come out in the second semester. So don't assume. Just run your race. And if you don't know what race to run, that's when you have conversations. That's when you read the books we talked about, you take the courses we talk about, and just make a plan, iterate, test it, and move on.
Mike: Don't worry about the person always raising their hand. That would be me on the Dunning-Kruger side; I would be really quiet my second semester. I would be a great data point for that.
Jonah, it's a pleasure. Thank you. We'll do it again next year.
Jonah: Yeah, my pleasure. And if anybody's interested, I'll share with Mike for the show notes, I've done a few episodes on my podcast about these topics and how to prep for law school with people who actually know even more than I do. So, I'm happy to share those, but most of all, if you're listening to this and you're about to start law school, good luck, the profession's here for you and you're going to make it a better profession.
Mike: Good luck everyone. Thank you, Jonah.
Jonah: Yeah, thanks Mike.