I had coffee with a stellar former student yesterday who asked a great question:

"I know it’s important to keep in touch with mentors & former supervisors but how do you recommend doing that?"

Here was my answer: 1. Don’t stress about quantity. Even checking in once or twice a year is plenty. I keep a birthday calendar for friends and professional contacts and always try to check in around their birthday. It’s an easy natural reason to connect and people are often (pleasantly) surprised.

🌀 Spiral Learning

Lawyers are constantly learning new topics & tasks. In law school we try to teach "how to think like a lawyer" but also "how to learn like a lawyer."

One of my favorite learning techniques is sometimes called "spiral learning": 1/6 Spiralling is a strategy where you learn the same concept multiple times but each time learn it at greater depth/complexity.

For law students this means learning the same concept multiple times:

• Reading
• Class
• Post-Class
• Outlining
• Practice Exams
• Real Exams

Law Students: What if I told you that you could be more successful on *all* your law school exams with a single word?

Seriously!

That word is BECAUSE

Short 🧵 I just finished meeting with my 57 1Ls in advance of their legal practice memo exam and I found myself giving the same advice over and over: tell me why. What LAW? What FACTS?

And one way to force yourself to do that and to tell the reader why is to use the word because.

Lawyers are often asked to give feedback on the writing of others but they are rarely trained how to do it well.

Every year I give written feedback on more than 350 pieces of #LegalWriting.

Here are 5 quick(ish) tips to give better written feedback on legal writing: 1. PURPOSE

Feedback can have many purposes. Sometimes it's to get a doc out the door. Other times it's to make a doc sound like you (supervisor). Other times to "assess" the writer.

Know your purpose!

Most often it is to make the document better but also the writer better.

I have published 59 hours and 14 minutes of interviews with lawyers on #HowILawyer. All available free & asynchronous.

That is a lot!

But finding the right episodes is hard. So here are some playlists for those who want to catch up on specific topics (& follow for the future): How I Lawyer Litigation Playlist:

open.spotify.com/playlist/5Wj5R…

⁉️This week many law students start On Campus Interviewing.Every single interview will end with “what questions do you have for me”?

Some of my favorites 🧵👇 0/ But before we start some reminders.
• Questions are part of the interview. You are still being assessed.
• This won’t be your last opportunity to ask questions so be strategic.
• Ask questions that show interest (ask questions that show hesitation post offer)
• YMMV

I recently had a #1L student who is about to start a judicial internship ask for some advice on how to get the most out of the experience.

As a former judicial intern, federal law clerk (x2), and now law professor, here are 7 tips: 1. Quality > Quantity. You'll be asked to draft documents for your judge. Even better, you won't be under the same time pressure as clerks. Just remember, you won't be judged by how fast you work or # of cases, but only on the quality of your work. Take the time. Do your best.

Many #1L students are off for spring break or will be soon.

This is a challenging time. The novelty of 1L has worn of. You finally know enough to know you don’t know it all. It’s a marathon and you are at mile 16. Exhausted but lots to go.

Thoughts on how to finish strong 👇 1. LOOK FORWARD, NOT BACK. Don’t fixate on what you haven’t done & mistakes you’ve made. The class you missed. The outline you didn’t start. The office hour you didn’t attend. That’s in the past.

Focus instead on what you will do with the the semester you have left!

🎙Ep. #056 of #HowILawyer is Live with Litigator & @QuinnEmanuel Founder John Quinn (@jbqlaw)

We discuss:
- his path from NYC deal lawyer to founding a litigation powerhouse
- ways to stand out as a litigator
- the Firm's shift to a "work from anywhere" model

& more

Link 👇 howilawyer.com/56

Just finished an incredible #HowILawyer interview with a decorated law professor about her path to the academy and how she has navigated it since. Won’t come out for a few weeks but I have to share four nuggets of wisdom from the convo that candidly apply to any lawyer’s path. 1. READ MORE. Obviously this is true for academic (although finding time is harder than I expected) but it’s true for any lawyer who wants to learn a practice area.

Find what others in the field read. Blogs. Foundational texts. Don’t just scroll. Dig deep into the conversation.

Want to do better on law school exams?

Here is a lesson from the Winter Olympics that might help.

In 2010, I was a 1L during the Vancouver Games. Men’s figure skating pitted 🇺🇸 Evan Lysacek v. 🇷🇺 Evgeni Plushenko.

Their story changed my outlook on exams forever.

🧵👇 Lysacek and Plushenko were both excellent skaters. The biggest difference was that Plushenko could consistently hit a QUAD jump. Lysacek couldn’t.

Since bigger jumps = bigger base point values that was a huge advantage for Plushenko who needed fewer points per move to win.

Law is a profession of passed down wisdom. But that wisdom is often siloed to a golden few. The internet offers an opportunity to share this knowledge asynchronously & at scale.

So in 2021 I interviewed 50 lawyers on the #HowILawyer podcast.

Here are 20 lessons I learned 🧵 👇 1. Career Paths Only Look Straight When You Look Backwards.

When you read LinkedIn bios top to bottom career trajectories can seem obvious. But the truth is that they are often unplanned, serendipitous, and the product of chance and risk taking.

https://twitter.com/JonahPerlin/status/1466789842688389122?s=20

🚨 Do you like advice tweets and threads for law students and lawyers?

I just started lawthread.com where I'll compile the best ones.

This is a *super* first draft. The internet is WILD. Idea to prototype in 16 hours.

Want to help? Read below.

https://twitter.com/JonahPerlin/status/1387506786408796163

I started with the tweets suggested in response to my post but I want to build out the library over time. Please tell me what you think I should include new and old (self nomination encouraged).

Want to make a recommendation ?

1⃣DM me
2⃣E-mail me
3⃣Tag with #LawThread

Ok #appellatetwitter / #legalwriting fam.

There are so many great threads for law students and lawyers. But after a few days they disappear.

I am working on a way to compile and display them for posterity.

Reply👇 with your favorite lawyer advice 🧵 suggestions to add. I’ll start with a few @CecereCarl on writing.

https://twitter.com/cecerecarl/status/1354486722764173315

Dear New #1Ls,

You are probably taking a course called #LegalWriting, Legal Practice, or Legal Analysis.

You may be thinking "I know how to write" or "I can sneak by this one" or "I'll just focus on other classes."

On day 1, I was like you.

Pro Tip: Don't be me.

🧵👇👇👇 1/ So much of #1L year is learning to "think like a lawyer."

This course (full disclosure: I teach it at @GeorgetownLaw) introduces you how to write, read, analyze, research, and act like a lawyer (and some thinking too).

Do those skills sound important? They are.