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Organizational Tools for the Disorganized Lawyer (Guest post by Lauren Clark Rad)

Today, we’re delighted to bring you the #PracticeTuesday Blog’s very first guest post, courtesy of #AppellateTwitter mainstay Lauren Clark Rad, a litigator at Ferguson Case Orr Paterson LLP. 

 

Take a moment to pause and imagine your ideal lawyer or law student. What is her personality like? What is her workspace like? Most likely, the person you imagined is smart, thoughtful, thorough, and organized. She has a desk that is reasonably tidy and a good grasp of what’s coming up on her calendar. There are reasons for that.

Law is a deadline-driven profession. The consequences of missing those deadlines can be severe, even catastrophic. Clients depend on their lawyers to monitor deadlines and make sure they’re met.

Lawyers are human, though, and they span the spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. Some of us are just not born with an innate sense of how to be organized. Over the last decade, I’ve been on a mission to find the organization system that works best for me. In hopes of sparing others that same lengthy journey, I’ve compiled this list of various tools and techniques I’ve used, along with a discussion of their benefits and drawbacks. Continue reading “Organizational Tools for the Disorganized Lawyer (Guest post by Lauren Clark Rad)”

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Dr. Katie Pryal and the Life of the Mind Interrupted

Today on the blog, we’re delighted to bring you a Q-and-A with Katie Rose Guest Pryal (@krgpryal). Katie is a novelist, attorney, freelance journalist, and erstwhile law professor in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is the author of novels, including ENTANGLEMENT and CHASING CHAOS, and nonfiction books, including her most recent, LIFE OF THE MIND INTERRUPTED: ESSAYS ON MENTAL HEALTH AND DISABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION. She is also the co-author of two popular law school textbooks: CORE GRAMMAR FOR LAWYERS (with Ruth Ann McKinney) and THE COMPLETE LEGAL WRITER (with Alexa Z. Chew). As a journalist, Katie contributes to QUARTZ, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, DAME MAGAZINE, WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION, and other national venues.

Katie earned her master’s degree in creative writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, her law degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her doctorate in rhetoric from UNC Greensboro. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Terrence W. Boyle of the United States District for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

My questions to Katie are in bold; her answers follow. Continue reading “Dr. Katie Pryal and the Life of the Mind Interrupted”

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“It’s not so shiny anymore”: 1Ls and the October slump

Unlike many law professors, I only teach 1Ls. It’s a role I relish, in part because I think the first year is a time when good teaching and mentoring can make a huge difference in the life of a law student, and in part because, as I’ve shared before (and again and again), 1L year was far from my finest hour. Between my experience teaching 1Ls and my experience being a 1L, I’ve learned that there are some pretty consistent messages that many first-year law students usually need to hear at about this time of year. That’s why, 1Ls, this post is for you.

So, it’s October. Soon it will be mid-October. Law school probably isn’t so shiny anymore. Maybe you’ve got midterms coming up. Maybe you’ve been talking to 2Ls and 3Ls about how to outline. Maybe you’ve been going to presentations about applying for summer jobs or how to prepare for exams, and, while helpful, they stressed you out because they made you think about The Curve and Everything You Have To Do and How Important Everything Is. Maybe, in anticipation of the end of the semester, some of your classmates aren’t being as friendly or as forthcoming with their work product as they were four weeks ago. Maybe you wrote your first memo and it was much harder than you expected, or the feedback you received wasn’t the kind of feedback you’re used to getting on your writing.

Either way, the newness is wearing off and your nerves may be wearing thin. Here are seven tips to get you through the rest of the semester. (Each of these could probably be their own post; I’ll get more specific about some of them as we get closer to December.) Continue reading ““It’s not so shiny anymore”: 1Ls and the October slump”

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Recommendations on Letters

You’re a law student who’s found the perfect opportunity—a summer internship, a fellowship position, or a clerkship. You’ve suffered through drafting a cover letter. You’ve squeezed your resume onto a single page (or not, don’t @ me) and agonized over the formatting so much that you never want to see it again. But you’re not done. The application requires a letter or letters of recommendation. How can you position yourself to receive the strongest possible letters from your law school professors?

The good news is that there are steps you can and should take to increase the quality of the letters written on your behalf. The slightly-less-good news is that some of these steps should begin long before it’s time to ask a professor for a letter. Let’s break it down. Continue reading “Recommendations on Letters”