Law students who realize that the practice of law begins upon matriculation employ the executive-level managerial characteristics of attorneys by segmenting their work. The most effective law students focus on their objectives, fractionate them, and then intensely prepare to prevail as to each component. Your first-semester objectives should be consistent with your longer-range goals, and therefore include:
- Developing a comprehensive understanding of each field of law you are studying (usually including Torts, Contracts, Property and Civil Procedure).
- Achieving fluency in the language of each distinct field of law you are studying, as well as attaining a wide-ranging facility in the general language of the law.
- Developing and mastering the skills of lawyering.
- Earning grades as high as your capability allows.
If your objectives approximate these, you will do superbly on law school examinations when you achieve your objectives—because not only will you have achieved the very goals your professors have in mind for you but you will be able to demonstrate your accomplishment on final examinations. As Professor Philip Kissam, from the University of Kansas School of Law explains, when professors read and grade law school examination answers to essay questions, they are assessing students’ understanding of the subject matter, “inferential abilities, analytical abilities, and judgment concerning particular legal problems.” They look for “sound ... interpretation of events and authorities; demonstration of practical reason, judgment and innovation in developing and reconciling competing arguments or making decisions; and the employment of rhetoric in forming well-constructed and persuasive arguments.” (Law School Examinations, 42 Vand. L. Rev. 433, 458).
Therefore, if you target personal-best performance on examinations as your goal and if you prepare for those examinations in a lawyerly manner, you will be heading directly toward accomplishing the particular objectives set forth above. Segmenting your work, to provide consistent practice of each element mentioned by Professor Kissam in each subject area, will lead directly to your ultimate objectives.
- Fluently speaking, reading, writing, and comprehending the language of the law.
- Persuading others through language use.
- Continually self-evaluating performance and making needed corrections.
- Recognizing legal issues where non-lawyers do not.
- Prioritizing objectives and the multiple tasks designed to achieve them.
- Strategically planning to accomplish well-defined objectives.
- Using time efficiently and effectively.
- Asking questions calculated to inform.
- Exercising as much control over the use of each day and week as events and circumstances allow.
- Organizing—and reorganizing—to achieve specific (sometimes shifting) goals.
- Managing time advantageously, expecting the unexpected.
- Operating within groups—as participants or leaders.
- Recognizing the need to work within a rigidly structured—sometimes antagonistic—organizational framework, to achieve self-defined objectives.
- Self-directing, self-motivating, self-propelling.
- Learning (and relearning) alone—without an instructor.
- Remembering vast quantities of material.
- Digesting and writing volumes—letters, pleadings, appeals, briefs, memo¬randa, contracts, leases, opinions, analyses.
- Engaging in dialectic (the exercise of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments).
- Exercising self-control.
- Briefing cases and statutes.
- Remaining calm while operating under stressful conditions.
- Maintaining composure while peers are exhibiting anxiety.
- Carefully balancing the practice of law with family, social, and physical needs and obligations.
Get the picture? If you begin practicing these traits now by the time you are sworn in as a member of the bar, you'll be ready to go. You will be the kind of lawyer that you would hire if you needed a lawyer!