Dear Student,
Welcome to The Law School Playbook! I’m Halle Hara, a professor of academic success and personal skills coach to law students and attorneys. I’m glad you’re here! Congratulations on the steps you have taken toward earning your law degree. If you are a 1L just starting out, these letters on law school learning and training will guide you to get the most of out of your experience. I sometimes speak directly to 2Ls because, let’s face it, there is a whole lot of law school support that already exists for transitioning from undergrad to law school. Nevertheless, the information in these letters is for you as well.
Why letters? I opted to use the letter format because, as a Professor of Academic Success, I endeavor to reach each of my students individually. To state it simply, Academic Success coaching is not a one-size-fits-all undertaking. My hope is that, by offering my learning and training advice in this way, you will select the letters and messages that resonate most with you. I am also available for one-on-one coaching to supplement these letters, and I hope that this is just the beginning of a dialogue we can continue over time. Law school is difficult, and I’m here to help.
If you are a 2L, I want you to think of how you felt just one year ago, when everything was new. You tackled a new language, a new type of reading, new study techniques, and in-class questioning and lived to tell about it. You’re a 2L now, so you’ve got law school all figured out, right?
Hold on—not so fast. In your second year of law school, the academic landscape will change. Your texts are less likely to contain straightforward concepts like intentional torts, and you won’t be able to master concepts as easily using mnemonic devices like you may have for adverse possession. Instead, the classes that you’ll face this year require a deeper consideration of complex legal issues, and they are more likely to have balancing tests weighing multiple factors than elements to satisfy a bright-line rule.
The key to your success during any year of law school hinges on your ability to consciously and objectively evaluate your own learning. Sounds easy enough, right? Scientific data, however, tells us otherwise.
At one end of the spectrum, students with cognitive scores in the top quartile often underestimate their competence, believing that what comes easily to them must come easily to others. Clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes coined the psychological term imposter syndrome to identify this way of thinking. People who suffer from imposter syndrome question their accomplishments and have a recurring fear that they will be exposed as a fraud.
At the other end of the spectrum is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which recognizes a cognitive bias to inflate self-assessment. Research by David Dunning and Justin Kruger revealed that the “illusion of confidence” was most prevalent in the students who scored the lowest on cognitive tests. In fact, students with cognitive scores in the bottom quartile estimated that they outperformed more than two-thirds of other students. In sum, science tells us that competent students underestimate their own abilities and incompetent students have a cognitive-bias of illusory superiority.
So how can you truly become a self-regulated learner capable of accurately gauging your own progress? Educational psychologists tell us that explicitly teaching metacognitive skills helps students to overcome imposter syndrome, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and everything in between. That is what this series of letters is designed to do—to guide you to think critically about your own learning.
If only that were enough. I would be remiss if I failed to recognize that alcohol and drug abuse and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression permeate law school based in large part on the unrelenting volume of increasingly difficult course material in combination with work, extracurricular, and social commitments. In the second year in particular, law students find truth in the old adage that they are “worked to death.” They also report feeling less supported than they were when first transitioning to law school. How could anyone do their best under those conditions?
As these letters will explain, you must treat yourself with the same care that you will treat your future clients. That doesn’t mean treating yourself to a fancy steak dinner or a spa day. It means having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset, being an optimist rather than a pessimist, having resilience and grit, and embracing the passion and intellectual curiosity that prompted you to go to law school in the first place.
Effective academic coaches help students to achieve results by building on their strengths. I believe you can move from being a novice law student to an expert law student with the right guidance. When I told my academic success colleagues that I planned to do coaching that included second-year law students, some told me not to bother because there was “no market for it.” The assumption in that position is that second-year law students are too busy, disinterested, or apathetic to want to be better learners. Given that the average second year of law school costs over $45,000 and most students cover that cost by taking out loans, I’m willing to bet that second-year law students are looking to make the most of their investment. No matter where you are on your academic journey, I’m here to help.
If would you like to read this episode, get suggestions for further reading, or to request individual coaching with me, please visit my website at www.lawschoolplaybook.com.
As always, do your best, and I’ll be rooting for you!
References and Further Reading
Career Igniter, How Much Does Law School Cost? https://www.careerigniter.com/questions/how-much-does-law-school-cost/ (accessed June 28, 2019).
Megan Dalla-Camina, The Reality of Imposter Syndrome, Psychology Today (Sept. 3, 2018). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/real-women/201809/the-reality-imposter-syndrome.
Toni Jaeger-Fine, Becoming a Lawyer: Discovering and Defining Your Professional Persona 85–97, 119–20, 151–53 (2019).