"Tips for Law School Success for Women"

all right so we're just going to begin with some introductions just for a few minutes talking all the panelists are going to talk about how they got where they are today briefly and also why they thought speaking on this panel was important and also for the student panelists what are you hoping to do after law school both in the near term and then the slightly longer term Katie would you like to start well hey everyone as Marta said my name is Katie rumba I my notes editor on the review I'm one of the co-chairs in charge of the mentoring program which as a side note we will be rolling that out in the next couple of weeks so I encourage all of you to sign up for the listserv there's a sign-up sheets in the back the mentoring program is terrific I've gotten a lot out of it so well I guess a little bit of background on me I worked for two years with for law school I was a paralegal at a firm in DC and so I knew that DC was where I wanted to end up in the long term let's see is the 1l went back to North Carolina which is where I'm from to work so that summer I was working I split my summer between a firm and working for a judge this past summer I was a summer associate at that Sidley Austin in Washington DC had a great experience there and then after graduation I will be working in a Public Interest fellowship for about ten weeks it's run through the DC Bar Association and subsidized by my firm and I'll be clerking for a year at the district court level and after that returning to the firm and then as far as as far as why I think it's good that we have this panel I mean as a member of both the Law Review and Virginia law women I'm I'm so excited that we were able to put this together throughout my career in law school I have received tremendous help from upperclassmen when I was a 1l you know talking to two L's and three also members of the faculty and I think that this is a good way to start you all off get you connected to some of us who have been through the law school process and who are scarily almost finished with it and so I hope that you will get a lot out of this program and thank you for attending hi my name is Anne Coughlin and I'm a professor on the faculty at the law school I want to join the organizers of the event and welcome all of you here we are absolutely overjoyed to have you at the law school and to have you at this event we couldn't do our work without you and we're really looking forward to having you in our community I'm going to say a couple of things about my background but first what I want to tell you is that each of us on the panel and indeed all of your law professors and you know other lawyers that you might admire all of us have been at one time for me a last long ago sitting exactly where you sit so I'm looking at your faces and I see a range of different expressions and I can see myself sitting there right with you so you're gonna hear some things about the hard work that we did and good suggestions we have for hard work that you might do but we all were once sitting exactly where you are completely clueless about how this was all gonna turn out and feeling a little bit worried about it so that's one of the reasons why we're just overjoyed to be able to have this open conversation with you so you may look at us and think that you know we're we're sort of models of some sort and I hope we are and and but we once were you and so there's no question that you can find your way in this profession and be successful in the ways that are gonna make you happy so I went to law school after having studied English for a year in a master's program and I was really unhappy with the master's program in part because the reading of these texts seemed remote from real problems in the world so I went to law school thinking oh my gosh I've got to have something to do and I was as I just said completely clueless about how it was gonna turn out about how to study law about it how to do anything about which end was up so I feel like I'm a pretty good person to give basic advice about the kinds of things that you'll want to be doing and thinking about from the very beginning I went to law school i clerked for a couple of years I worked in practice for a while I then went and taught at Vanderbilt for four years and then had the great fortune to come here and be a member of this faculty I am especially thrilled that we're having this event now because there'll be similar events like this throughout the year when Sarah Buckley was a first-year student we had a brown bag lunch sort of late in maybe the semester the first semester and she later confided in me that those conversations were really helpful to her but it would have been better to have them earlier and with a larger group so that's one of the reasons why I'm here because we are completely and utterly committed to your success and want to answer your questions and just be useful to you from this day forward hi I'm Sarah Buckley I am the editor in chief of Law Review this year I am a double who I went to UVA undergrad and graduated in 2009 after that I worked in Charlottesville for two years for delegate David Toscano who represents Charlottesville and proud of Albemarle County in the Virginia General Assembly and was so fortunate to be able to stay in Charlottesville for another three years and have been so happy to be at UVA for Law School last summer I came to law school because of my interest in environmental law in particular and last summer I clerked with DOJ in the Environment and Natural Resources Division and this summer I worked at Latham & Watkins in DC which has a great environmental practice and I anticipate doing that in the future immediately after law school I'm going to be cooking for a couple of years and then hope to return to Latham and on my career I am doing this panel because of what mr. Coughlin said I went to a Virginia law women brown-bag I think it must have been October or something of my first year and I think it what professor Kaufman said really just opened my eyes and really helped me in my approach to law school and that's because when I came to law school I was pretty scared I thought that everyone was a lot smarter than me I mean everyone is so incredibly smart every professor is so incredibly smart and well-read and I just thought there's no way that I could achieve the level of success that I had had as an undergrad and I think you all probably also found came rather easy as an undergrad so I came in thinking well it's okay it's a B+ curve like I can I can be middle of the pack and that would be fine with me but something that professor Coughlin said during that Brown Bag as we were talking about disparities and gender in the top indicia indices at the Law School Law Review membership the number one person in the class moot court etc somebody said and that panel like well why would I pour all these pour all this effort into getting these these trophies when there are other ways that I can experience law school other ways that I can advance my career and professor Kaufman said why wouldn't you why wouldn't you want to be that person why wouldn't you want to get straight A's and that really gave me the motivation to let myself try to succeed you know to make it make myself not afraid of failing and actually try and grab it so that's why I'm doing this and I hope you all will do that too I'm Molly shadow I'm a professor here at the law school I teach advocacy and verbal persuasion which means being able to make an argument in a way that is gonna convince people so I want to try to convince you that what Sarah just said is exactly right that the more you tried to achieve and push yourself in law school the better off you're gonna be I came to law school really not knowing why I was here at all when I was in college I spent all my time directing plays I went to a master's program to get an MFA in directing dropped out after a year because I wasn't sure I wanted to do it move to New York start the theater company with a bunch of my college friends and after several years of starving and not be able to pay the rent I decided that I needed another career path so I went to Columbia really just because I had friends who were already there and I already lived on the Upper West Side and that was my plan was it was an easy commute and right away felt completely at sea really thought I don't know why I'm here Columbia is full of the Socratic method and the way the professors there use it they will call on one or two students throughout the course of the semester so everybody gets called on once but a couple people get called on all the time and I was one of those people in a lot of my classes and my theory is that it's because my name was easy to say because at that time it was Molly Bishop but easier than a lot of my classmates so I found it to be humiliating I thought it was I thought it was terrifying I didn't want to talk and I quickly thought I already need a strategy I need to figure out how I'm gonna survive law school and and you know I can't cry in class there's no crying in law school because I got a different strategy and so I came up with all kinds of ways to keep up with the homework take notes for myself figure out how I can answer these questions you know what I got pretty good at it by the time I finished I was on Law Review I could do a job interview like you wouldn't believe and it was the practice it was being in those stressful situations and answering the questions so I graduated I clerked I joined a law firm called Covington and Burling and worked in their DC office and also in the New York office for many years and found that I had no problem speaking up in team meetings putting an opinion out there and many of my female colleagues were not as forthcoming it's really terrifying to speak up if you are the only woman in the room and I feel like I learned how to do it because of that miserable experience in law school that actually taught me quite a lot so what from Covington to the Department of Justice I was in the office of intelligence which is the office that Edward Snowden has now made famous who were the lawyers that went to the FISA Court to get the secret warrants to let NSA spy on all of you and then after a couple years I got engaged to my husband who owns a website design company here in Charlottesville and so I needed a job and I couldn't do my DOJ job here because it was all classified you had to actually be there and so I reached back to my Covington connections I called it Bob sailor who's a faculty member here and I said Bob I need a job do you have any Covington work I could do and he said no I have a better idea why don't you come to UVA and be a professor and I said I don't think it works that way and the answer is it doesn't usually work that way so if you're gonna be a professor like an Coughlin is if you're gonna teach traditional doctrinal stuff that's not how it works how it works is you publish articles you go to a a big conference that happens once a year where you try to get a job with any law school that will take you but if you want to teach things like I teach practical things clinical things things like that it can help to have connections and so I started off really as an adjunct my first year I was a part-time lecturer really you know could have been nothing at all and then they let me also be the director of the Public Service Center but here's the lesson you can take from that I kept working I wrote two books I taught a lot I finally went back to them and said I don't want to do the administrative work anymore I just want to be a faculty member now I'm a professor of law all right so here's the takeaways that I would give you so one is talk in class talking in class is really really great because it will teach you a skill that will get you jobs if you don't want to talk in class come take one of my classes and I will help you talk in class the second lesson is connections so that's another reason why I want to be on this panel is your connections start right here all the people in this room with professors that you're gonna encounter my connections have gotten me great jobs they will help you too you got to start networking now and then the third thing is don't give up so this is the sort of lean in philosophy that you've probably heard Sheryl Sandberg talk about any idea that you lean into your career so when I left DOJ took an enormous pay cut to come teach here that was kind of mommy tracking my career well you don't have to just give up you can take whatever opportunity you're in and decide you know I'm gonna make something out of this and if you do it can turn into something that's pretty fantastic I got to say I love my job and a part of why I really love it is because what I'm teaching is extremely interesting to me and it harkens back to the stuff that I loved about theater so if you could find a job like that a job that jives with your own personal personal interests that's gonna be a job that you're probably gonna be good at - all right thank you everyone so we're gonna move on to the hot topics portion of our event I want to start talking in class okay that's example of what you shouldn't do in class and the professor's talking I want to start first I wanted to add a corrective to what Molly said when I was in law school I never talked in class I think it's important to talk in class but you can be a big success never talking in class I'm gonna go on the record even though this is being recorded and say that there must be something wrong with a law school Socratic method if it's designed to make people miserable and feel humiliated and and all of those things and if you've discovered that that's happening here in your courses you should complain about it don't just lean in you know make noise rock the boat have a fit the Socratic method the Socratic dialogue is for you to help you learn and I agree with Molly it's very important to learn to speak it's important to find your voice but there are different ways to do it and I don't want the first years in the audience to think oh my gosh I've got to start talking in class even though I don't yet know a thing to talk about right so that was sort of my experience at the beginning was I didn't even know whether the book was upside down you know back I couldn't read it so how could I talk in class and I was a very quiet person I'm not so much quiet anymore but you can be a very big success even if you are a quiet learner and find other spaces in which to exercise your speaking skills in large law school classes frequently talking can be problematic because the professor's gonna lecture or wants just fairly limited you know comments from you so don't blow the talking into class stuff out of proportion if you enjoy it and you should develop an enjoyment for it go for it go for it early it's costless what you say in class is a free place to practice we are not gonna penalize you for making mistakes in fact your professors are desperately grateful to you for raising your hands for answering our questions for making a good-faith effort to participate so don't try to be to be perfect we're just so happy that somebody is speaking up and helping us to fill up that silence 60 minutes okay and then so what I would say do your best listen to the questions answer but nothing's gonna happen to you if you make a mistake right no one's gonna hear it no one's gonna remember so just use this as a place to practice and if it's not you if you were like me more more of a quiet participant early on don't worry about that find other places and ways in which you can begin to burst into speech because I do agree with Molly it's crucial to begin to speak somewhere yeah Columbia and UVA are very different you're not gonna have that same experience here it is a really different environment but I will say you know the part where you think I don't have anything to say I don't know what the answer is you probably actually do know what the answer is so very often the talking in classes that you've been called on so if you're called on go ahead and try to answer that question because you probably got it right this is where you sometimes will see gender differences you know you'll see men in the class raise their hands and say well I haven't done the reading but I think the answer is I'm not advocating that you should volunteer when you haven't done the reading I think don't don't hold yourself back and think I'm only gonna speak if my answer is perfect if I know for sure that what I'm saying is exactly right because there really aren't right answers in the law most of the time if you feel like you have something to say and you hold yourself back and think well I'm just gonna I'm not gonna say it till I can articulate it completely perfectly then you'll probably never speak at all and and that's a shame this is the the part of this education is a rhetorical education the more you practice at it the better you're gonna get at it okay so in that same vein we the first topic is gonna be dealing with cold calls and classroom participation so if you do decide you want to participate you like that like I was the type of student that I just like talking so I probably talked too much in class this is an answer I'm interested in like how much participation is as seen it's like a good amount and and how much is too much and how much is you know it or how little is too little to the point where you're like oh I don't know who that person is when they come to my office hours just addressed it well to begin with the professors I have some questions for the students a little bit yes so it's gonna vary from from class format to class format you're gonna have small sections small classes with 30 people you're gonna have classes maybe with a hundred and twenty we're trying to have smaller classes but it was common for me to teach a hundred and fifty students and you can imagine that the level of dialogue that you have really varies with the size of the class you'll have seminars where the whole point is to get together and to talk for for two hours so it's it's a matter of judgment and again it's something that you'll learn as you go forward again if the professor sir calls on you again my experience in the early days was I was like quacking you know like you remember Charlie Brown with the teachers always a quack quack fire so I would like have this instant out-of-body experience and not be able to understand what they were saying just take a deep breath listen to the question as Molly said take a shot at answering and most of us are going to give you give you plenty of time and space again we're really nervous too you know we've got a lot going on we're afraid of mixing things up making mistakes so you so realize it really genuinely is a dialogue we're interested in hearing what you have to say you are on the verge of being lawyers so listen to the question answer and and you you'll pretty quickly pick up what the dialogue is all about as for volunteering I mean it's a matter of tact that you want to develop you don't want to sit in a classroom with your hand up all the time I think you know that's just a difficult thing for the professor to do you know to constantly be to be dealing with someone who's got their hand up and and and so forth but certainly you should volunteer you should find a way to to you know in provide interventions at appropriate points the important thing on this front is the way in which you make friends with your professors is not just through classroom discussion but through contacts after class so going to office hours and speaking there and so forth but the question of how much you talk how much you volunteer it really varies if it's a seminar you're gonna be doing a fair amount of talking but you want to share the wealth with other people it's a dialogue it's a conversation yeah I agree with what Ann said I think if you're in a big class the talking you really should be doing is answering the questions that are asked of you and there may be times when the professor opens it up and says what do you think and he's saying it generally and looking for a volunteer in that situation go ahead and volunteer but if you are in a big class and clearly trying to get through some material it can really derail things if you've got your hand up in the air because you are trying to get through the syllabus and I think if you feel like you want to stop the class discussion and ask something you want to ask yourself is this actually going to move the conversation forward or is this some idiosyncratic thing that I'm not understanding or some a little tangental thing that I care about that other people may not care about if that's the case don't ask it go see the professor during office hours to talk about something that's a tangent smaller classes I think are different seminars you the class is going to roll on participation and so there I think you do want to try to make an effort to be an involved member of the class especially if the professor tells you too that participation is gonna be part of the grade that means professor is counting on you to be speaking I think another thing you want to think about is that sometimes your participation is going to be riffing off what another classmate said and so you always want to be respectful of other people's points of view you can disagree with them but you don't put them down for it you don't you know say it in a kind of a high-rolling sort of way tonus is important it's Erin Katie do you have any advice for getting over the cold call fear or how you go about participating close even now public speaking she's leaning in but I think if you are like me and you are very nervous about raising your hand and speaking up in class the best thing that you can do is is just force yourself to do it you know not you know not over and over again not you know to the point where you're being obnoxious but but the more the more you do speak up in class and the more you do speak out in group meetings or other there's situations in the law school the more you'll become comfortable with it and who knows maybe you'll find yourself giving advice too so I think the the biggest thing for me was just practicing it and forcing forcing yourself to you know tamp down your fears and realize that you know you don't sound like an idiot when you speak and even if you do no one's gonna remember it a few days later so you'll feel comfortable doing that I encourage you all to try to put yourself out there my biggest advice for cold for dealing with cold calls is class preparation I think for me as a whanau my highlighting and briefing strategy was really key to being able to deal with that moment that they call your name and you forget everything so I'm we might get to this later but my sort of strategy as far as class was I used the different color highlighter technique in the book so each color signified a different part of the case but I also always had a case brief which was both a great opportunity to review the reading that I had just done and have them put it in my own words and it was another place that I could look down immediately and try to figure out what the professor was saying and then I think the other big piece of advice is that remember that it's a conversation and that as much as you feel put on the spot and threatened the professor is not trying to threaten you the professor is trying to use a conversation with you to advance the discussion or to help illuminate something for your colleagues who are also just as confused as you are about the point so if you don't understand what's being asked say that you don't understand ask them to repeat the question say I understand this much but I don't know this much or I think this is right but try not to always put your answer in the form of a question with the trailing up which is something that I tried to focus on because I know that that's something that and tend to do a lot so and also if you if you really don't know like don't get and you feel like you really screwed up don't get stressed out about it try to forget it and if it's something persistent that you don't understand that's an opportunity to go and talk to the professor or talk to your classmates afterwards and try to figure it out but I always felt like I was on stage and that everyone was watching me when I think actually read this in your book when everyone else is just really glad that their name wasn't called yes so you're not getting scrutinized and do what you can to understand what the professor is trying to get at you'll want to be mindful of the student norms on this front as well so you know again as I mentioned from my perspective you know I'm nervous I'm asking questions and I don't understand why you all just don't go you know I'm paying you what how how much money am i paying you you dummy I mean what am I gonna do right I can't I can't punish you or harm you in any way I'm just desperately hoping that somebody is gonna throw me a lifeline and speak to me I'm exaggerating a little bit but but not completely right so so so from the professor's perspectives I want to be clear all that many answers all questions are useful or helpful and frequently if someone a student may ask a question that that he or she thinks they're way off and look it's because I've wandered off into left field I've lost the thread and someone helpfully asks a question that brings me back so from our perspective we really need we value we want your participation and yes if you say something that's less than perfect in our view we'll find a way to fix it you just got the ball rolling so we're deeply in your debt but there's another set of norm so our norms are to encourage participation unless we're lecturing and then you'll know she's lecturing she's not asking questions she's not calling on anybody you'll know if your hands are up and I'm not calling on you you pretty quickly get the message that you know participation is not the order of the day there's norms among students as well that you have names for each other the people that talk too much are typically called Gunners or something along those lines and those are norms that I really urge you to be thoughtful about just in general but then also in terms of sex differences the the dialogue is helpful because the answers that you give are interesting and correct so if I ask a question and someone answers it there's the answer I don't feel like I need to repeat it so you need to have heard what your colleague said and write that down and realize there's the answer right just because it's not coming out of my mouth it's coming out of your mouth or her mouth or his mouth right so you want to be very respectful of each other right and be careful of the gunner norms and not diss the people who are speaking too much I mean you know again I really some people do get obnoxious and cross a line right and you and you know when you have to find ways to silence that person or get them to calm down a little bit you know whatever it would be but then the other question is whether there are sex differences whether men participate more than women and then if when women do start to participate more actively which is what we are dn't we want right we want you to participate at the level which you're comfortable you know and so on and so forth whether women are are feeling more constrained by the norms among you as opposed to the norms from us if you notice us doing things in the class that are silencing women while empowering men to speak tell us about it we need help right because you know we may be unconsciously doing things that that that you should call us on but if it's norms among each other then you're gonna have to work on that as well and that's difficult it's one of the ongoing projects that we call the movement towards equality for women right but your perspectives are valuable that's why we're doing the Socratic dialogue otherwise we would just lecture right so the answers that you're giving are valuable you want to be respectful of each other's comments and then really be looking to see whether there's a double standard that's being applied I don't know but I fear that sometimes certainly in the past there has been on that note something another thing that really motivated me as a whanau was talking to I think was that a feminist legal forum event where someone pointed out the empirical data that women tend to raise their hand less in a class lecture in a situation like this and just taking that on as a personal responsibility that when I thought I knew the answer I thought I had something to say not waiting to make sure that it was perfect but making sure that I was keeping engaged with the class and contributing my voice to the class I sort of used that as a personal philosophy as far as volunteering and also on a volunteering note my sort of rule was that I would try to participate fairly frequently but not much more than not more than once a class or not more than once a week and if I ended up raising my hand it was usually because there was a dead awkward silence and I really just couldn't stand it like no I know people in this room know the answer and nobody is saying is raising their hands so I'm gonna go for it professor will be very grateful if you do that all right let's move on to tips for 1l exam preparation that's probably the one everyone's most interested in so I know it's early in the semester we're not trying to scare you but I personally spent a lot of time just wondering where to begin what to do you hear all sorts of different advice and random anecdotes about what someone did who did really well so I just wanted to get some very concrete as possible advice from the panelists both from the professor perspective who grades these exams and also from students who've done well about just what they did and also if especially from the professor's just what just really try to be concrete because a lot of what I got was do what works for you and I'm like I've never been in law school before I don't know he now you only get two shots and well I'm not not trying to stress all right anyone can start um well so from a student perspective what what I did I think Marta asked us to kind of think about it month by month so for the month of September trying not to think about exams try to think about getting something out of each class that you go to and just staying on track with that I recommend like my system was the highlighting and briefing and I really tried to stay on top of my briefing as semesters have gone on everything has fallen off but definitely in my first semester I prepared briefs for every class and I thought that that was particularly helpful in order to stay on top of the discussion and understand gaps in my understanding versus what we were hearing in class I would also not recommend using horn books this early I really use horn books as a review method during exam period and not for every class I think that you'll get the flavor of the subject as the professor wants you to understand it a lot better if you pay attention in class and do the case book and then sometimes form book reading that the professor assigns because I think getting the professor's perspective and understanding that is important to success on their exam I also briefed all of my cases I still do that in a lot you'll see a lot of tools in three L's we'll stop doing that I find that it's incredibly helpful especially at the end of towards the end of the semester when I'm going back to make an outline and actually you know really really tamp down and learn things for the exam it's it's much easier to go back and see just a one page long brief of a case rather than having to flip through a big case book I guess I would agree completely with what Sarah said about now you should be just getting getting familiar with how to briefcases how to read cases what the professor is looking for in each class I will say that I also agree that hornbook should be mostly for review towards the end of the semester but there's a concept that you're really confused with and and I you know I still do this it may be helpful to look at a horn book to just kind of get the real the real bare-bones concept like what how is this supposed to work and then once you methought helps you understand it then you can go back and you know look at your notes from class look at the reading and that may help you understand more comprehensively what the professor is looking for I remember my 1l year people throwing around like oh when have you started outlining yet but but people do it you'll you know you it'll get a little people will get anxious about outlining you know I find for me that it's helpful to not wait until the very end of the semester to outline but it you know it happens but at least try to keep your notes organized I think one of the biggest things for me is organization you know keeping up with the reading keeping up with your notes keeping them in a way that when you have to go back and look things up at the end of the semester to learn stuff you can find it very easily and that just it it it may be more work on the front end but it will save you a lot of headache from the back end yeah what I have to say coincides very nicely with the the comments that Sarah and Katie have made I think that in the first month you're going to be really just getting your feet under you and and figuring out how to read case what does this language mean there's lots of I remember looking up lots and lots of words and dictionaries over and over again and and and it's just taking time to sink in and to absorb the language to absorb the discourse to absorb the way in which cases were structured and what what it meant to have a holding of a case and so forth I puzzled for a long time over the distinction between descriptive and normative like I just couldn't understand certain things in the discourse I think the most important thing that I wish I had known and and it all worked out great but is that you're going to be tested particularly in your first year on the doctrinal content that you're learning now when you're in the class of course you're going to be covering a lot of different things again as I mentioned some of its going to be that process of osmosis of learning how courts speak of learning you know all the procedural niceties of things and so forth and you're also going to be getting a lot of theory and policy from your professors and maybe a lot of critical evaluation of the cases that you're reading and that can sometimes leave you puzzled even dismayed about what exactly your job is your professor may come in and disagree with every single case you read you know each of these cases they're more stupid than the last one and if you're a first-year student you're sitting there thinking oh well that's what I'm supposed to be absorbing is the complete idiocy of each of these opinions and so that leaves you at the end thinking what am I going to do when it comes time for the exam well typically on the exams unless you're in a critical theory seminar or something where you won't have an exam you're going to be tested on that doctrinal content so even though the professor may think say the law of attempt I'm just speaking about criminal law now is foolish the way it's constructed still in the first instance for purposes of the exam you're going to be expected to know the basic doctrinal content that you covered in the course so dig into that what is the case or why are you reading it what is the holding in the case and I do think it's very useful to keep notes your own notes as you go forward for me what was essential was preparation before class I briefed all my cases I did fall off towards the end but i briefed them all the beginning I had no idea what a brief was but I tried I went to all my classes and that was something that I continued throughout law school even when I got busy and later had to play catch-up sometimes I would always go to class to hear the professor's own words I found it very difficult to rely on lecture notes from other people and one thing that I want to mention Marta said she wants us to be specific and not just tell you oh do what works for you I think we can be specific in concrete hence my advice make sure you learn the rule in the cases no matter what your professor is saying up here about the theory down here you need to know what the law is and then there'll be room for disputing theory and and so forth as well so I can be specific but you also do want to know your own strengths and your own ways and styles of learning I'm a very slow and plodding reader I read a page and then I turn the page and I read the next page and it can go slowly so I didn't begin outlining until well after the semester had wrapped itself up I had heart attacks coming back our exams were after Christmas so we got back from Thanksgiving and people were saying they'd outlined and again I was like I don't even know what an outline is you know I hadn't done I just barely finished the reading for the day how could I be doing the outlining for it for the entire semester it worked out great for me I mean it drove my husband crazy I'd be sitting on the couch you know doing finishing my studying a half an hour before the exam but that's the way I learn I go through everything no stone unturned it's slow I hope you guys don't have to follow that method but if that's your method don't let other people convince you you should read a treatise you can cut through all that just no no no no think about the way in which you learn and continue to deploy those skills on the materials that you have here the other thing that I would say I absolutely agree don't think about exams now don't get agitated and worried about them now but of course you know that this semester is building up towards exams so I think that you really do want to be thoughtful about how you use your time and don't overextend yourselves the the basic job for the first semester at least maybe the second semester maybe the third fourth is this class material that you're being given hopefully your professors are correct that this is important material it's a ton of work and again you know how you study best you know the things that you need to do to stay healthy and that's what we really want this should be a happy experience for you law school is a huge intellectual treat hopefully you'll soon really enjoy this reading and we'll just love some parts of it you're not gonna love all of it but some parts of it you will really find speak to you but it's a lot of work so don't overextend yourself and just because your classmates are engaged in certain activities don't feel like you have to go do those same things whatever they may be it may be social activities it may be pro bono activities whatever I really feel strongly you should just spend your time reading these cases figuring out what they mean and if you don't get it you can look at a treatise but come and talk to your professors you're paying a lot of money for this education have you noticed and you should come upstairs and if something's not clear to you maybe we've messed up maybe we're not being clear maybe you've missed something obvious it'll give you a chance to practice by talking to us in small context right or maybe you don't understand it because it's really difficult and then it does it is something that you should focus on talk to us about and if it's really difficult it's likely to be on the exam so remember you you're expected to know a body of doctrine plus some additional theoretical materials your professor will be presenting and that's where the exams are gonna start they're gonna they're gonna focus there so each time you read a case think about that what does this add to the architecture of the law in this course all right I don't know that I have much more to add to what they've already said but maybe this would be a good to transition to that topic of what if you did want to go talk to a professor great start us with that so it's a good idea to go talk to your professors because especially if you're in a big class you know to us you're a sea of people and it can be difficult to actually understand like to remember this individual is different from this one and so forth but if you show up in my office I'm definitely gonna remember who you are but I think before you walk into a professor's office you want to think about what it is you're gonna be asking because you'll only get a few minutes of that person's time and you want the impression that you make to be a good impression so the students who come to my office who really you know I feel like wow I I want to help that student I want to write a recommendation letter for that student or mentor that student they're the ones who've been thoughtful about trying to figure out alright what is it why am I here what is it exactly I'm going to be asking and so they walk in you know maybe with a couple of notes already written out about what it is they want to talk about they don't just wander in willy-nilly so most most professors will have posted office hours those are the times when you're welcome to come in or they might tell you I have an open door policy come in any time then fine you can come in anytime for those people but if that's not the case if they've posted office hours and you're there outside of those hours then maybe what you want to do instead is email in advance and make an appointment so you know you're not sort of just you know walking in in the middle of something that they're thinking about you know that's not you and then you want to remind them who you are because most the professors have a lot of students and say you want to say you know hi I'm Molly I mean you're some procedure class so the professor remembers you and then ask your questions I also think you want to have a pen and paper with you so very often people will come to my office and they'll have a laptop and so there's this weird period where they're booting up the laptop and then the oh the battery's out could i plug this in under your desk yeah so it wears if you have a pen and paper then you can write down all the bits of wisdom that I give you and it makes me feel like I'm being listened to and I'm as smart but you're also still able to look at me and then we're actually able to have a converse so I think that is a better way to go for something like meeting with the professor and probably for meeting with a client as well the same rules apply out in the professional world and then if you've asked for something so very often the conversation is could you please write me a letter recommendation by the way if you're asking that question please don't ask for it like for tomorrow you know think about how much time is this gonna take and you know ask for it in advance think about what I might need so you want a letter recommendation from me I need to know I need your transcript I need your resume you know get all that stuff out there and then once I've written the letter of recommendation tell me what happened you know let me know yeah I got the clerkship I got the job whatever because because I if I taken the time to write the letter then I'd sure like to know how it ended up you know I've been vested in you and so I care about you your professors candidate being a really helpful professional network I have students that graduated nine years ago that I still hear from and now they're you know really into their careers and I'll help them out as much as I can because they've stayed in contact with me and I know what they're doing so what I kind of think about starting to build those connections and keep them up even what you're out of here even once you graduated I think this is since we are running out of time we do have some time to get to Q&A but to finish up on relationships with professors and I also how many two L's are here or three else okay great so just to briefly discuss maybe from the student perspective I know you both are clerking I'm quirky as well like what did you guys do the process has gotten kind of crazy what are just a couple tips you have about if you have to be interesting clerking it is something to start thinking about just and what it during well because a lot of it is about professor relationships just how you went about it and why you think you're successful as I said I'm cooking for a District Court Judge after graduation you all obviously have a long time before you need to worry about that but there's a reference to of my three recommenders are professors that I had as a one out in my first semester one of my recommenders was my small section professor I did fine in his class but you know I had other classes that I had done better in but because he was my small section professor I was able to actually get to know him he knew you know I'd been to his office hours he knew me from speaking up in class and that he was invested in me professionally and so that is the kind of relationship that you want to cultivate this even starting this year even starting this semester I guess so so step one professor relationships I guess my second piece of advice would be think about you know the kind of clerkship you'd be interested in and this is this is true for jobs as well start thinking about the kind of job that you would be interested in and you know you hear a lot in law school about what are the most prestigious firms what are the most prestigious clerkships and you know that in them sure they're all wonderful but what you need to be thinking about is what's going to make you happy in the long run so I knew going into the clerkship application cycle that I was interested in trial work so I limited all of my applications to the district court level rather than the circuit court because ultimately that that is what I want to do and I think you know as I said you all don't need to be worried about clerkships right now you don't need to be thinking about jobs right now we're stressing about it but start thinking about what it is that you want to do and what will make you happy in your professional life because clerking from from everything that I've heard it's a wonderful experience but it might not be right for everyone for whatever you want to do and that I think that's that is really important and I guess the three is a nice round number so my third point of advice is what goes back to what I said earlier be very organized be very on top of things clerkship applications are not difficult per se I mean you need a writing sample you need a cover letter your resume etc but but you have that there's a lot of moving parts particularly when you have you know you're trying to coordinate letters of recommendation going out around the same time as when you're mailing applications and you just you just need to be very organized I think that most of law school I'll concur on the professor point all three of my recommenders were from some stage of one out and they were all professors whose subjects I had really connected with and who I had sought out after class and during office hours to try to build that relationship so use the tips that we've given you on professor relationships because not only will it make your law school experience better make will help you when you're trying to get out of here to the other thing on clerkships I think that this is very far off for the one else is to think about your writing sample you can definitely use your l RW samples but I know for my Circuit Court clerkship the my writing sample really spoke to an issue that the judge is particularly interested in and I'm positive that's how I got pulled out of the pile and and why that worked out so when you're going into your second year and think about taking a class that has a paper or that even has short papers mine was only a 10 page paper and take something that you think you're gonna be really interested in that says something about you that gives the judge another window into what you're like it's difficult when you're a first semester first-year student to think about becoming friends with professors at least I found that to be tough it was sort of like well Who am I I'm a pipsqueak I can't speak I don't know anything you quack you know when my supposed to come back you know so so so what I urge you to do is to just brush all that aside and take yourself seriously take this work seriously I don't mean take yourself seriously in the sense of being pompous but these are three very important years and as you can hear from Sarah and Katie the first semester matters a lot and one of the things that your professors care about is taking ownership of the work you know even though you're really new and you don't know what you're doing yet you will soon you'll be astonished by the time your third year how much you've learned and how different you are and and so forth but from the very beginning take yourself seriously as professionals and realize that in a very short period of time you're gonna be out there in the world doing the work that we're writing about and our aspiration for you is just as Katie says to find stuff you really enjoy on that's gonna make you happy and also to be able to practice at a very high level wherever you are big city small city wherever right so we're deeply invested in your professional success and your professional friendship right so figure that out early on that it's hard to go upstairs and talk to professor's and it's a little scary and blah blah blah but that's what we're here for in part you know we have a lot of pieces to our job but we're here to help you get to the places that you want to go and besides some of us are nice people and you really will end up being our friends and as Molly was saying it's really terrific for us to have these professional friendships I've been teaching for a long time and so I know how much it means I'm thinking back over the students I've known but it is also really helpful for you it's also again if you happen to like one of us it might be fun we're a friend but then later you know eight years out you're gonna change a job you call up professor Shadle you call up me and I know you immediately and I can pick up the phone and make a phone call for you because I know you right and you've got to be part of the initiating of that process you want to connect with professors who know you and be able to help you it's part of taking ownership of your career as a professional so I really really urge you to do that the other thing though I get all the being organized business but again I can see I mean it is important to be really organized and all you've got to get writing samples but forget all that for now right you will do those things you will write a great writing sample you will learn how to organize your clerkship applications it all comes together there are people here to help you so ask for that help and like Molly please ask me if you need the letter in a month ask me today but if an opportunity arises and you suddenly hear that the clerkship for you just opened up and it's open tomorrow will come upstairs and tell me and we'll get the letter out but notice you can only do that if you know the professor well so that's why you should you should take yourself seriously now your one else we're upstairs we're in our office hours we're lonely come up talk to us ask us questions give us a context within which to know you and then we'll remember you big class of small classes and and it will move forward from there

Channel: University of Virginia School of Law

Views: 8,956

Keywords: Law School (School Category), women, University Of Virginia School Of Law (Organization), legal education

Id: B7US6Ya9ejg

Length: 55min 35sec (3335 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2013