Welcome to How I Lawyer, a podcast where I talk to attorneys from throughout the profession about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it well. I'm your host, Jonah Perlin, a law professor in Washington, D.C. This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by my friends at Law Pods. Law Pods is a professional podcast production company focused solely on attorney podcasting. I absolutely love working with them, and if you're considering becoming a legal podcaster, we just want to learn more. Check them out at lawpods.com. And now let's get started. Hello and welcome back. Today I'm excited to welcome Lisa Blaster to the podcast for a special law student centered episode of How I Lawyer. In addition to owning her own law firm, Lisa's a former law professor and director of academic success at Western State College of Law, and she's the founder of the Law School Success Institute. In this role, Lisa teaches a flagship course, the law school operating system, both in person across the country and online. She's also the author of one of the best books on succeeding in law school, at least from my perspective, titled The Nine Steps to Law School Success, a scientifically proven study process for success. Lisa and I met on LinkedIn, and I asked her to join me on the podcast for a special episode of How I Lawyer in advance of law school exams that by time this gets published, we'll be quickly coming up. This episode is obviously targeted at law students, but I hope even if you're a practicing lawyer, you might give it a listen, maybe a little nostalgia, and share it with anyone you know who's just getting started to help them succeed at the earliest stage in our profession. So welcome, Lisa. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Hi, Jonah. Thanks so much for having me and thanks for that awesome introduction. So look, before we dive into sort of everything, exam prep, exam taking, nitty gritty, I'd love to hear a little bit about you. What was your path to law and what was your decision like to become a lawyer and maybe even how did you end up doing what you're doing now? Sure. So I went to law school to prove to myself that I was capable of doing something really hard. You know, we all have our voices. We all have our story and our reason and for whatever reason in my history book of life, I was kind of told a lot of you can'ts or you're all heart no logic. You're not smart enough. You're not this enough or that enough or law school is not for people like Lisa or you. So when I got out of college, I said, what is something that I can do to see if those stories were true? Or if they were just what someone was saying to on their own agenda. So into law school. And then in my second semester, I got a letter from my law school saying that I was going on academic probation. I had failed to meet the threshold of the law school on my GPA tip below 2.0. And so in my head, I thought, oh my gosh, these stories are true. It is true. I don't have what it takes. I'm missing that piece that's going to make me a success in life. And it was pretty quickly thereafter. I said, I gave myself about a week or two to sit in that disappointment and really feel it. And then I realized, you know, what my law school's giving me another semester. So I had an opportunity to kind of shift the mindset and say, this is your last chance to prove yourself and seek you have what it takes. And so that's what I did, Jonah. I went and decided to wear my academic probation status as a badge of honor. And I spoke with every professor. I could get my hands on it, my law school, other law schools. And I wanted to talk to students that were achieving their academic goals because that's what I wanted to do. And I was like, what are you doing? Here's what I'm doing. And it was quickly made apparent to me that despite studying 60 hour weeks and really trying and spending my will. I was super inefficient and ineffective in what I was doing. And so I was ultimately able to turn that around that semester. I got a 2.02, so 0.02 for me. I always, what I hung my hat on small steps. And I made it. And I proved the voices wrong. And every successive semester, I made GP increased exponentially, luckily and gratefully and graduated with high honors, past California. Bar the first time. And I have enjoyed a fantastic 22 year career as a personal injury lawyer, law professor, and all these great things that I have to make well to do. I love that. I love that. I mean, honestly, it gives me tingles to hear because I think so often people judge themselves by that that first attempted something and the sort of metaphor that I stumbled upon five years ago. And I started this podcast is every pilot needs to land a plane the first time, but they don't get on the loudspeaker and say, this is my first landing. And your whole story reminds me of there's this graphic that I've seen before of exponential growth. And it starts really, really constant, sort of really, really low. And it says all the people tend to stop right at the end of that long line of figuring out how to do it, finding yourself, finding your method, finding what works. And that's when that hockey stick sort of builds itself of success. And it sounds like you've done that, but not only that, I mean, you could have just stopped there, right? You could have had this experience for yourself and then stopped. And instead helping other succeed has been a huge part of your legal career. Tell me a little bit about that. Absolutely. And I like the hockey stick analogy. I know exactly the graphic that you're talking about. I love it. And I love that you stumbled upon that. And that's a piece of YouTube. And that's why you and I connect. And I'm a big huge Jonah Perlin fan. Mitchell Adhration Society. So I knew it's part of my every like fiber of my being to make pathways easier for those that are coming behind me. And I'm a big believer in just sharing experiences and information. And I honestly, I found so I started, I practiced for about six years. I was a personal injury attorney. I kept my teeth doing personal injury, which I love. Not that I still do in my own practice today. But for a little bit, I did some city attorney work as a deputy city attorney for five cities here in Los Angeles where I live. And I knew I could feel it brewing around year five of the practice. I also really was ready to give back to students. Now that I had that practical experience. And I never wanted someone who had those same untrue stories about themselves think that it was over and then just say I'm done. Los Poles not for me. I'm not cut out to be an attorney. So I went back to my hospital, happened to contact me and say, Hey, we have a position. We think you'd be really great for the assistant director of academic success and bar prep. And that was in 2009. And I made a switch from my law firm and I went there. And I wanted to work with students on probation. That was my thing. And so in working with students on probation, I kind of quickly realized that the last bullet I was at, we did a great job in orientation and we had skills courses. But no one was really taking the students and saying, Hey, on day one of your very first day in orientation, rare semester, here's what you do. We would teach skills in a vacuum. We would teach briefing over here, maybe outline, but it was so disconnected. So in theory, it was great. Like, Oh, I know I can do good analysis. I know that I can I write, I know that I can do the skills necessary to succeed. But in what order and no one knows even talking about how to make those skills applicable to the students own learning preferences. And so I knew from my own experience of failing and succeeding at the same law school with a lot of the same professors. I knew what I did. But I am also a big believer in, and it makes me cringe. Don't know when I hear someone say, I succeeded in the top five or three or one percent of my class. Do this in law school and you'll thrive because it's just not true because our brains as you well know are like they have their own fingerprints. And so what I wanted to do was something different. So Michael Hunter Schwartz, who I'm a huge fan of the Godfather of academic success across our country. He I was able to get a 10, 15 minute meeting with him at a conference I was at. And he said, at least I love your idea. I love where you're going. But it's just your opinion. What you really need to do is a qualitative phenomenal logical study with a law students to understand the lived experiences of students who are actually in-lossful and attempting to thrive and achieve their academic goals. So that's what I did about I'd say in 2016, 2017. And I finished in 18. I did my first study and then I just finished my second qualitative study. The phenomenon being what do you do from day one of your semester to the final exam to achieve your goals? And so I interviewed in the last study I interviewed 250 law students across 50 law schools in the United States. And I asked them to list their steps from that first moment to the final exam. How do you understand the information? How do you organize it? How do you achieve your goals? And what I was left was this big, huge picture, Jonah of all of these different study systems. Some had three steps, some had 12, some had 20. And what I did was I eliminated all the redundancies across the board and all 252 students system. And I was left with the most comprehensive picture of what students can do to succeed in law school. And then what I did was I took that data and I organized it from day one to the final exam. And I now teach it to the law students in a way where students use medical ignition to understand how they're learning while they're using the system. And I use a series of quizzes and tests to understand their thought process, their learning preference, their personality, their typology. And I customize it and I show them how to customize that information or the study system to their own learning. And then I show how to run that system every single topic, you know, that they've identified and organized through their study system. And then how to calendar and schedule that weekly studying for every topic for every week of their 14, 15 weeks semester or try to mess it whatever system they're on. And that's what I do. And that's what I love. And it makes me really happy to do that. Wow. I think it's fantastic. I mean, especially as someone who I also
but thankfully had some mentors early on, even before I started law school, who said, "Here's what worked for me," and I've tried to pass that on before I was a professor, and now I try to pass it on to all of my students as a professor, but there has always been that tension in my own view of like, "Yes, but I'm giving you what worked for me." And there's this, I don't know, fear that you're gonna lead someone astray, and there's only so many hours in the day, and you don't want people wasting their time, so to take your approach and sort of balance that need to find everyone's individual approach, but at the same time try to find sort of meta-best practices for lack of a better word. It's such a gift to, I think, to our students, and to those who are listening who want to sort of hear about it, I promise we won't be able to get to all of Lisa's system and all of Lisa's work, but she's been kind enough to agree to sort of like, talk through some of the big picture pieces, so I think we can work on that now. So obviously we could sort of like organize it, however you think is best. I was thinking maybe we'd start with sort of preparing for class, then preparing for exams and then taking exams, so we can sort of work in those three parts. That sound okay? - Absolutely. - Okay, so let's talk about class. And obviously every class is a little bit different, every professor's a little bit different. I teach legal practice legal writing for a living. My class is a little bit different than are your traditional podium or doctrinal classes, but what's the best practice there? How do you start getting ready for class? - That's a great question. So I view class personally as an opportunity to confirm what you taught yourself prior to getting there. And so you shouldn't be the expert in the topic that you're gonna cover in class, but class becomes an exercise in you saying, okay, I have this document. It is a compilation of all of the things that I learned from my syllabus. For my syllabus, we'll take one class, one doctrine of class, from my syllabus, from any commercial supplements that I used, from my own reading and annotation and synthesis and understanding the processing of the information, paraphrasing, using the margins, all those things, from looking at a sample answer beforehand, all those things on this topic that we're gonna talk about right now in class. I'm gonna use, I'm gonna say, okay, did I do a good job? And I can assess whether or not I did a good job in preparing for class and trying to understand the material with answering a couple of questions. One, was I able to follow along in class? Two, was I able to anticipate the questions? My professor was gonna ask me. Three, was I able to respond if called on? Four, was I able to tune out when I know someone had gone astray? In class, the next question would be, was I able to really listen to the cues my professor was putting on the board in his, her, their slides? Was I able to really understand the chronology of questioning that my professor was asking because if they're starting with the same question every time they go through this topic, the odds are really great that when I write about it on the exam, I'm gonna have to follow that same chronology. So in answering those questions, you've really told yourself, I've done a good job in preparing for class. And so class then becomes an opportunity to sit back, confirm, really learn and listen, if you, if you have anything that needs to be clarified, get that clarification. And then after class sit there and tighten up the outline based upon that confirmation of what you taught yourself. And so for me, that's the class process. So we might, if you want me to go into the couple of things that students are doing before they get to class, the students in my study. Let's go there because I also have some other questions, but let's go there briefly if you don't mind. So in order to get that feeling and in order to answer those questions in class, the students in my research, what they do is they are, I'm gonna say quote input studying, Jonah, and basically that means that they're reading and briefing and outlining simultaneously. So those are the three big law school study skills, but before they've done those, the very first thing that they're doing is they're looking at their syllabus and they're saying, what are the main topics that I'm going to be learning in the next 15 weeks? So step one, main topics and understand really, okay, if we're in torts, I've got intentional torts, I've got negligence, and then I've got a strict liability. Let's take that first main topic, how many intentional torts am I learning? Okay, seven, and then I'm learning defenses. There's eight things I have to know, they're chunking the information and saving places in their brain for where it goes. So they're creating this mental framework, if you will, for every bit of information they're about to learn. So then they take that first topic, and then they run it through that study process of reading and briefing and outlining. So I would say that those skills are happening simultaneously, but the biggest indicator of which skills students do first is whether or not they're a big picture or a detail oriented thinker. The big picture, you can go online and take a myriad of online tests if you don't automatically know to define those terms and to really understand what your preference is, for your thought preferences. But a big picture thinker is someone who tends to see the end result first in their head and then has to work backwards to fill in the blanks, to explain to the professor how they got there. The detail oriented thinker is more linear, chronological, in that they can't see that big picture until they go step by step by step and get back. So if you're a big picture thinker, you tend to be more analytical, you speak in analogies, a lot more often, your analytical reasoning skills are high kind of off the charts. And for those students, they tend to outline every couple of weeks, and their outline might not be as comprehensive and as full of information as the detail oriented thinkers is. Regardless, every topic gets its own outline, and the big picture thinker's is going to look more like how they would write that topic on the exam. And that document that they create is ultimately the document that they memorize from. It's already framed in how they're going to write. On the other hand, the detail oriented thinker, they are creating that document. It's typically a lot longer. And they're creating document that includes everything they've learned about the topic. And then they transform it into that second document that the big picture thinker automatically creates as their first. So they have an additional step to get there. So they're reading, and they're using sources to help them to save time in their reading. And that could be "quimby." They're reading just the overview on Lexus Nexys or Westlott to give them just a lay person's understanding of the case. So they're saving time. Then they're reading the case, outlining, and briefing. Everything goes into that document at the same time. Then that document's right and ready for them to bring to class. And that's what they bring to class to do that confirmation process. So that's really what they're doing at the outset. And then when the document is finished, and they're going to learn no more information on that topic, the big picture thinker, they're doing things like looking at the sample exam answers. And they're starting to craft it in the way that they're going to write it. And the detailed ready to thinker is then going to start transforming, going line by line to that voluminous, 40-page topic outline, and start to transform it into the way that they're going to write it. And what I call the approach, or it's a pre-writer attack sheet, whatever. There's a million synonyms. Sure. All right. It's a lot of info. It's a lot of info. If you're listening and you're like, oh my god, go back. Listen to it again. Break it down. It's all makes sense. And just to make it more concrete, it's funny. I'm thinking back to my own experience, which is admittedly a little bit dated in law school. And for me, what worked-- and it sort of maps, I think, onto the detailed oriented thinker, even though I think of myself more as a big picture thinker-- was definitely to do enough reading. So I understood class, but not so much that I didn't have time after class. And I want to talk about time. We'll put a pin in that in a second. And then after class, I spent a lot of time distilling. And essentially, my outlining process was going from 80 pages of notes to 50 pages of notes, to 20 pages of notes to 2 pages of notes. And if I could get it down to 2 pages, that was a pretty good sign that I was ready for the exam. Because in my brain, the other 20 were sort of there. And at times, it felt like the other 60 and 80, where they're also-- Yes. And you may have changed, Joe. And you may have now become-- Since you've become an expert at that process. Now you might be a big picture thinker. I love that. You may have changed. I love the growth mindset approach to that, too. Let's talk briefly about time before class and time after class. So this is the tension that I hear from my students a lot, which is, there's only so many hours in the day. Everyone says, treat law school like a job. And if I spend three hours drafting the most beautiful color-coded brief in advance, and I'm ready to go, and I just sit there and listen, then that's great. But between class and my pre-work for class, there's no time for post-class work. By contrast, I think there are students who start to say, well, I'm going to learn everything I want to learn in class. So I'm not going to spend that much time in front. Hopefully I don't get called on. And I'll spend all my time after class. Talk to me about that balance between pre-class time, class time, and post-class time. I think that we have to stop telling students that there's a way to do it. - Love it. - And if it works for your brain, that you do all the work post-class, if that allows you then to understand it, articulate your understanding and writing and affordance to your professor's preferences, do it. So your schedule is going to be, it's going to look a little different than the person who's front-loading the work. And so there's definitely a way to schedule all of that in, but you should be probably one week ahead of your reading so that you can do that process after class. So after each class is when you're going to spend creating that outline where you're going to spend every Sunday doing the outline, if that's your way of thinking. Before class, I'm not a fan of your in class X amount of hours, so you should be studying X amount of hours. I just don't think it translates from very many students. And so for me, what I love to tell students is give yourself a track. So say I'm going to read 10 pages, read brief and outline 10 pages.
right now. I'm gonna re-brew and do the three or four one skill that I do that works for me, that I need to go to class. And I'm gonna say, let's do 10 pages and let's see how long it took. And if it took that student 20 minutes or an hour, then they have a better understanding of how long it's gonna take to do the reading for the entire week with its 50 pages 100 pages. And they're gonna have to say, okay, in creating my schedule, I know my class times, I know my applications, worker family, religion, whatever it is. And here are all of my pockets that I have to get all of that done. And so before class, that can happen. And I still recommend being one week ahead so that you can get all that done. Students don't love to use Friday's, Saturday's and Sundays. Like it's really easy for you to say, okay, I have all Friday, all Saturday and all Sunday available. Let me just go until the reading for the week is done on one subject. Okay. And instead of doing it here and here and here and here and here and here in the schedule, right the night report class and they're all stressed out, get it done on Friday. And then when you have class on Monday, you're just like, I'm ready. Let's go. Let's do this, you know, which is frankly a good skill right for practicing lawyers. Like I had one of the best lawyers that I worked for when I was in practice. One of the things that always impressed me was he never waited till the deadline to work on something. He also would work on it up to the deadline, but he'd find these pockets of time to improve, you know, I was litigate or so, improve the document. And it often came that the best ideas came in those like, I'm going to spend a half an hour this morning before the day starts working on this brief and not the like five hour everybody's in a conference room. Like the kernel of that idea came from the less stressed moment. And I think that can be true for law students as well. I could not agree more. Absolutely. And you just have to test your schedule and be comfortable knowing that it might change next week. But give it a week and see how you did when we were peak brain times, when we were down times, when were you unfocused, when were you ready and then use those times. That's what you're listening to your body, your body's telling you. I love it. All right. So brass tacks, somebody's listening to this. It's the middle of October. They may have been successful in preparing for class. They may not have been, they may have been successful in their first cold call. They may not have been, but they are sort of staring down exams in say four to six to eight weeks. brass tacks, what's the plan of attack? Even if it's not a one size fits all, what's the plan of attack for that person? So you can't possibly memorize a 50 to 60 to 80 page document that has incomplete sentences and bullet points and lots of data in it. You just can't. It's if you do, chances are very high that your your final exam is going to mirror that brain bar for the information that's included. So what you said earlier in taking it from that document down to 10, down to five, down to two, right? That's what we should be doing. But we have to understand our professors preferences because the two things that you're going to the two ways to increase your grade and lossful and upgrade thousands of exams as have you, right? And I've even sat with the California bar examiners on three different occasions. And I've seen how they grade bar exam essays. We're all doing the same thing. So what we're looking for is two things on a final exam. Your format and it has to be in it's going to be use, uh, professors specific. And once the format is down, then we're going straight to your analysis. We want to see that you're able to apply the correct facts that we spent three weeks drafting for the final exam. And we want to see that you're able to identify those facts, apply them, come to an outcome, and then move on and get through every one of the topics that we raise. So knowing your professor's preferences is huge. So at some point from now until the final exam, you should schedule an appointment with your professor and ask them, hey, do you like a traditional Iraq? Do you like a Kriak? Do you like some other acronym of act that you want me to produce? Do you have a sample answer? I can look at. Can you give me some feedback on something that I wrote? Do you want me to in the analysis portion? Are you okay with me? Are you doing both sides? Do you not just the strongest argument? Do you want a conclusion? Do you want a roadmap paragraph? What's specifically are you looking for? Do you want me just to go straight to the analysis and some professors do? Are you okay with the issue statement just saying battery or do you want me to include a sentence with facts? The issue here is what if battery has occurred when the defendant punched the plane up in the face. A classic example that every law professor uses, I hear it. It's like the deposition line about being at the conference table. I want your best guess. You know the right answer is conference here. You know the one that's like right. So really take whatever class you're taking. Know the number of topic. Know your professor's exam preferences. Write every topic in that format and then just practice honing your analysis. And I think there's two types of analysis. There's fact-based analysis and then there's case-based analysis. Fact-based is here. This fact proves or disproves this element because and then case-based is here. The problem with case-based analysis, the students want to say this case had this fact. Our fact pattern has these facts. Therefore it doesn't apply or they have the same fact so it does apply. And that's just a huge mistake because in the practice we're never going to say situation where there's the same facts as you well know. So we have to do something a little different in that type of analysis. And what we do is we actually create the reason the court came to its outcome. We take the court's facts and apply the rule from the case and we say ourselves the reason the court came to this outcome is this we share that you know that reason with the facts of the final exam or we don't. And if we share them then it applies if we don't then it doesn't. That's the difference between analysis. And so so really just getting yourself in a position to give good format and to write good analysis because I don't know about you, Jennifer. But what I do is I get my big stack of blue book final exams and I first want to see if I did a good job teaching the course. So I will flip through and spend 30 to 45 seconds and I'll say okay I didn't do a good job or oh I did a great job. And I can always tell by the ones that are formatted well and they go on a pile on the left and the other ones go on a pile on the right and it's always so much easier the ones that are nicely neatly tightly identified because then it's easy to grade them and I'm in a happy place and I want to give more points right because it's like yes that's exactly right. If you know if their analysis is bad I can see that they understand. Totally. I got a couple of takeaways from this and I want to see what I want to get your reaction to my takeaways from that great answer. So one of them is I remember somebody told me taking a law school exam at least a classic issue spot or exam is sort of like being an ER doctor which you know all the potential ailments in advance before the person comes in and your job is to first diagnose what they're talking about because people don't come in and say I fractured my fibula right they say my leg hurts. You the doctor lawyer in this case are the one who's responsible for saying well we learned about fractures this is a fracture and then being very clear and I always tell my students and I I'm fairly confident you would give the same advice but we'll see is to use the word because a lot the word because forces you to do that kind of analysis that you're talking about not just assuming the reader can connect the rule to the fact but rather saying this is why this rule applies to this fact your fibula is fractured because and here is what's next what's your reaction to that. 100 percent I mean that's what it is right so if you go into the exam with an approach in that same vein of thinking if you go into the exam and the very first thing you do remember we said step one was identifying all the main topics those are all the potential ailments for the doctor right first someone coming in and saying I have a broken whatever those are all the potential ailments and so if you spend the first 45 seconds writing down your one page checklist of just all potential topics while everyone else heads spinning on its axis and then there's trappinal flying and steam coming from their hands clickety clanking typing if you ground yourself with that first you have an approach and you know all of the responses that you could potentially see and you're comfortable and then if you have your once you identify one of them is being the issue you literally drop the approach that you created from your outline or that you created initially you just drop it in so now all you have left to do is you have to you've saved precious time for analysis and you tell yourself okay I see that this topic has 22 facts this topic has four if I've got an hour left I'm going to spend most of my time here and then I'm going to spend the remaining time on the short or when were there's less facts and I can tell my professor all of the ailments you know if I'm the doctor and get through every single one and know how in depth I have to go with all of the reason the words that come after the word the cuts the cutter percent so everything is a system everything is a formula in lawful in my opinion and if you have a formula for organizing a formula for studying a formula for preparing the topic for the exam and then when you get to the exam you follow that formula for right time I want to page checklist read the call to questions what understand what my goal is read the facts create these little grids of what the elements have to prove and the facts that go drop in my approach right good analysis get through it go everything's a formula totally and you know sometimes and I will speak for my colleagues and fellow law professors there's sort of a negative visceral reaction I think when professors here that law school is formulaic where there's formulas involved I am less concerned about that word formula because to me it's much more I use it more in the mathematical sense right that is analytical reasoning analytical reasoning is reasoning from a rule which could also be described as a formula I also had a law professor once described sort of these rules as kind of like little bicycles you just have to ride them and if you know how the if you know how everything's connected and you just have to sort of see how it plays out on a set of facts and you have to identify what formula right applies to any given fact pattern it's why I don't teach doctrinal classes but if I did I would absolutely say bring your formula sheet with you
you because ultimately that's not the hard part, right? Identifying the formulas is sort of table stakes. It's the application that I want to see. That's the more challenging part. But I think, and you've clarified this a couple times, and I think it's so important, I don't want to miss it, especially for the one I was listening who have never taken exams. Formula creation is not something that always happens in every law school class. We learn through the course method, through the case method, excuse me. And like I remember this memory is painful. I remember one of my first law school exams I sat down and the person next to me, I had an outline sort of stapled with all my rules. And the person next to me didn't have an outline. All they had was a binder of all their case briefs from the semester. And I remember thinking, one of us is going to fail this exam. And I don't know who, and it didn't happen to me me. And I just, I think about that because it just feels like that person, that was not a failure of that person. That was a failure of that person's process. And that meant that we as a profession had hidden too much that both that person and I thought we could come in with that document. So the goal is not to come in with the best case briefs, the goal is to come in with rules that you can apply. Absolutely. I don't always understand why it's looked down upon to say that law school is a series of formulas. Because at its core, every student that is part of my studies and every student that work with, they do it in their own way. And they do the same thing to learn every single topic. And then they understand their professors. Perfence analysis analysis, the templates that I use for analysis are the same templates that I use in my practice. I still practice personal injury. And I'll be very honest with you. I had a case, it was a very difficult case a couple of months ago, where I had to come up with a reason to get my client, the result that they wanted. And all I did was apply the same templates that I use in the law school. I pretty exist in the course I teach. And I got my client at additional $500,000 because of the demand letter that I wrote using those templates in my analysis. It's not rocket science. And they came back and they hired outside counsel to review it because I created a conflict. And they even said at least they were right. They said, we've changed our employee handbook. And we've included your demand letter, pieces of your demand letter, your analysis. Now in our employee handbook. So the template for analysis, the way that you apply in the distinguished cases, yes, it varies by case, because every case is different with facts. But we have to do the same thing. And if we want the same outcome, we're different outcome. There's no-- it's a formula. It's a formula. So, you know, but yes, so I'm a big one. And that's really what I've done in my research is uncovered the formulas, be it that they're different for everyone, the systems, and then show students the comprehensive version, and then just adjust it to each of them. So I'm a big believer in using formulas and having a consistent studies schedule too, where it's like I'm doing the same thing every single week on each day. So that I know in the morning when I wake up, it's this day. It's that day. And just attack the tasks. Yeah. And the good part also is you keep coming back to Professor's preference. And I think that's something that students also forget. And last people think they want to sort of-- I think if you can go to office hours, absolutely do it. As a professor, I always fear when people say go to office hours because then I'm going to have 60 people come in. But ultimately, at many schools and mine included, we are required to provide best past answers and feedback and/or feedback memos. If you have access to those things and you don't look at them before the exam, you are doing yourself a massive disservice. Because essentially, you can reverse engineer. It's like in a case, if you could get some intel on what your judge likes, every single litigator knows, you get that intel. Why wouldn't you? That would be such a wasted opportunity. And it's not going to say, like, I prefer having answers that start with because or I prefer headings. But if every single model answer has the same approach, it's going to be a brand new exam. You're not going to learn anything substantive from it, but you learn so much about your judge. And ultimately, that's until we get to the world of computer graded exams, which I hope doesn't come too soon. But you never know. Like, that's just part of it. Yeah, it absolutely is part of it. And I don't think that anyone should go to their professor and say, is this good? And give them an eight page jacket. Because your professor is going to hate that. He's definitely true that that shows them that you haven't done the work, right? And even though you spend a lot of hours doing that, that's not the professor's job to like review your outline. When you create the outline, you get such good intel on your own self. Like, you have such deeper questions. The questions that are produced from creating that document are what you go to the professor with. And that's the difference between students achieving their goals and students that are just copy and pasting briefs into their outline, right? So it shows a different dimension. Yeah, the outline is really the way to learn the material. It is not a document that-- it's not a free standing document in that sense. It's really a learning document. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we're not preparing for class. It's really preparing for the final from day one. Totally. So if you flip your mindset and you say, you know what? It's OK if I get cold called on, I have no idea. It doesn't matter. Because most of us have anonymous grading. And so if you-- 90% of your grade is your final exam, then that's OK. You're just learning throughout the semester. You're just waiting, cheering up for that final. Totally. All right. So I think we've covered, to at least some degree, class, outlining, even some exam prep. We haven't talked about taking practice exams, but I'm a big fan of practice exams. I'd be curious about your take on that. But as it gets closer to exam day, whether or not you've been successful all semester, or whether you've only hit 50% of your goals, talk me through that sort of last five to 10 days, or even two to three days, until the exam. You know what's cool, Jannon? If you do steps-- there's nine steps in the study system I teach. That doesn't mean every student's going to use online. You're going to condense them or separate them out. The moment that you finish a topic, and your outline is done, and you create that topic of purchase to step seven, step eight and step nine are writing practice exams and then getting an assess in your performance. So if you finish a topic in week two, you can start writing practice exams in week two using that topic of purchase that you created. Week four, week 10. So the beauty is that you have the system, or you have this calendar, and you can see every single week. And I have loads of calendars from students that I'm working with this semester of which topic they're on. And when it's completed, and then they send me the outline, they send me the approach. And so then they send them what we do in our meetings as we go over practice exams and using their topic of purchase that they created. So it's not necessarily the five to 10 days before the exam that you can just start practicing. And there's a lot of people that have the advice of, oh my gosh, you can't even start outlining until week six. That just means they're a big picture thinker, and that they don't need to do it until then, and that works for them. But had they done, created their approaches, and started, you know, when they started a new topic, started writing, they would have had all that practice and throughout the semester, so that they're on autopilot. The five days, six, seven days before, if you do this system throughout the semester, you are just so happy, 'cause all you're doing is memorizing those approaches. And it's like writing bikes. If you understand something, you don't have to relearn how to read the bike every time you get on it, right? You just go. It's all automated for you. So that's the goal then to just sit and spend those days just looking at your approaches and memorizing. But the practice is so critical, because if you get to the exam in the first time you write that topic as the exam itself, you're gonna waste time with both formatting and analysis. You wanna have it done, and you know how to write it, you know all your options for each topic and go. So I would say somewhere between, write out three to five full hypotheticals per topic, and you know, the multiple choice if you have multiple choice on your exam. You decide the number early on in your semester of multiple choice questions that you wanna take, and then split it amongst the weeks of your semester so you hit that target. And then you have already done multiple choice and prep the exams and you're ready to go. - I love it. And hopefully people are listening to this early enough to take the advice. And if not, remember you also get other bites at the Apple, but you know, if I were to pull this back to 50,000 feet, it's you really have to understand the law, then you have to have enough experience to sort of issue spot what issues are available to you, and then you need to be able to apply that to a new set of facts. And as long as you can build those things in, you'll be better off than if you don't build all three of those things in. - Boom, to Jonah right now for the mic drop. - Love it, love it. All right, so last question as we finish up our conversation, I guess is, you know, you have an incredible sort of high level view on successful law students by having spoken to so many different people in so many different areas who have so many different learning styles. Are there any sort of either common themes or even better surprises? Things that you said, wow, I can't believe I keep hearing this from this group of people that sort of help those people stand out. - You know what's surprising to me? It's really indicative of the fact that we haven't changed the way we're teaching, but the study systems from 2015 to 2025 are very similar. So I'm writing the second edition of my book, and I'm thinking to myself, yes, there are a lot of changes that I'm making, but the basics, surprise me how it's not students are doing very similar things. They're using different or new apps, which is super cool. They're using different ways to take notes, different ways to create outlines, so it's saving them time. But quite honestly, Jonah, I was very surprised. That's kind of how I start the second edition is, it's not much has changed. And that's despite the fact that the bar exam is changing. We're still teaching the same thing.
way. And I know that that's a bit, a whole nother issue, but that was a big surprise to me. I want to say that I've never met a student that the way that they learn is so surprising because I don't expect there to be one way. And so for me, it's like, okay, then I ask a bunch of questions and I'm like, okay, and I know exactly where they're going with, like, their thought process of what they're trying to achieve. I always start with what are your goals? And once I know what their goals are, then it's like, okay, well, what are you doing? Okay, once I know what you're doing, okay, here's how we can make that more efficient. It's the same, it's the same process, Jim. I love it. I love it. And I think, look, I will tell you as someone who's engaged in legal education pretty seriously, you know, that's a conversation that we're having in the academy. I don't think we're very far along in it. I think the tension of the new bar exam is present. I don't know if it's the cause or the solution, but maybe it's both, but you're, I think you're absolutely right. I think the way we teach is so similar to how many of us were taught in law school. And therefore, that which is successful shouldn't also change very much. You know, is generative AI going to change that? Is the new bar exam going to change that? Is our whole profession going to change? Those are all very interesting questions, although if you're listening right now, probably not the questions you, you were looking to listen to answer. So look, I'm going to leave it there and just say thank you, Lisa, for taking the time to sort of open open her system to my listeners and to us. And if you're listening to this and you're about to take exams either for the first time or the first time in a couple of months, you can do this. No matter how last minute this is, if the exam is tomorrow morning and six hours, like you can do this, you can get better, it will take time and have a little confidence in yourself. Don't tell those negative stories. You belong. Oh, I love that you just ended with that so much. The negative stories are just stories. So regardless of your entering credentials, your LSAT, your GPA, your UGPA, your undergrad GPA, whatever it is, those are really irrelevant in terms of you achieving your academic goals. So moving forward, there's always a way and all of us belong here for here and you're listening and your hardest beating. You have an opportunity to achieve those goals. Amen. Amen. Love it, Lisa. Thank you so much for being here. People want to find out this is not like a, you know, pitch for Lisa's course, but I'm curious Lisa, people want to find your book or your course or more about you where the best place is to find you. Thank you so much. It's LisaBlaster.com. That's my website and it's all included there. And it's been such an honor to speak in Tijana, you're off to. Mutual Adoration Society. Thanks for doing this and yeah, and if you're listening to this because you're taking exams, good luck. At least then I both have faith in you. You got this. We got this. Thanks again. I am Jonah Perlin and this is the How I Lawyer Podcast. Thanks to podcast sponsor Law Pods for their expert editing. If you're a lawyer considering starting your own podcast, definitely check them out at lawpods.com. And thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, I hope you'll consider sharing with friends and colleagues or on social media. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please sign up for the email list at HowIlawyer.com or subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. As always, if you have comments, suggestions, or ideas for the show, please reach out to me at
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