Five Indispensable Tips for Law Students and New Lawyers

by Matt Homann

Matt Homann, an Illinois lawyer, is the author of the [non]billable hour.--Ed.

Evan was kind enough to ask me to be one of his guest posters here at NFT(L)U, and since Evan participated in my weblog's Five by Five feature, I am excited to be able to return the favor.

Evan is expecting just a quick guide to a few non-legal weblog sites here, but as I am about to return to teach another semester of Pretrial at Washington University Law School (only as an adjunct), I thought I'd give my five tips to law students and new lawyers.  In no particular order, here they are:

1.  Learn to use legal technology now.  I know you have a far better understanding of technology than your professors and future bosses do.  Use that to your advantage.  Mastering these technologies will enhance your productivity as a law student and give you a leg up on your classmates when you enter the workforce.

Get a Tablet PC.  If you are shopping for a laptop, the tablet form factor is the only way to go.  It is impossible to overestimate the leap in productivity you will experience with a Tablet PC.  I take all of my notes (in handwriting that is searchable and convertible to text) on my Toshiba M205 and am quickly making the yellow legal pad disappear from my desk.  Some great tablet-focused resources are here, here, and here.  If you have a Mac, good for you.  I wish I'd bought Macs when I started my firm.  However, in the Windows environment, the Tablet is as good as it gets.

Keep your stuff all in one (electronic) place.  FranklinCovey PlanPlus or Agilix GoBinder are both programs built on the same platform.  The first is an elegant incorporation of the Franklin Covey system, and the second is geared towards students.  The calendering and to-do management of both of the programs is first-rate.  Both have free trials and work well on both the TabletPC and regular windows notebooks. 

Save time and keystrokes.  Use Activewords.  Buzz Bruggeman, who is blogging through the hurricane, created this utility with some other really smart people.  Download it.  Check out this weblog, and take the time to learn the software.  Trust me on this one.

Learn to organize your case.   The Casemap group of programs, and most particularly, NoteMap.  If you are a litigator to be, you absolutely must try these programs and learn them.  Download them for a free trial, schedule a free demo with one of the tremendous salespersons, and use the program in your trial or pre-trial class.  Your school should get at least one free license, if they don't have one already.  One small part of the suite is Notemap,  a little outling program that far exceeds anything I've ever used for outling and note taking.  You can pick up a free license  of Notemap from Dennis Kennedy's site.

Use a brainstorming/mindmapping tool daily.  The best on the market is MindManager Pro, but it is a bit pricey (but especially worth it if you use a Tablet PC).  A great (and free ) alternative is FreeMind.  You will not find a better method for organizing your ideas and brainstorming sessions.  Both programs also work great for organizing your thoughts before you write that big brief or law review article.

Use the software lawyers use.  With the exception of Casemap, not a lot of lawyers use the software I have listed.  A lot of lawyers do use legal-specific practice management software like PCLaw, Timematters, Amicus Attorney, and others.  Download a trial version, try managing a fictional case, and keep track of every six minutes of your day for a few weeks.

2.  Learn how most lawyers work.  Sixty percent (or more) of lawyers work in a small firm environment.  Odds are, you will too someday.  Go work for a sole practitioner (even just a few hours per week).  Seeing the other side of law practice will give you valuable insights into how most lawyers work, and help you determine if small firm life is a viable alternative to the big dollars/long hours/no life that often accompanies working in a big firm.

3. Learn Time Management.  I'm not just talking about skipping Oprah to read for tomorrow's civil procedure class, I'm talking about true system-based time management.  David Allen's system is great, and the Franklin Covey system also works well.  Get over your procrastination habit now, or it will kill you in law practice.  Some good time management-related blogs are here, here, here, and here.

4. Learn the business.  Law is a profession, and law is a business.  In law school, you generally get one class on ethics and none on law practice management (and certainly none on marketing).   For the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) you'll pay to become a lawyer, the fact that you'll get no instruction on how to be a lawyer is absolutely shameful.  Since this is the self-study portion of your curriculum, I'd suggest the following:

Read these five books:
Clients for Life Creating Customer Evangelists Firm of the Future Million Dollar Consulting The Seven Day Weekend

Visit these six blogs regularly (or add their RSS feeds to your aggregator):
Gaping Void
Sandbox Wisdom
Seth's Blog
the [non]billable hour
The Occupational Adventure
Worthwhile

5.  Don't be an Asshole.  Nobody likes the student who always volunteers, and tries to show how smart he or she is.  We called those students  gunners.   Believe me, if they don't like you in law school, they won't like in law practice.  There was a student in my law school class who constantly bragged about herself, her job, and her grades.  She would constantly put others down in an off-handed way.  If I saw her today, and told her I was just appointed by the Pope to personally find his successor, she'd respond by telling me she was asked first, and turned down the job because the money wasn't half of what she's making now.  Do you know how many cases other lawyers have referred to her?  I'm guessing zero.  Your reputation as a lawyer begins now.  So don't screw it up.

There you have it.  It's been great.  Good luck in school.  See you next year.

Comments

[Kevin]

Ev and Matt,

Do you pay for hyperlink typos? Gaping Void is linked to Sandbox Wisdom rather than http://www.gapingvoid.com/

You've actually posted 6 blogs under Visit these five blogs regularly, but I assume you meant to say visit the [non]billable hour irregularly.

I'm forwarding this post to my friend who just opened his own practice right now.

[Evan]

Kevin: Jeez. I posted about three minutes ago, and am sitting here checking the links, and "helpful" people like you are already being critical.

That was a great post, wasn't it?

[Matthew Homann]

I screwed up the links on purpose to make Evan pay out some bucks. ;-)

[Kevin]

Excellent post. Damn bloglines is addicting -- I just keep clicking on it and all the little categories light up and I click and I read and I click and I read.... gotta be quicker with the fixes next time.

[David Giacalone]

Yes, Evan, this is a great post. Thanks for writing it, Matt.

I have, of course, my usual caveat -- marketing techniques that may be just fine for typical products and services can often be inappropriate when done by lawyers, who have special ethical and fiduciary duties to their clients. As I've said elsewhere: "A simple test: If you'd be embarrassed to tell your client your marketing strategy, it's probably unethical (even if not a technical or obvious violation of any particular rule of professional conduct)."

Along with Matt's links, I hope your readers will peruse and consider some of ethicalEsq's offferings on this topic:

The Lowered Expectations Game - Lawyers as Tin Men
Is Legal Marketing Spoofable?
Brand Lex

Yes, law is a business and lawyers who work hard and well deserve to make a good living. But, undisciplined entrepeneurial impluses are best practiced outside the legal profession.

[Abnu]

Great advice, Matt. Especially the Tablet PC recommendation. Your Toshiba M205 Tablet PC is a wonderful hybrid. (That's laptop/tablet, not gasoline/electricity.) Gotta luv that high resolution screen. But, the Motion Computing M1400 Tablet PC is a very nice tablet, too. Very slick. That would be a nice upgrade for Evan--from his Little Purple Drive--I think. He could even blog from the car when caught in railway-crossing traffic between offices.

[Federalist No. 84]

That post officially passes the shiz nit test. Your post was the shiz nit.

I have one semester of law school before I open my solo criminal shop. I'm already working on my web page so that I can jump from the gate. Your post will help me get their faster. Thanks!

Evan, btw, your blog is ON FIRE.

[Federalist No. 84]

"there" not "their".

[Nipper]

Great post. Some other tidbits of advice:
a. Law school teaches you about The Law, not about practicing law (business and social skills). The sooner you realize that you are clueless...the sooner you can start becoming competent.
b. You catch more flies with honey....I too often see attorneys who treat my staff (and presumably their own) like crap. Just because you have J.D. doesn't give you the right to treat others poorly. Grow up. Maybe this fits into Matt's #5.
c. Remember, it is not what you know, but who you know. Network, network, network.
d. Your clients should be evangelists...treat them well, respect them, establish an actual relationship with them. You will be rewarded.
e. No one ever made money in life (unless they inherited it) without taking some risk. Risk in the practice of law typically means non-billable hours. Plan on taking some risks.
f. Having a great life is determined by what you gave, not what you received. Don't forget that...do what you love and leave time for other good things (family, friends, charity/religion).

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I don't have anything funny to say. Excellent post. I used to use NoteMap, one of Matt's reccomended programs, to organize my areas of inquiry for depositions. The same company also makes a program called TimeMap that allows you to make very detailed timelines, which for me came in handy in professional liability cases arising out of transactions.

[UCL]

I'm going to take issue with the following statement by Matt: "Don't be an Asshole. Nobody likes the student who always volunteers, and tries to show how smart he or she is. We called those students gunners."

"Being the student who always volunteers" is NOT the same thing as "being an asshole," "trying to show how smart you are," or "being a gunner". I was always a very humble law student and made many friends in law school, who remain my friends today. But I was also always the guy who always raised my hand to volunteer answers to profs' questions. This wasn't because I wanted to show everyone how smart I was (which would've been futile because I'm actually mildly retarded), but simply because I love the law and am fascinated by its academic study. I was also one of the few students in my class who was never even slightly intimidated by the Socratic method, and there were many times when a prof's question was met with silence and stillness, and only then did I raise my hand so his/her very interesting point did not go without being discussed.

[Ted]

I agree, UCL, and so does Professor Volokh.

[David Giacalone]

If there were more gunners in classrooms, classes would be far more tolerable for professor and students. Prof. Stracher's recent article In Praise of Gunners makes some good points. Whatever the irk factor may be in the classroom (I'll take gunners over backbencher "whatever dudes" and frat boys any day), there are lots of times when gunners come in handy in the practice of law.

[FedNo84]

Timewriter (http://www.timewriter.com/) is also a good time-keeping system. Fortunately, they offer a freeware version. (http://www.timewriter.com/en/download_free.php)

[Lashlar]

Nipper,

So if you realize you're clueless and you have roughly 2 more years to go... you're doing good? :-)

Matt,

I don't know about "gunners," but I occasionally volunteer when I have something to say, and sometimes look up additional information (bless you, Lexis) to back up what I think I'm going to say. Does that count?

Beyond that, I definitely think that all the legal technology mentioned is going onto my "test extensively as soon as possible" list. Thanks.

[Stephan]

Why do you wish you had gone with a Mac instead of a PC?
What is so great about Macs for lawyers?
You're a lawyer not a graphic designer.
I'm sure that most lawyers can afford a Mac, why would it be any good to a student?
Why can't you switch now?
I have asked a lot of questions so I really doubt they will ever get answered, but it would be nice.

[Acai Berry]

Yes, law is a business and lawyers who work hard and well deserve to make a good living. But, undisciplined entrepeneurial impluses are best practiced outside the legal profession.

[AlexM]

I read this entire article and while it was extremely informative and very helpful, I must say that the best advice I got my 1L year was from an upperclassman. He suggested I follow along in my classes with an outline from a previous semester. Most professors teach the same way, almost word for word, semester after semester, so a solid outline is extremely beneficial. I uploaded my old ones to this site http://www.outlines.com/ so you’ll find plenty there to start with!

[sdeagie]

LIVING the DREAM is the brainchild of ex-BigLaw attorney Rick Eid, who wrote the episodes from his own
experiences as a middle class, second-tier law school graduate who lands the job of his dreams at the world’s most prestigious law firm.

[hopefullawyer]

hi sir. Thanks for the tips. I have a big problem right now. I am a first year student taking Juris Doctor program in one of the prestigious schools in the Philippines. Last Friday, my substitute professor called me for recitation and humiliated me infront of the class. I was able to answer all his questions except for one where I failed to explain in a manner that would satisfy him. He told me that I do not know anything and I do not know how to answer. I felt really humiliated and I cried after leaving the room. He made me feel so stupid. I was thinking of filing a complaint against him and withdrawing from the class. Unfortunately, my original professor has a heart failure and that substitute professor has to take over. Please give me an advice. Thank you.