Top 1L: Suboptimal 1L grades
Our initial post on maximizing your chances of achieving your real goal: getting the best possible job offer.
So you got your fall grades. And you’re not ecstatic. Anxiety and worry pierce your mind. You have trouble sleeping. You don’t want to admit it, but you feel embarrassed.
If you’re in a school that has a mandatory curve - said differently - a school that systematically ensures a portion of otherwise highly qualified 1Ls will receive lower grades than others, this is for you.
We’re a small group of experienced former and current Biglaw attorneys that successfully navigated the 1L game and Biglaw interviews during the Great Recession. This is our advice to you.
#1. Escape the chaos.
Rid your mind of all the noise right now, and remember this:
Your singular objective is to maximize your chances of securing the best possible Biglaw job offers at the end of this summer. And you have to do two things now to achieve this:
Identify the best methods to get the best possible grades this semester; and
Apart from grades, figure out how else to maximize your interview capabilities. By and large, everything else is irrelevant.
If you’re already back in school, you’ll feel the chaos created by the collective anxiety from hundreds of type A overachieving people who are all secretly in shock to see their lower-than-expected grades. Do whatever you can to separate yourself from this chaos.
Do NOT:
spend time worrying about what others will think of you
be critical of yourself as a person, as opposed to objectively examining your methods
allow yourself to stay in a mental loop of denial and self-pity (if you feel seriously negative emotions, seek out help immediately from close ones as well as professionals)
be angry or cynical towards other people or your law school
forget that you’re the same talented individual who has achieved great things
Nobody can give you a detailed plan for success. Because only you know what you did or did not do. But we’ve walked this path before and there are two relatively consistent common denominators among those that achieve an upward trajectory in their grades:
They quickly acquire a very good understanding of their exam performance.
They are highly conscious of what kinds of distractions exist in the 1L world and manage them well.
Let’s start with the first one:
#2. Acquire an objective understanding of your performance.
There can’t be a meaningful increase in your performance without an accurate understanding of your reality. That reality is represented by your grade, but right now you don’t really know what that grade means. What are the actionable items you need to do differently this semester?
Start with your fall law school exams. Dig up your notes, reflect on your memory of how things went in the exam (this should not take more than a few minutes) and then reach out to your professor and tell them that you want to:
UNDERSTAND IN A VERY CONCRETE WAY WHAT YOU DID RIGHT AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, EVERYTHING YOU DID WRONG.
You need to know EXACTLY what kind of essay response results in a superior grade. You need to know EVERYTHING you did wrong from the prof’s perspective. Proceeding to execute out your new plans without seeing what an excellent essay response actually looks like is complete insanity. It’s like running a marathon without knowing where the finish line is. Trying to maximally improve without exactly knowing everything you did wrong is equally silly.
Once you’ve analyzed in concrete detail exactly what you did wrong and right in the actual exam, you’ll be in the best position to strategize, structure and plan your approach in preparation for this semester’s exams. You may not unearth a silver bullet insight, or find a quick fix. If there was one, everyone would do it.
But the most surprising thing for us was this:
We found what we really needed to do differently this semester didn’t require super-human effort; it was just not very obvious.
For example, if you found - like many of us - you had trouble systematically identifying issues and analyzing them in a way that gets you the most points, taking Wentworth Miller’s Law Essay Writing System (also known as LEEWS) may be extremely helpful. This is what some of us did. A substantial investment of time is needed to do the course, but for us, it was a very worthy investment that gave focus to the way we approached studying, classes as well as our exam taking methods.
We want to emphasize that this may not be for everybody - you will know after you’ve reviewed your exam responses. The point we are trying to make is that all of these details must be dictated by a concrete and detailed understanding of your exam performance, which can only be achieved by seeing your essay responses and possibly comparing them with other responses.
(We note we do NOT accept compensation from LEEWS or Miller. Their website is quite badly designed and there are typos all over it. But the method definitely worked for us.)
Tips on reaching out to your professor
First, do it quickly.
If lots of people reach out to the profs for this same request, over time the profs will get more tired and bored, possibly irritated. They’re like dragons guarding the gold and you don’t want to piss them off. If you reach out to them late in the game, the quality of your conversation with them might be negatively impacted. Be the early bird.
Second, craft the email thoughtfully and consider the below.
The email should take longer than just a couple seconds to prepare and send. Consider the following:
Briefly introduce yourself if you think they won’t immediately recognize who you are. Mention you took X course.
Briefly describe how you’ve been struggling after seeing your grade - the prof needs to understand what this means to you personally.
Then get into the meat. While you feel somewhat embarrassed to talk about your suboptimal grade, you want to get a good understanding on what you did wrong because you really want to improve.
You can tell them where you struggled, during class or in the exam and ask how, if it were them, they would have approached it (this may elicit a completely out-of-touch response, like “just make sure to do all the reading carefully,” but it might be worth asking anyway).
Think about whether you need the prof to prepare anything for you in advance of the meeting. Most importantly, if you want to see other people’s superior responses or a model response during the meeting (as we highly recommend), don’t forget to mention it in your initial email to them so they have the chance to actually have it ready for you (if they’re willing to show it to you, that is).
The last thing you want is to have an entire back and forth email chain with the prof on scheduling the meeting and have a couple days pass while you guys duke out the time. To avoid this and the frustration it will cause for both of you, provide your availability upfront and make it absolutely easy for them to understand when you are available.
Your availability plug should sound something like this: “Would you happen to be available any time tomorrow (Friday) morning? I would love to schedule this sooner than later, but if you’re not available tomorrow, I’m also free on Monday after 2:00 pm and Tuesday before 3:30 pm. If these times don’t work for you, please let me know when works best for you - I’m happy to rearrange my schedule, as this is very important for me.” Note the “tomorrow (Friday)” wording - you should add Friday because you don’t know when they’ll actually see your email.
Do not provide a large number of small minute-by-minute availability blocks: “I am available on Monday (9:00 am - 10:15 am, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm, 3:00 pm - 3:45 pm, 5:00 - 6:30 pm, etc.” It makes it look like you have no clue that they would be hosting this meeting exclusively for your benefit. Block out large chunks of time instead of being petty with your availability.
The email should be as short as possible. It could honestly be just a few sentences, as long as you know exactly what you want out of the meeting. You should not list every single question you’re going to ask in the meeting. Read the next tip.
Third, don’t go into the meeting with the professor without a handwritten list of items and/or questions you want to cover.
You want to start the meeting by thanking them for their time and how meaningful this meeting is for you. The professor may then take lead and start going over your exam, as you requested. Let them lead (it makes them happy, if they’re the type to do this, and it takes less energy for you). But make sure you have a list of topics you want to cover so you’re not just covering what the prof conveniently thinks you need to know about your exam. Consider these items for your list:
Anything I specifically mentioned in the initial email to the prof (for example, did we go over model response)
From a higher perspective, what are the things I did wrong or not quite right? What did I do right?
From a granular perspective, what did I do wrong with respect to each response?
Particular challenging areas of the exam that I want to go over (be as specific as possible)
You (the prof) have probably seen lots of students over the years (or something else to show respect / kiss ass) - do you find I am making similar mistakes as those students? If so, any tips or guidance on what you (the prof) would do?
Is there anything I should have asked but didn’t?
We think it should be a handwritten list because it will look much more genuine. (Don’t just copy and paste the above and print it out.) Space it out so you can jot down critical notes on the key topics during your meeting.
Fourth, remember that even if you gain nothing from the meeting with the professor from a substantive point of view, it can only help your overall objective (maximizing your chances of securing the best possible job offers this summer).
Everyone makes mistakes. Law firm associates certainly make lots of them. You bombing Torts or Conlaw? Definitely a big mistake. But what do you do after you’ve made big mistake?
Are you the kind that faces reality, gets your hands dirty and drills down to what you need to do to fix it right away? Or are you the type to try to bury your mistakes and operate on hope alone? Law firms like the former and tend to fire the latter.
Let’s hypothetically fast forward to this summer. Your interviewer seems to like you, but you see that they’re now looking at your suboptimal transcript. This would be the perfect time to deliver a short (true) story about the kind of intelligent and fearless effort you employed to improve them. You can’t do this without reaching out to the prof and having this meeting.
In our experience, anecdotes like these were the critical difference between us who got job offers and those other students that had the same grades but could honestly not claim that they made this level of effort.
So reach out to your professors now. It’s that important. Next:
#3. Recognize the two faces of your greatest enemy and hardcode your path to avoid them.
Even if you have the best plan, your failure to execute on it consistently will result in suboptimal outcomes. Execution depends largely on habits and willpower.
So what is likely to be the greatest enemy of a person who wants to nurture good habits and superior willpower?
It is:
distraction
/dəˈstrakSH(ə)n/
noun
a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.
extreme agitation of the mind or emotions.
At virtually every corner of your 1L world, distractions beg for your attention. They can be split into offline and online distractions.
Offline distractions: Minimize event attendance for now.
Offline distractions are basically events sponsored or planned by people you don’t really know, who don’t care about or have a stake in your 1L performance. The bottom line is, avoid these for now.
These offline distractions come in the form of corporate or school-sponsored events, but they can really be any gathering where you can’t tell before the event happens how exactly your attendance will benefit your objective. These include:
marketing events framed as networking events (meet our attorneys!)
events with unclear focuses (learn about our Asia practice!)
any event with an academic topic irrelevant to your spring semester courses (learn about X cutting edge legal topic!)
panels that purport to provide advice from “super successful” Biglaw or inhouse boomer lawyers (come meet awesome alum / partner / GC / cool dude or dudette from random company / law firm!)
These events are not for you now in this critical moment. Even if they say 1Ls are welcome to join.
(Later in the semester, you should attend some of these events, but with a very clear strategy on how you can make your attendance maximally benefit your chances of getting the best job offers. We will address this topic in detail in February, but for now, avoid attending these events because you need to spend that time reviewing your exam responses and strategizing how to increase your academic performance this semester.)
Online distractions: Get what you need without digesting trash.
There are many online distractions. But the most nefarious kind are the ones that directly profit from distracting you. These include the “popular” legal community websites (the most prominent being ATL) in addition to “professional” legal websites that feature “Biglaw news” (Amlaw, Vault, etc.).
The problem is, sometimes they have useful stuff. In fact, some of the information will actually be important for your goal to get the best possible job offers this summer.
But you can’t figure out what’s useful on these websites without spending your valuable time looking at all the crap that isn’t. And visiting these websites on a periodic basis takes a huge toll on your ability to focus on what’s important.
So how do you get what’s helpful and avoid what’s not online? This is where we come in. This is why we are launching our newsletter.
We recommend two steps for those who want to stay focused:
Do a systemic inbox / browser detox.
Take the time to unsubscribe from every source that sends you distracting emails; block all distracting websites from your phone and laptop browser so you can only access them intentionally at an allotted time, if at all. If you must subscribe to something, send it to an email address that isn’t connected with notifications on your phone or laptop, so you can see it on your schedule.
Subscribe to Top 1L newsletter.
We at Top 1L sift through more major sources of online information relevant to Biglaw than you could possibly ever devote your valuable time to.
We will essentially be your filter, your Biglaw info purifier.
Our singular goal is to cut through all the noise and BS, and provide you with only the maximally helpful content for your goal of securing the best possible Biglaw offers this summer.
The newsletters go out just once a week, at noon every Friday, to avoid taking you away from your studies during the week.
This is the newsletter that we wish we had when we were 1Ls. We begin charging subscription fees in February, but it’s free now. Sign up now to get our first official free newsletter next week.
Make sure you sign up with your law school email (otherwise we have to usher you out). You can always unsubscribe.
P.S. Because the competitive value of our service will erode with more subscribers from the same school, we limit the number of 1Ls who can subscribe from a given school.