The Building Blocks of Law School Success

• Author: Ramsey All/Daniel Batista/Koker Christensen/Ian Cooper
• Pages: 17-43

one

The

BUILDING BLOCKS

of

LAW

SCHOOL SUCCESS

HIS

short history

now

complete,

the

following question

arises:

What exactly

is

intended

by our

invocation

of a

phrase

as

hackneyed

as

"work

smarter"?

To

answer that question

fully

would require that

we

explain

at

this

stage

everything that

it is

the

task

of

this entire book

to

explain. Nevertheless,

we can

begin

by

making some preliminary observations. Notice,

for

starters,

that

Andie's

formula

for law

school

success

is not

built around working

smarter

"than one's peers."

To

repeat,

it is

simply,

and

without qualifi-

cation, built around working smarter.

The

temptation

to

calibrate

one's

efforts

in

response

to

what one's

classmates

are

doing

is

exactly

what must

be

avoided

if one

wants

to

steer clear

of

Billies

fate

and

avoid

an

arms race.

Rest

assured, however, that

in

working smarter

(full

stop) Andie

will also

be

working smarter than most

of her

peers. For, while

Andie

may be the

most evolved

of all law

school species,

she is far

from

having

the

most numerical representation

at law

school.

(It is,

in

fact,

part

of the

goal

of

this book

to

render other

less

developed

species

extinct;

for

now, however, these dinosaurs continue

to

domi-

nate

the law

school landscape.) Thus,

it

will

be all too

easy

for

Andie

to

work

smarter

than

Charlie,

for

example, since Charlie simply does

not

work.

As for

Billie, Andie

is

assured

of

outsmarting

his

work

habits

because

she has

developed

her own

work habits largely

in

response

to the

failings

that

she has

observed

in

his.

But

while Andie

goes

out of her way to

outsmart

Billie's

work habits, this should

not

I?

rr^

THE

ABCs

OF LAW

SCHOOL

be

confused

with trying

to

work smarter

than

her

peers.

There

is no

contradiction here:

if all her

peers were

to

shed their

affiliation

with

the

Billie

camp

and

join

the

Andie camp

tomorrow,

her

work habits

would

not

change

in

response

to

this.

Andie's

interest

is not in

out-

doing

her

peers

per

se,

but in

outsmarting

the

work habits

of

"Billie,"

conceived of as a general type of student, rather than as any particular

individual.

Andie

Is a

SOCIAL SPECIES

of Law

Student

The

distinction just made

is

important because

it

gives rise

to an

insight that

is at the

heart

of

Andie

s

smarter work program.

As we

have

seen,

Billie's

work

program—with

all its

disastrous social conse-

quences—is

precisely premised

on the

notion that

he is in

direct

competition

with

his

peers. This leads

him to

continuously

intensify

his

efforts,

while

consciously working

in

isolation

from

others.

One

fundamental

way in

which

Andie's

work program

is

smarter than

Billie's

is

that

she

sees

her

peers

not as

competitors

but as

potential

collaborators. Because

of

this, Andie

is

able

to

take

full

advantage

of

the

benefits

of

teamwork. Indeed, Andie firmly believes that there

is

truth

in the

acronym that

is

commonly generated

from

the

word

"TEAM":

Together Each Achieves More. More than

a

mere slogan,

to her it is one of the

most

useful

pieces

of

advice that

a law

student

could receive.

The

reasons

for

this

are

obvious,

but few

people other than

Andie—certainly

neither

Billie

nor

Charlie—ever

stop

to

consider

them.

To

begin with, Andie recognizes that

the law

school environ-

ment leaves

her

surrounded

by

people very much like herself:

in

other words,

smart

people with interesting backgrounds

and

perspec-

tives.

She

talks

to

some

of

these people every

day

about topics

rang-

ing

from

politics, sports,

and

other current events

to the

goings-on

in

their daily lives.

When

these conversations occur,

she

inevitably

finds

them

both

stimulating

and

enjoyable.

And she

gets

the

benefit

of

new and

thoughtful perspectives

on a

wide array

of

issues.

It

requires

no

great imaginative stretch

for

Andie

to

reach

the

logical conclu-

sion

that much could

be

gained

by

talking

with

these people about

the

most obvious thing that

she

shares

in

common

with

them:

the

study

of

law.

18