CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

Since we have entered law school we have been inundated with gloom and doom advice about the state of the legal economy.  Each week’s ABA newsletter last year seemed to highlight another several hundred jobs cut at some big city firm, partner’s asked to give up some job perk, and ominous undertones implying those of us still in school would not likely find work.  Being a first year student I felt the same way I felt about all tragedies that didn’t directly effect  me… so what?  But as months went on, and I heard nightmares of recent graduates, it occurred to me that there had to be a solution for this predicament of too many lawyers not enough jobs.  This post is my answer, which will inevitably be ignored:

Now I admit that I am not a brilliant economic mind.  In fact, economics is the primary reason I changed majors in undergrad, eventually leading me to law school.  But I think I have a handle on the basics, and the legal job market seems to be a pretty basic concept to me.  As supply goes up, demand goes down.  Profound, ain’t it?  But believe it or not there are a finite number of legal problems in America; as we continue to fill the job market with new lawyers it resembles a cup under the faucet (or spicket, if you are from North Carolina).  If we do not soon turn off the faucet, we are left with a big mess.  This seems to be the only logical solution, since lawyers have already tried the opposite approach, creating more problems to support the growing field.

To clarify “turning off the faucet,” I mean regulation.  A nationwide proposal amongst every accredited law school in country to not accept a class of 2013.  To draw an academic parallel, no less a groan from my classmates, you will recall the Supreme Court tried this in Wickard.  The government said stop producing this product in excess because doing so is dragging down the national post-depression economy.  Needless to say we are again in a post-recession/depression economy, and need to be particularly cognizant of society’s needs.  I foresee two primary benefits to this approach.  First, we take some small measure to thin out the “job-seeking” crowd.  By reducing the denominator in the jobs to lawyers ratio, we would ever so slightly lower unemployment.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly it would strengthen the talent of the next class that is produced.  Having twice the population competing for the same number of spots allows only the best to continue their training, instead of simply applying until you get accepted somewhere. 

The obvious argument against is that this would be “bad for business.”  But, I have to question the validity of this.  One of my numerous and sordid jobs prior to law school was working at the Maryland Fund for Excellence.  You know us as, “Hi.  I’m from your college.  Give us money!”  In any case, one of the facts from our script was that state funds (at a state school) only covered about 50% of the cost of a student’s education.  Now, couple this with another fact.  I had the occasion to meet the associate dean of one of our near peer law schools over summer break.  This person said they had admitted over 220 students into the Class of 2012.  Now for the hypothetical…

If there are 200 students at 100 recognized law schools, creating a 50% of 1 student’s tuition deficit [let's round it off at 40,000/year, though Elon is markedly less].  This is 20,000 students times 20,000 dollars, creating a $400 million deficit.  Traditionally, this is covered by raising tuition rates for students for whom, as it stands, there are bleak job prospects at the end of the line.  If we were to cut a class for a year we would not only lower the variable costs of running the business, but allow professors with newly found free time to pursue new methods of teaching and research.   This has the collateral effect of adding value to the teacher, and perhaps, the school.  This way, perhaps we would produce better lawyers, instead of just more…

Last year, I was having a discussion with my writing professor about 9/11.  I was telling her how close I was to the Pentagon and the chaos that erupted from the lack of ability to use cell phones and check on loved ones.  A classmate of mine interevened saying she was in 9th grade at the time.  I was absolutely deflated.  While I realized that this event was some years ago, I did not know people that young could already be in law school.  For that crowd,  a brief explanation of stagflation.  Wikipedia (my Webster’s) says that stagflation occurs when inflation and stagnation occur at the same time in an economy and remain unchecked.  The gist of this during the OPEC crisis, was that while prices were rising and changes were being made in response to the problem,  it did not fix the problem. 

From the law school perspective, we are forever trying to make our school a community.  Seemingly, this is why we are in cohorts, why leadership is a mandatory course and why we have the preceptor program and the afternoon teas.  One of the most effective ways to get a student involved in the Elon community is to engage them in student organizations.  They have the ability to work without oversight towards effecuating a new angle by which we integrate our students to the Greensboro legal community.  Over the first three years of the school’s presence, we have developed approximately 20 organizations appealing to most every aspect of a student’s personality.  As you read, two more are in development.  But, with this blossoming supply side of new organizations, space and time for activities remain stagnate.    We have but so many rooms in which to meet in this building, and with everyone on different schedules, 12:15 - 1:00 has become the default meeting time.  This obviously leads to double booking.  Take today for example (though it’s no more special than the rest):  During the same time we had a Lexis study skills review, a Phi Alpha Delta meeting, and an Elon Law Republicans meeting from 12:15 - 1:00.

Until we can master cold fission and replicate ourselves, certain decisions will have to be made.  Do I know enough about online research to sacrifice this review session for a legal fraternity to whom I have an obligation?  Can I miss out on a first meeting of an organization I would like to be a part of for the same reason?  And the logical question, which meeting has the best free lunch?  Seemingly, you could catch any one of the three on the second meeting, but most organizations only meet once a month, and this conflict of time and space seems to be a repetitive one.  In a separate dilemna, you may have to put an organizational meeting which you are chairing in front of a career services program you have been awaiting for sometime.  This is never a wise decision. 

So, if we are already stretched thin on our schedule, what then serves the purpose of continually accrediting organizations?  Instead of double booking, we will be triple booking, and so on.  Unless we can find more resources to accomodate for the operations of each organization, we are only allocating student funds to groups with low student support.  Further, if you are a member of multiple groups and only attending meetings on a rotating basis because of the conflict, how involved can you actually be?

I am, however, an advocate of not complaining about a problem unless you have a solution.  Here it is.  Monday and Wednesday - administration days.  Career Service functions, Let’s Study meetings, Town Halls, SBA/Honor Council issues.  Tuesday/Thursday/Friday - Student Organizations.  Divide each lunch hour into three 20-minute sections.  Think about all the meetings you have attended this year; each could easily be condensed into twenty minutes of actual work.  Admittingly, once or twice a year, extra organizations would have to suck it up and hold a meeting from 8:00-8:30 AM, or 4:00-5:00 PM.  However, doing so would afford each student the opportunity to become as involved as they want to be with each organization.  It would also have the collateral benefit of allowing each organization to weed out the members who show up once a semester to secure the organizational name on their resume and are never seen from again.  And all the while we spend more time at the school attending these meetings, the building starts becoming a community, instead of a place of business from 9-5 like the rest of downtown Greensboro.  Now if only we can convince the restaurants to stay open past 3…

First year law students seem to have it made.  There is a brief ’smack in the mouth’ period until you realize how to adjust to a new life style, but ultimately you still hold the power.  Unhappy with your school?  Transfer up.  Need more scholarship?  Transfer Down.  Unsure how to handle yourself in professional situations?  There are literally volumes of books (and blogs posts) on how to make the transition to being a law student.  You don’t have to pick your classes, or who you hang out with (thanks to the cohort system), you are assigned an advisor and a preceptor to smooth the transition and give you some vision, and everyone is excited to welcome you to the school.

Third year students see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Granted, the bar looms in the distance like a severe thunderstorm, but many have just finished a summer internship that has given them some direction in life.  Some have standing job offers, some have a practice certificate so they can begin giving pragmatic meaning to their studies.  Some have prepared so well that they can coast down the road to graduation with electives and bar prep classes.

But what about the middle children?  The work load increases, because there are no ‘gimmes’ like first-year leadership.  You have some autonomy, but not enough to escape a pre-determined eleven credit workload.  You are forced to decide upon a specialization, which will mandate some classes that of absolutely no interest to you, regardless of your desired sector of the law.  And you must answer the overarching question of ‘What do I want to do with my life?’  This is the same question that many of you came to law school to avoid answering for another three years.

Somewhere in between the booze and coffee is the equilibrium of the second year student.  They suffer from what I call 20 to life, representative of the mentality of a prisoner who has been sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.  You are too far into law school, in time and money, to get out and it is too late to decide you want to finish somewhere else.  So you are stuck roaming the halls, isolated from society and entrenched in a close knit circle of people in the same situation as you, perpetually talking about what you ’should’ have done.  Against your will, the better part of the day is spent inside, while your body and your non-legal mind suffer the consequences.  No news, no pleasure reading, no exercise, just food/sleep/study/repeat.  I know the feeling well because it is much the same in the working world.  The phrase actually came from a guy who worked the midnight shift with me at the courthouse.  Biggest difference between here and there - we are not getting paid. 

Anyhow, this guy had been police for 10 years working from 11pm-11am most days, and was always in a good mood.  He was forever talking about his intramural football league.  He commuted almost an hour each way to practice twice a week, and once for games, from north of DC down to Gravelly Point, VA to play in league with no prize money, just pride.  But, football was what made him him.  He was always taking bets on the Atlanta Falcons when they played against your team, and talking about fantasy football when the rest of us walked around staring at the ground, drinking coffee, feeling tired and grumpy.  It was difficult to find someone who was energetic enough to throw a football around the office at 4 am on Tuesday morning after 5 hours of roaming the inside of  courthouse, staring at marble walls.  However, he was also the most well-liked guy on the shift because of his optimism.

Point is, in this arduous, and sometimes maddening process of school, you have got to find what makes you you.  Maybe it’s basketball, maybe it’s volunteerting, maybe it’s writing, but whatever differentiates you from the red eyes and noses buried in books is what will save you from crashing and burning.  Everyone tells your first year that you have to dedicate a night a week to your significant other if you want to make it work.  But, you must also allocate time for yourself.  It gives you stories to tell your friends, a means to relate to strangers, and talking points in your job interviews.  If you do not, at the end, we will all just be lawyers… and I don’t think anyone really wants that.

This is the third and final installment of guest posts derived from my recent book: 1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School (Thomson West 2009). Part I addressed psychological distress in law students. Part II explored the perilous second semester.  This post discusses academic research that provides answers to a hodgepodge of important/interesting questions about legal education and success in law school.

III. Surprising Empirical Answers to Law School Questions You May have Wondered About 

Scores of studies have been conducted about law students, legal education, and teaching and learning in general, yet this research data is often overlooked in giving advice to law students.

Did you know that the LSAT is not nearly as strong of a success predictor as most people assume?  That students who sit in the front of classrooms get higher grades than those who sit in back? That women participate in law school class discussion at lower rates than men? That, contrary to student belief, the brain cannot multitask in class without one of the tasks suffering?  That the conventional wisdom to not change initial answers to multiple-choice questions is completely backwards?  Read on.  (As with my other posts, I’ve omitted the citations, but can provide them on request.)

LSAT Correlation to First-Year Grades.  Most law school applicants and students are aware that the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is the most heavily weighted factor influencing law school admissions.  I’ve served on admissions committees at three different law schools.  At each school, I’ve protested while seeing students with undergraduate GPAs barely above a 2.0 get admitted because of a good LSAT score, while students who have proved themselves through four years of college with outstanding GPAs get rejected because of average LSAT scores.

Validity studies do show a positive correlation between LSAT scores and first-year grades, but the correlation is not nearly as strong as most law students believe. Correlation is measured by a coefficient for which 1.00 represents a perfect correlation and zero shows no correlation beyond one attributable to random chance. In 2005, the Law School Admission Council, the good folks that administer the LSAT, conducted a validity study using data from 181 law schools.

The median correlation between LSAT scores and first-year grades was only .34. The correlation varied wildly among schools, from a high of .56 (reasonably strong correlation) to a low of .04 (virtually no correlation). The correlation was higher when LSAT scores were considered together with undergraduate GPAs, ranging from .24 to .65, with a median correlation of .46.

So take heart.  While the LSAT does measure several important abilities―primarily the abilities to engage and manage complex text―your LSAT score does not predetermine your fate.  Like all law profs, I’ve seen students with low LSAT scores excel and students with chart-topping scores flunk out.

Seat Location as Tied to Academic Performance.  I always encourage law students to sit in the front of the classroom, convinced it enhances their law school experience.  Now I have some research to back up my recommendation.  Non-law school educators have conducted a variety of studies on the relationship of seat choice to student personality type and academic performance. They support one proposition quite clearly: students who choose to sit in the front of the room are disproportionately better students. They have higher GPAs, participate more frequently in class, and receive better grades in the course. One study, for example, found that students sitting in the front received higher percentages of As and students sitting in the back received higher percentages of Ds and Fs.

Several studies have linked this better performance to personality differences between students who choose to sit in front and those who choose the back. In other words, with regard to the cause and effect relationship between seat selection and academic performance, research suggests that students who sit in front by choice do better because better students choose to sit in front.  But at least one study suggests that sitting in the front is actually causally related to better academic performance.

Don’t be a backburner!  Grab a seat near the front in all your classes.

Class Participation Rates between Men and Women.  Unsurprising to anyone who has been involved in legal education for any period of time, several surveys show that female students voluntarily participate much less frequently in law school classes than male students (although my Torts class this past year was a notable exception). For example, a survey of students at the University of California at Berkeley found that a majority of women, and also persons of color, never asked questions or otherwise voluntarily participated in class, while almost two-thirds of white male students reported doing both.  The survey is dated, but the results are consistent with current experience.

Reasons offered by scholars as to why the Socratic method negatively impacts women include increased feelings of alienation and fear, the adversarial and competitive nature of the method, sexist conduct by certain male professors, an interest in protecting the sanctity and integrity of one’s beliefs, less willingness to engage in grandstanding, a lower interest in dominating class discussion, and—I love this one because it’s so true—better recognition by women than men of the limits of one’s knowledge. In short, male students, as a group, are more willing to engage in the adversarial, competitive “sport” of the Socratic method than women.  As noted, the same surveys show that minority students also participate at lower rates.

This data is important because class participation carries several benefits with it, some tangible and some intangible: (1) Active student participation in class discussions adds to the energy level and sense of community in the classroom, making for a more lively and memorable experience for everyone; (2) You will better remember the classes in which you participate and feel more satisfaction about your law school experience; (3) Participating sharpens your oral communication and group speaking skills, essential abilities for all lawyers; (4) Your professors want to get to know you, but with so many students, we can=t realistically accomplish that unless you speak up from time to time; (5) It is an established fact of legal education that if you volunteer even once in a while, you will get called on less often when you are not volunteering; (6) Finally, many professors raise grades for class participation.

Multitasking with Computers in Class.  The use of computers in law school classrooms is quite controversial among law professors, with some professors banning them and others threatening to do so.  Profs Kibosh Students’ Laptops blared a headline in the American Bar Association Journal. The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by a Georgetown law professor advocating a classroom computer ban.  Every time I think the great law school computer debate is about to die down, some prof will stir it up again on the lawprof listserv, igniting yet another torrent of email on the subject.

A primary concern professors have with computers is that too many students check out of the class discussion to web-browse, check email, send instant messages, etc.   Gen Y and Millennial students respond that they are so skilled at multitasking that they really can learn law and check sports scores at the same time.

Is it true?  Research suggests the answer is “no,” or at least “not as effectively.” Studies regarding the ability of the brain to engage in simultaneous tasks show “almost without exception” that the performance of one or both tasks directly suffers.

In one study, researchers tracked the wireless computer activity of students during class. Not surprisingly, the study showed students used their computers for a wide range of functions unrelated to the class, such as email and web-browsing.  The researchers then divided a class into two groups.  Prior to a lecture, one group was told to use their computers as usual, while the other was asked to close their computers. Afterwards, the researchers gave the students a surprise test.  The students who used their laptops during the lecture performed significantly poorer on the test.  Two months later the researchers replicated the test by switching the two groups of students and got the same results.

Another study suggested that even if multitasking does not necessarily decrease the overall ability to learn, it negatively affects the kind of learning used to acquire new concepts and information and to engage in deep analysis—learning abilities that are critical to law students.  Researchers did MRI brain imaging of fourteen twenty-somethings engaged in dual-task learning.  The brain imaging showed that multitaskers engaged in “habit learning” rather than “declarative learning.”  Habit learning relies on a portion of the brain used for repetitive skills, whereas declarative learning involves a portion of the brain used for storing and recalling information.  Basically, the researchers concluded that even though people can learn while multitasking, they can’t learn the material as well or be able to adapt it to changing conditions.

Even if you’re adept at multitasking, the research suggests you can’t do all the tasks well because of the brain’s limited processing ability.  So if your professor is defining the Rule Against Perpetuities at the same moment you’re updating your Facebook status, something has to give.

Changing Answers on Multiple-Choice Questions.  Ever since I was in elementary school, teachers have admonished not to change initial answers to multiple-choice questions because it’s more likely you will change an answer from right to wrong than from wrong to right.  Well, guess what?  The advice is completely backwards.  Study after study, some of them dating back to the 1920s, consistently show that changing multiple-choice answers is more likely to increase—not decrease—test scores. An example: a study of upper-level accounting students showed that 95 percent of the students changed answers on their multiple-choice examinations (changing a total of 5.6 percent of the answers).  Fifty-six percent of the answers were changed from wrong to right, while only 21 percent were changed from right to wrong.  The remaining 23 percent were changed from one wrong answer to another wrong answer.  These results are consistent with other studies.

Conclusion.  Thanks to the CELL blog editors for giving me the opportunity to share some of the things I learned in writing my book about first-year law school success.  It’s been fun!

Okay so law school doesn’t actually get harder per se - but it does get busier.
1L year is tough. It’s was all about the learning curve for me. You have to re-learn how to think, analyze and study. You have to realize you take the professor, not the course. And you have to learn how to self-manage. These aren’t undergraduate courses that require 4 papers spread evenly throughout the year. This is a course where you don’t know if you understand the material until you’re in your third hour of the final exam.
But by the second year, you’ve hopefully made is over that curve. You know how to handle all the reading, how to study smarter not harder, and how to decipher what is important out of a 2-hour lecture. But second year brings about a whole new set of stresses. It just seems like the second year is when they pile everything on your plate. There is moot court, law review and the leadership positions you find yourself in other clubs and groups. There are extra lectures to help you figure out what kind of law you want to practice and decisions about what bar review courses to go ahead and sign up for. Not to mention applying for every summer associate position you hear about. And on top of that, there are still your classes that need every bit of your attention to be successful in.
It seems like every day there is another “brown bag” lunch to attend. Law school is notorious for its academic rigor. But what’s less recognized is that law school is just as demanding in all aspects of your life.

“What if I got it wrong, and no poem or song could put right what I got wrong…?”
-Coldplay-

My mother makes the most beautiful baskets. From scratch. By hand. Really, they’re just unbelievable. I told her to sell them, and her response was that she couldn’t possibly; not because she’s attached to them, but because “each one contains at least one tiny flaw, and I wouldn’t feel right selling them that way.” My mother is paralyzed by perfection. Guess who inherited that trait?

Bingo. This week at Legal Aid it truly occurred to me that I, too, am paralyzed by the thought that I have utterly no business doing anything, let alone representing a client in court, if I don’t know how to do it flawlessly. I mean, hello! This is someone’s life. These are someone’s rights. And they’re in my very inexperienced hands. Oh. God.

While preparing for an in-person client interview with the very intelligent woman I’m soon to represent in Randolph County 50B court, I started writing out a few preliminary questions I’d like to ask her on the stand. OK, I’ll start with a little background, I thought. No, that’s not compelling. Start with a nice heart-wrenching statement of why she’s here – her fear of her husband and desperate need of a 50B – then move on to how awesome she is at her job of being a bioterrorism expert (seriously, this lady rocks). No, that won’t do either. That’s just freaking hokey. What is this, daytime television? OK, skip the plaintiff and move to the defendant. He’ll never admit to this on the stand. And if he won’t admit to it, how the hell will the judge know who to believe. We have very bad pictures of her eye after he shot her point-blank with a bb gun, but that doesn’t prove he shot her, only that she was shot. How the hell do I pin this guy down? Maybe I should have subpoenaed people. But who? Her kids? How awful would that be?? OK, f-ck this. Just wing it. Ahhhhhhh! This is so much harder without the little spiral-bound notebook of already-admitted facts!!!!!!

That was pretty much the thought process, and has been the thought process for most of my very short legal career and all of my pre-legal career. I just cannot fathom the idea of taking on a job I seriously do not know how to do … perfectly. It seems so … wrong. But, luckily for me there is an ounce or two of common sense to calm the fiery delusions, and here is what that common sense has to say:

One: the only way to learn is to do. Everything I have ever done in law school has filled me with dread (a fact my ego lies about rather effectively in the form of statements like, “Psh. Please. I don’t get nervous.”). Every time I’ve argued to a fake jury or stood before Justice Exum to rehearse an oral argument or submitted a faux motion or prepared a memorandum of law – every single time – I’ve been terrified. It would not be perfect. It would not even be close to perfect. But every single time I’ve gained invaluable amounts of confidence and even more valuable feedback from those who arguably know what they’re doing. And with each time, I get better and the given task gets easier. The hard part is convincing myself I have any business starting.

Two: no one does it perfectly; in fact, there’s no such thing. Sitting in Guilford County court on any given morning reveals this fact with PAINFUL force. Are these people really lawyers? How much did you, the client, pay him? Pay me half that much right now and I’ll do ten times better than this dweeb. I’ve seen lawyers ask questions to which they very clearly didn’t know the answer; lawyers fail to ask even a single follow-up question to actually make the point they started; lawyers whose idea of preparation was a legal pad of scribbled notes not even they could read; and lawyers whose “closing arguments” were terrific except for failing outright to mention the law upon which the argument rested. Seriously, some of it is appalling. And it really ought to teach me that it doesn’t take a mental giant to be a lawyer in district court, and that even the slightest bit of preparation on my part ought to do the trick. At the very least, I ought to be learning that there is no such thing as perfect and no matter how effective a given attorney might be, even effectiveness does not equate to perfection.

Three: we learn best through our mistakes. It’s trite and tired and true. What’s really scary is that whole fiduciary duty thing underlying the concept of making mistakes. I could make a mistake that allows a woman’s battering husband to abuse her again. Me. I could do that to her. Oh. My. God. But just like doctors will inevitably make mistakes that kill people (eeek! One more reason NOT to be a doctor!!), I, too, have to cope with the mistakes I will make and their ramifications. And instead of allowing myself to be paralyzed by fear at that thought, I should simply resolve to work harder to ensure it doesn’t happen.
Now if only I could convince my mother to sell those baskets…

I would love to be my normal witty self here (because I KNOW how much you all have missed me) and wax sarcastic about the recent manner in which I once again pried the lid off ole Pandora’s Box, to say nothing of my feelings about the topic that inspired its prying.

But.

It was a typically-sarcastic and terribly un-PC Facebook note that got the proverbial poo to hitting the equally proverbial fan in the first place; and it was for the sake of fairness and diplomacy that I declined to post the Facebook note on such pages as these. Therefore, I shall endeavor to present the issue in a slightly (hey, I’m only human) more balanced manner and leave you, the most educated 2% of the world, to debate the issue amongst yourselves.

Facts (briefly): In 2006, a co-ed law school softball team formed even before the formation of SBA. In 2007, the same co-ed softball team decided to go all-male and exclude female members. That same year, the now all-men’s team funded itself and went to the national law school tournament, competing in the all-male division (as opposed to the co-ed division, which is where the excluded women would have liked to play but-for the sudden lack of a team). In 2009, this same all-male team seeks SBA funding to attend the same all-male division of the national tournament.

Issue: whether student body funds, which derive from all students, should fund groups (or sub-groups, teams, committees, etc) that are not open to all students? Continue Reading »

Perhaps lawyers (and law students) should learn from the uniforms worn by professionals who consistently rank the highest in public opinion polls. Asked questions such as “which professionals do you most trust?” respondents typically name nurses, firefighters, doctors, pharmacists and airline pilots. Just imagine how much credibility lawyers would have with jurors during closing arguments if they scrapped their 3 piece suits in favor of white coats with stethoscopes or bright yellow fire retardant suits with hatchets.

Generally, it appears there are few, if any, law school dress codes, especially regarding informality. Many students begin law school dressed like they did in college. Students often learn quickly, however, that the same is not true for the world of law practice, particularly law firms. Lawyers, it seems, have uniforms. While the uniforms — suits — do not have team insignias, they are the calling card of lawyers nonetheless. It is interesting to see how the uniforms start infiltrating the classroom in the second year, especially when law firm interviewing begins. By the third year, no one looks twice when a student shows up in business attire. Perhaps this is just another way the law seems to creep up on us and “change our way of thinking.”

In my International Environmental Law course, each student is responsible for 20 minutes of a class session. The students are to split those sessions between presentation and facilitation of active engagement by the rest of the class. Students understand that time management is a critical to the success of the session. To help them with time management, I spent 5 minutes in class offering my two cents.

1.    Time management is important, not just for students but for their teachers too. Time management is hard, not just for students but for their teachers too. But there are things we can do to help us manage time effectively.

2.    Less is more, less is more, less is more. Decide what few items of content and skills are important for the session and focus on those. The best way for us to manage time is to plan an appropriate amount of things to do in the time allotted. By violating the less is more principle, we create our own time management problems. After we expend considerable effort to learn the topic, plan visuals, craft exercises, we then try to inject all of that into the session. Nope. A critical step is for us to decide which of the wonderful things we know, impressive slides we created, and clever exercises we designed, we are NOT going to use.

3.    Make sure the most important stuff happens and is not rushed. In our fantasies, we present/facilitate sessions that build to a powerful, dramatic conclusion, with our best stuff at the end. Nope. Most of us can’t make this happen consistently. Instead, our great stuff gets jammed in at the end, or even worse, in the few minutes after class was supposed to end. Instead, make sure the important things happen in the beginning and middle of the session, with plenty of time to spare.

4.    Plan omissions. Before the session, decide what parts can be dropped if time is becoming short during the session. What topics, visuals, exercises can be skipped? You can be the only one who knows that you skipped them.

5.    Sacrifice presentation for facilitation. For most people in the presentation/facilitation role, default mode is that we talk. We have control. We have important stuff to say! Often, however, learning would be enhanced not by us saying more, but by the participants doing more.

And now I see my time is up…