 Good morning. My name is Professor Vanille Urando and I am going to talk about mastery and why if you want to become a master at the law, if you want to become a do well on exams, if you want to pass the baby bar the first time and pass the bar at the end of law school, then you will have to build in practice, much more practice than what you get in the normal law school environment. Generally speaking, the law school environment is not designed to build into the class of the kind of practice that you need to do these things. And that's why many people have study groups, but many people, especially people who are working and who have kids or who come from a non-traditional background, sometimes they are under the mistaken belief that all they need to do is prepare for class because that's what they did in high school, that's what they did in college, and preparing for class with a short burst of activity at the end of the semester will do it. If you do that, I guarantee you that you will have disappointing results at some level, maybe not on exams, but definitely a bar passage. So you need to build into your study scale practice, and so what we want to talk about is what kind of practice is required and why it's required. Research studies have showed that students who take practice exams throughout the fall semester, frequently, raise their GPAs by 1.5 point in law school. Students who take practice exams throughout the year pass the baby bar. So you need to make taking practice exams a priority and doing other kind of practice, and we'll talk about what the other kind of practices are. So when it comes to learning a new skill or becoming proficient at something, there people have several approaches. First of all, this work is based on George Leonard's book, Mastery. From 1991, I highly recommend it. We will have a couple of clips of people talking about his book, and we have a PDF file that's about six pages. That is a review of his book. We highly recommend that you do one or the other, and then if you're looking for summer reading, we recommend this book, Mastery, as one of the things that you might want to take a look at. So when there are several reasons people fail at becoming a master at something, largely it's because when working on Mastery, which is continuous and forever, it's a lifelong journey, people reach a plateau, and when people reach a plateau, many people engage in behavior that defeats them ultimately. So here's three of the defeatist behavior that George Leonard identified. So the dabbler. The dabbler is a person who they work, they improve, but when they reach the plateau, which everyone reaches a plateau, a plateau meaning you get to a point where you are working to improve, but no, you're not seeing any improvement. You improve somewhat, and then you stay at that new level. The dabbler quits. They decide that the plateau is evidence that they have made a wrong choice, and so they move on to something else. And so what you will find is that the dabbler ends up being a jack of all trade and a master of none, because they quit. They gained some skills in an area that they tried, but they quit when they reached the plateau. The obsessive person, they started activity to improve skills, and they reach a plateau, and then they become obsessive about getting off the plateau, and they start trying all different kinds of things to see, to break the plateau. They don't keep doing the kinds of things that are needed to become a master. They just start throwing activities. Maybe this will break it. Maybe that will break it. And they have a jerky response, but they never really have significant improvement, and they quit. So ultimately, obsessives will quit, too. And the hacker is the person who gets satisfied with the new plateau. They don't quit, but they quit trying to improve. And so they hit a plateau, and they stay at that plateau as good enough. And so that's the hacker. If you want to be a master at something, you have to know that mastery is not a goal or a destination. It's a process and a journey that you are continuously on. I have been working on academic support issues for 30 years, and I'm still working on mastering. I'm always learning new things. I have been working on racial disparities in legal education, racial disparities in health for 50 years, and I'm still learning. So mastery is a journey, a journey that involves brief spurts of progress, followed by a slight decline. But that decline is at a higher level than what you were, and then a plateau. The problem for many people is they can't stand the plateau. And so they are they're looking for that constant spur to progress. But if you want to become a master, you have to know the things you need to do and do them even when you're on a plateau, trusting the process that you will in fact improve some more that you will in fact get bad better that you are on a mastery journey. So that's what we that's why we say trust the process. Trust the process, do the things that you need to do, make the changes in your life that you need to make. We believe that there's that 100% of students can pass the bar. But that means that they may need to make some changes. For instance, if you have reading difficulties, and you don't slow down the progress process so that you can really do the things you need to do, then you're not going to learn the things you need to learn. And you may go through the whole thing. But at the end of the day, you will have not taken care of something that needs to be taken care of. If you have problems with issue spotting, and you're not practicing that doing the kinds of things that will help you improve on issue spotting, then you will you want to be engaged in the activities that will move you further down in this journey. You can pass the baby bar the first time, you can pass the bar the first time, but it will mean identifying your issues, developing a path that is based on the issues you have and trusting a process to get you there. So this is the face time that we really shared with you the overall structure of what we're trying to get you to. So this is the basic structure to legal writing. There's a thesis paragraph. If you're doing writing in that thesis for a judge, a memo or something, and in that thesis paragraph, you have a problem and you identify the rule that will solve the problem. Then you identify the elements not at issue that is elements that are completely satisfied by the facts or can never be satisfied by the fact. And then you just state the elements that are at issues that are elements that require discussion and argument. The core paragraph of legal writing is for every issue that you identify, writing a core paragraph or paragraphs, it can be more than one paragraph. We say paragraph because we start with one small issue, but a complex issue may have three, could have three, four paragraphs, could have a page. But you state the conclusion to the issue upfront. You state the core rule that you're going to apply, that rule for solving the issue. You do analysis or application. Analysis is where there's two sides to the argument and you go back and forth. Application is when you just show how the rule is applied to known law, I mean how the facts are applied to known law. And then you state the conclusion in a restated manner. That core paragraph is repeated over and over again. And we believe it is the basic unit to do it passing the bar. That to pass the bar the first time and the baby bar the first time, you have to be so skilled at doing this that is second nature. If you have to think about what you should write, then you haven't mastered it. And our goal is to get you to master that core paragraph. Conclusion, rule, analysis slash application, conclusion restated. In a longer problem question, you then would state a conclusion to the problem. That is, was there a battery? Was there a breach of contract? But start off with getting that core paragraph down so that you do it without thinking about it. So I want to revisit. We've done to go back and I encourage you to go back to some of the videos to remind yourself, especially if you didn't take notes, you need to go back to some of the videos that we have and take notes because those videos are designed to tell you the things you need to know and be able to do to pass the bar the first time, pass the baby bar the first time. So three stars means you need above average skills and ability. Two stars means you need average skills and ability. One star means below average and blank means it's not necessary. So for passing the bar, which is all we're really and passing the baby bar, you need to have above average knowledge and above average understanding and you need above average issue, spotting skills. Then you need average problem solving skills. You don't need synthesis and judgment at all, but you need average exam writing and test taking ability. To get to that level of skills and ability requires practice. In this course, if you're in the legal writing course that we're offering, this course does not even come close to providing you the kind of practice you need. All we do is introduce you to the thing that you need to be doing. You need to be spending three to five hours per credit hour studying for each class and half of that time needs to be on exam preparation and most of that exam preparation time should be on practice activity. So that gets into the type of practice though. As a review, you want to improve your issue, spotting skills, your analysis and application and your writing skills. You want to be able to do structure, organization and timing. That is you need to be able to stop writing and move on. The best grade I got in law school is when I wrote an average answer to every issue I spotted. Now, how did it get to be the best grade and the highest grade in the course? Because I spotted a lot of issues and I got a 6 out of 10 on every issue I spot because I was organized and because I got every issue so lucky. So I spotted a lot of issues. Some people go for going into a lot of detail but you really need to know how to move on and that's not something that most people want to be able to do. Most people want to write and to exhaust their knowledge and show everything they know on the issue in front of them and then move on to the next issue. No, you allocate a certain amount of time because you are so good at structure that takes little of your time. You write in a structured way and you stop writing when you have given it the amount of time it's supposed to give and you move on to the next issue. You have to be good at that. I am convinced that people who don't pass the bar are not good at that. That's one of the problems they have. So what are kinds of things types of practice you need? So for every course that you're taking you need to practice short hypotheticals. You need to find things on the internet. You need to do practice exam questions where you just identify the facts and identify the issue without writing anything. Issue spotting, just read an exam and see how many issues you spot and then read a model answer and suggested answer and see how many issues you spotted. You can practice issue spotting without doing this kind of reading exams, identifying the issue and without writing and then seeing if you spotted enough issues. Towards the end of next semester for those who are in my legal writing course we will practice the whole pre-crack seat. In fact that's all we will do in the spring semester. But for right now put your emphasis if you're in my legal writing course you want to put your emphasis on crack the RA and then do flashcards. Flashcards will help you with your knowledge and your understanding and help you identify where you have a lack of knowledge and have a lack of understanding. Ideally making your own flashcards is the ideal but we realize that lots of people don't have the kind of time necessary to make their own flashcards. Buying flashcards is another alternative. There are flashcards on the market. If you're in a study group divvying up the work so that you all make some of the flashcards for all of the courses and then you share the flashcards. Using us an electronic flashcard method is helpful. We will show you a method that of using flashcards that really does result in a significant knowledge improvement. We also will show you another technique called super learning that also is very good for just straight-up memorization. But you have to realize that you have to do practice that will just cause you straight-up memorization. Most students practice fail in one or two ways. Either they practice in a way that fails to produce improvement or they practice in a way that fails to ensure lasting memory of what they've learned. And what we want to do is give you some tips that will help you avoid those two failures. Our saying is practice doesn't make perfect. Perfected practice make perfect. Over a very long time, years, people don't become the best at something by just practicing a little bit. They practice years. They identify. So you have to prioritize practice. I'd say 30 minutes a day for every course that you are in is the minimum. 30 minutes a day for every course you're in is the minimum of practice that you need. Practice when you're fresh are the freshest and have the least likely to be interrupted. So you might want to get up 30 minutes earlier after you're awoke. Practice before your day starts. Don't skip practice. Don't skip days thinking well I put in two hours or one hour tomorrow. No, that's not how practice works. If you want to get better at something, you have to practice it every day and not insert. You have to have steady continuous practice. Steady continuous practice. Don't skip days. To establish a baseline, know where you are right now. So take a practice exam. Do some hypotheticals. You need to know where you are so you can know what improvements you have and where you need to focus. So don't try to practice everything every time you practice. Focus on okay and make a schedule. So Monday will be the day you practice improving your knowledge. Tuesday will be the day you practice improving your issue spotting and then rotating back. Divide up the skill. Look at the skills you're trying to learn and divide it and practice small parts of it and so that it don't obsess. If you start if you start up obsessing you will begin to try to do different things just to see if you can get improvement. Trust the process. I can't say that enough. It's why it's our motto motto is is that people who trust the process get the results they want. I had a student. He's a partner in a DC firm now. He was an engineer. He was an older student when he went back to school. So he had had he had been a successful student. He took the academic support programs sort of reluctantly. He didn't really believe it but he did things that he needed to do. Then at the end of the first semester his grades were really good. He scored A's and B's that he decided that did because what we were teaching him was not really necessary. He decided all that extra work which is what he called it. Extra work was not necessary that he could make A's and B's without doing that extra work. So he didn't do the things that we recommend and at the end of the second semester his grades dropped significantly and he came to me and he said Professor Randall my grades dropped. What should I do? And so I questioning. I said well did you practice? Did you do this? All of the things that you do you start to outline early. Did you do all of these things? No no no he said and then the light bulb came on in his head and he said oh I need to go back to the things you taught us because apparently they do work and he did go back and he ended up doing very well in law school and and getting he was looking into a firm of lawyers who do engineer law and and that's what he got. An African-American student with low entering statistics in a traditional law school who who significantly outperformed his statistics. Now he was a student with habits. He was a student who knew how to gauge in habits. He just didn't think the habits that we were teaching him were necessary. The things that we're teaching you have to be transferred to other courses. You cannot think that you can just do this in legal writing and that'll be enough for you. No three to five hours per credit hour. Half of that in exam preparation. Half of that in practice. Half exam preparation in practice. If you don't have that kind of time a reasonable question may be is law school right for you at this moment in your life. There's no doubt that intellectually law school is right for you. The issue is do you have the time to give it and unfortunately people who don't give it the time up front end up giving the time in fail bar passage. Fail baby bar passage. So now they can't move on because they have to spend the time learning the skills that they should have learned the first time around. So failing as a person who has failed in my life but I was not a good student in undergraduate school and failing is never a a pleasant activity and it's heartbreaking and it causes you all kinds of ongoing stress not to speak of ongoing problem. So it's something you want to avoid and you certainly don't want to put your family through all of this time because no matter how much time you are giving you are giving less time to your family now. So I strongly encourage you that if you're going to stay in law school give it the amount of time and frankly if that means you have to deprive your family then do that because it's going to be a temporary sacrifice. You'll pass the bar the baby bar the fast time you'll pass the bar the first time and then you can go back to your life with your family but don't do it without having a discussion with your family and with their agreement that this is something that they're willing to sacrifice for you. I don't would not have been able to pass law school and do as well as I did hadn't it not been as a single parent. Professor Chakorando babysitted my youngest son every day six days out of the week I was at the law school 12 13 hours a day more because I would go back to the law school after I came home and got dinner ready for you them I'd go back to the law school around seven o'clock and I'd study to midnight I drive home I'd stop and get a a bottle of beer I drive home I drink the beer when I got home go to bed and got up at five o'clock my routine for three years you are going to have to make a sacrifice like that your family is going to have to make a sacrifice like that if you haven't already done it which I suspect you have then you will need to make the sacrifice if you still need more time because you haven't given it to three to five hours or and this is important because three to five hours is not sufficient for you that because of the issues you have you may need six to eight hours so like if your reading speed is half that of what the average is then you will be spending all your time reading so you need to give it the time I I know I obsess over time because it's the one thing we can't do that you we can give you all kind of tips we can give you all kind of practice but at the end of the day if you don't give it the time it's going to be meaningless so review frequently don't just practice review and review frequently we talked about that that's what doing a course summary the does it provides you a review and learning so you want to alternate between learning which is what practice does and reviewing which is what the course course summary does so get your practice routine right and then keep it the same figure out of practice routine that in that covers the stuff that we have said that fits into your schedule and then do it when you practice complete your practice with a review this will ensure that you don't end up with the problem of not having learning um and so just remember you need to practice but if you don't figure perfect your practice perfect the things that you're doing then you will have failure at practice so trust the process and prepare for success items all of these things you have to do and all of your courses all of your courses not just the ones you're having troubling that's a fatal mistake that students make you and what we want to talk what we've talked about today is in the context of memorizing the law and practicing writing if you have any questions post them on Moodle