This Lawyer Is Changing the Studying Game
Erin:
Hello, hello, powerhouse lawyers, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Erin Gerner, and I'm so excited to have my friend, Lisa Blasser, on the show. Over the last two decades, this woman has done a lot and I'm so excited to chat with her today. She has got an amazing program for law students that is just changing the game, and I'm so excited to have her on the show.
So, over the last two decades, Lisa has not only built a law firm. She directed an academic success and bar preparation department at an ABA law school and authored a book that was based on the qualitative study that she conducted to uncover how successful law students study. And she learned that law students crave consistency. And she also learned that no two law students study the same and their confidence increases when they have an outline to study from and also when it's tailored to them.
So in 2020, she opened the Law School Success Institute, and the results have been phenomenal. Within four months of launching that program, she had schools from Ivy League schools all the way down to fourth tier law schools, asking them to teach her proven process at their law schools, and since then she's partnered with dozens of law schools, pre-law organizations and hundreds of law students nationwide.
She is on a mission to make success available to every single law student who believes they are capable of learning, and eliminate the fallacy that you need a perfect LSAT, gpa or IQ to succeed in law school, and she wants to prove to every student, regardless of their background, that they are enough. I am so excited to have you on the show, Lisa, welcome.
Lisa:
That was such a nice intro. I appreciate that.
Erin:
Yes, absolutely. So that is obviously a little bit of a reader's digest about where you have landed over the last 20 years, but I would love for you to dial it back to the beginning. Take us through a little bit of your story - why you went to law school and how you have come full circle now helping law students. Because I know in the back of my mind, I think back to law school, and I'm like, uh, I don't even want to remember those three years, but you're going back and helping the first, you know, these baby lawyers. So please talk to me about how all that came full circle for you.
Lisa
Absolutely. I was a first generation law student myself, and I went at it full throttle. I went kindergarten to law school, and I was just amped to go and to learn and what I found was that I really struggled in law school, and so everyone kind of reminisces about law school as a time where they just didn't love it or it was really hard or really stressful, and I really viewed it the opposite.
I took the struggle, and ultimately going on academic probation because I was failing out my second semester - I took it as a real opportunity to test myself and to say at least, what are you worth? What is your value? Can you accomplish and do hard things? Do you believe in your ability? Do you believe that you don't need that LSAT and that high GPA and that, you know, 180 IQ? Can you actually just learn and teach yourself how to study? And so I proved myself right.
I consulted with every expert and professor I could get my hands on. I talked to everyone. I wore my academic probation status as a badge of honor, and I got off of probation. I graduated with honors. I passed that California bar the first time and I have been practicing since, ever since, and I had so many opportunities because of my mindset.
And it's kind of a gift that I believe that I possess that I can identify that mindset and ignite that mindset in other people, whether they're starting a law firm, whether they're in law school, and they're struggling or succeeding and know they're capable of more. So that is my superpower and I feel so grateful that I have the opportunity to do that. So that's kind of the genesis of where this all started back in law school for me.
Erin:
That's awesome. So talk to me a little bit about how you help or help baby law students. Tell us a little bit about this program, what you developed, probably based off some of the study that you did for your book, I assume, if you want to talk about that and just kind of take us through how you developed this whole system because, god knows, I would have appreciated a system in law school, so I would love if you would take our listeners through that.
Lisa:
Absolutely. And it's so funny because if I had just a penny for every time, a lawyer like I had told me that you know I would be a wealthy woman. Because it didn't. It didn't exist then and it tries to exist now. But what I offer is really different and I'll explain why.
So I knew when I was teaching, so I had been practicing and I knew that I wanted to go back and give back to law students what I felt I needed or what would have helped me get off probation.
And so I went back and became a law professor at Western State. At the time it was in Florida, now it's in Irvine, California, and I really I worked in the Academic Success and Bar Preparation Department, and I was working with so many students and I was learning what they were doing, and I was learning what their struggles were and how, what helped them and made it easier for them.
And so initially, you know, all we have is our experience, and so I was guiding them through with what I was doing. But what I realized is that it's really not fair to the student for professors or attorneys to say, “Hey, here's what I did and here's what you should be doing.”
So I conducted what's called a qualitative phenomenological study, the phenomenon being what do successful law students do like? What are they doing from the moment they get that syllabus up to the final exam to succeed? And so I uncovered the process of law students, successful law students, and I was left with this really cool picture of all of these step by step processes that these students, through interviews and documents and just talking to one another, gave me. And what I did was I eliminated the redundancies, Erin, and I was left with this really comprehensive picture of what the most a law student could do, from the start to the end.
And so then I've made it my mission to take that study process and teach students how they learn new information, what their thinking process is, what their learning preference is, and how to customize the most comprehensive study process to their own needs, so that it's not someone saying, “Do this.”
In my new course, the Law School Operating System, it’s me saying, “Hey, here is how other law students have studied using this most comprehensive process. If you're this way, you might be inclined to try it this way or this, or eliminate this. If your skill level is here, start here.” And so for me it's just been this full circle way to meet students where they are and say listen, I know that you're unique and you and I may be very different in how we process and learn, but here is how it will benefit you if you do this.
That's number one, and number two is teaching them how to use metacognition, like how to actually plan their studies and then study and then assess their performance. And I give them, for every step in the study process, a list of metacognitive questions that they should be asking themselves as they complete the skills, be it breaking down the syllabus, be it reading, briefing, outlining, transforming the outline into the essay approach right? Or writing an essay, or taking multiple choice questions, or getting feedback. So then they have those questions, those metacognitive questions, as well as an understanding of how they best learn, and that's why I love what I do.
Erin:
Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm like mind-blown. I have so many questions right now. I'm like this is amazing. Ok, so can you walk us through a real life example of this? Like how this would just work, like using, you know, me as a student, Erin, for example. I come in and how would this process work? For example, let's do torts.
Lisa:
Yeah, okay, so torts. So the first thing I would say is: what is your learning preference? And then I would say - and then I would give you a battery of tests. We just do quick online tests together and then I would ask you other questions so that I could ascertain… But I've asked so many times that I can, honestly Erin, I can see in a student within the first like 10 minutes what their learning preference is going to be.
Erin:
And what does that mean exactly by learning preference? What does that mean exactly?
Lisa:
So a learning preference is the organic way that your brain receives and processes information.
So some of us are visual, some are auditory, some of us are read/write. Some of us are kinesthetic, multimodal, most of us are multimodal, so we engage in one of the four. You know two or three of the four actually, and depending upon the skill, maybe more or less.
It's your learning preference, and it's also your thinking preference. And so some of us are analytical, some of us are linear, some of us are concrete thinkers, some of us are better cognitive thinkers. And so there's 12 main thinking preferences and 5 learning preferences.
And so, knowing that about yourself, then I would ask you questions, we would take the test, or you would take them beforehand, and so then I would then introduce the 9-step study process, that is the result of my research.
So you want to start with torts? Step one is to get a big picture overview. This is what successful law students do. They first start by just grabbing a commercial outline and saying, “Ok, I'm going to take torts in the fall, let me just skim through it” and just gain that...
You know, they're developing what's called neuroplasticity, and so it is a pathway between the neurons firing in your brain. It's the framework of what you're going to be learning when you actually get to the class your professor’s teaching.
And so, I have a process. For every step in the study process, I give them a chronological list of how to complete the skill on that step, and so we would practice that skill together. I would show you examples of what it looks like, and then I would have you practice it on your own, and then we would assess your performance together. And then we would go to step two.
And step two is now that you have the big picture. Let's look at what you're going to learn in your class, and then I would give a chronological list of how to complete step two with your syllabus, breaking it down and creating a one-page checklist of what you're about to learn, and then we we'd look at samples and then we'd practice it on our own with samples, and then you'd assess your performance all the while, you know, engaging in a metacognitive questions to help you start, so you're not just like, “Okay, Lisa told me to do this, what do I do?”
So here's your list of questions that you're asking your brain, and as you continue. Then step three, four and five: read brief outline. Step six: attend class. Step seven is transform that outline on each of those main topics into an approach that mirrors how you'll write it on the exam.
Then write practice exams and take multiple choice questions and assess yourself, and there's processes for both of those, and then get feedback. And you can get feedback in a number of ways, all of which I'm telling you how to do with a chronological process as well as for people that aren't linear, metacognitive questions and examples and samples, and so that's how I would help a student that came to me with torts.
Erin:
That is absolutely fascinating and something that I seriously could have used. That's the thing, because I think so many students arrive out of college. I mean, say for instance, I went straight from college, right? I was like you. I went K through, all the way through.
So the learning process and the studying process in college is nothing like what's happening in law school. And so these students, including myself, walk into this environment and it's like drinking from the fire hose, and you don't even know where to start.
And then the overwhelm kicks in from the very beginning. So when you were doing this study and developing your nine steps or whatever, what were some of the common struggles with law school that law school students were having? Like what were some of the common things and themes? And then how are you addressing that in your 9-step program?
Lisa:
So a couple of things… Great question. So I would have students come to me and they would say, “You know what? I just feel like I'm sitting in class and I can follow along and I'm having this great Socratic dialogue about the topic. But when I go to write it, I have no idea what I'm doing.”
And so I'd say, “Well, what are you doing? How did you prep that topic to write about it?” Right? And they'd say, “Well, what do you mean?”
And so then it was actually getting them to just articulate their process. They had no idea and it was just like this random brain dump of stuff they were just constantly doing which stressed them out and led to that disorganized exam, when they really did know what they were talking about. So it was kind of a shame they were putting in the effort, but their result was just not matching that.
Another student that would come to me with problems would be someone who says, “I just don't have time to get it all done,” and I say, “Well, let's look at your calendar,” and they would say, “Oh, I don't keep a calendar.”
So then we would actually have to schedule in exactly… you know, just look at a week. And so also part of the law school operating system is a complete scheduling method to take each of the 9 steps and make sure from the beginning of the semester to the final exam, you calendar every week, every step for every main topic, into that schedule.
So really doing that for them, with the students too. So, I saw these as issues, and they were just repeat, repeat, repeat, and it would just lead to their low confidence. And it kills me when someone doesn't believe in themselves because I believe in them. I see them, and I see their ability, and I want to just hug them, and I want to just cheerlead them, and I want to let them know that I believe.
So I see them, and I believe wholeheartedly in them and their ability. So repeatedly seeing these types of issues where students, you know, couldn't assess their own performance, didn't articulate a process, were overwhelmed, were not keeping up with the schedule.
Two other things they do too is they read so many law school prep books that they just have so much information in their brains that they're afraid to pick a process. You know? Or what a lot of commercial you know prep companies do is they teach them the law, and I think that's such a disservice for incoming law students, because your professor is not going to teach the law to you in the way that a commercial bar prep company is going to teach you, and so you're learning the law and you don't even need to know it. You need to know the skill, which is what I'm teaching you before you actually get to learning the law. This is a skill of how you learn the law. So all of those things combined.
Erin:
Absolutely, oh my gosh. Ok, so I think our conversation, I mentioned this before we pressed record, and so this is like a perfect segue to this.
So we are in the middle of a mental health crisis in the law and I think that we have been for a number of years, but it keeps coming up again and again. And obviously that is clearly an issue.
How are you greeting that at the very beginning of this law student’s journey, when you are working with them, because I think that you are making such a difference in each and every single law student that you touch, because you are instilling them just a tad more of that confidence that they did not have in themselves, and I think that is the very beginning of when we start pairing our worth to our accomplishments, and when it's not happening, we do not… that we stop valuing ourselves and don't believe that we are worthy.
And so you are meeting these people at the very beginning of this journey and hopefully combating that in some way. So I would love for you to elaborate on that.
Lisa:
It's one of my favorite things to do. I actually teach a course on how to defeat imposter syndrome in law school, and it's awesome. Essentially what I do, though, and I was working with a student yesterday, and she was actually embarrassed to tell me what her goals were, and she's embarrassed to talk about, you know, she hadn't even checked her LSAT score from the last go around that she'd taken it because she was so nervous that she wasn't going to get into Harvard.
And she wanted to go to Harvard, and she was embarrassed to say that to me because she thought, “Oh, I don't want you to think I'm stuck up and stuff.” And I said, “God, no.” The student that wants to go to a fourth tier law school to the student who wants to go to number one, I love you. I champion you. I want your definition of success to be personal, and once you define that definition, we're going to create a pathway for you to get there.
But oftentimes, Erin, what happens is we all have our own insecurities, and you know that law school, and even practicing, is a highly emotionally, intellectually-charged arena, and so we get knocked down.
And what happens in those situations is I tell a student, “What is the reason that you are feeling insecure about your ability?” and we have to trace back that reason to either an untrue story that they believed from early on, or is it real, and if it's either of those things, why?
So is it true you're not good at this or you're struggling at this, or has someone told you that you're not capable, or you're stupid, or whatever it is they've told you. Let's uncover it and then, once we take that off, we can then address it and then in the future, when that triggers them, we can say, “Oh wait, wait, wait, Lisa, this isn't real. This is happening, and I'm working on it.”
So it calms down that anxiety and that belief that they're not capable, and it only gets better the more that they practice it over and over. And also just being there for them in the moments when it gets hard, and just sitting back and listening without judging, and accepting them and taking them for who they are and seeing them.
And really every day, posting on LinkedIn that it's not about your LSAT, your GPA, or your IQ. It's not about that. It's nothing about that. It's only about you as a human, living your dream and accomplishing your goals. Compete with yourself, not with others.
Erin:
Compete with yourself, not others. That is so good. I wish someone had told 25-year-old Erin that exact thing. So what can law schools be doing better? To elaborate, even if they can't say work with you, in your opinion, what can law schools be doing better?
Lisa:
They can meet their students where they are. So, instead of not allowing them opportunities based on a bad test score, give them opportunities so that they can shine if their GPA is lower and then they have that experience to balance the resume when they're going to get the jobs.
Also, I think law schools should really work together, big law and law firms in between, or the ABA perhaps, or state bars… work together to create some kind of mandate or discretionary, or, you know, a limitation, so that law firms, when they're considering applicants, to diversify the pool and give more people opportunity, consider other things besides GPA and class rank, because those things aren't true indicators of someone's ability to shine and thrive and just kick the law and someone can do amazing things.
But if they don't have that GPA or that rank, they're not going to have that opportunity. So, working with law firms, working with the ABA, accepting their students, helping them thrive and teaching them the process of how to study in orientation. Don't start with the last thing they're going to be doing - you know, writing an exam. Don't teach them how to write an exam because they're not there yet.
Teach them how to look at a syllabus. Teach them step by step and then let them in. However their brain operates, put those pieces together in a way that's meaningful to them, so that they can thrive with that process.
Erin:
Yeah, so what does the process look like when you do this for a law school? So you obviously work with clients one on one, and then, when you go in there and do this with the law school, do you work with the entire student body?
Lisa:
Yep, so I’ve been hired to to work with entire incoming classes or students that are in a first generation professionals program or students that are on academic probation, or 2L students that need assistance with skills, like as an additional skills course that’s either required… and what I do is I take my nine step process and my scheduling method and all of my teaching on how people learn new information, and I customize it to the student body of my client, my law school, and I do that by asking, do you want a full semester program? Do you want a 1-day orientation, a 3-day orientation, a 5-day orientation? Do you want a full workshop? You know, what is it you want, and then I say, “Here's what I offer.” Then the length of the program is lengthened based on the amount of practice I give the students. And so I can teach them a lot of skills, but I like for them to practice, and so if they just want a one day course, it’s going to be less practice and more just skills training. So that's really how it works.
Erin:
Awesome. So talk to me about this new program that you are releasing in October, because I know a lot of the listeners are like, “I need to get my hands on this outline situation, like how can this happen in my life?” So talk to her. Talk to our listeners about how they can actually get this in their hands or recommend it to a very loving law student in their life.
Lisa:
No, it's my brainchild. It's basically the second version of the program that I created. In 2021, I launched Law School Success Institute, and what I've learned in teaching the nine steps to so many students, you know? So the program, students can purchase online. It'll be available on my LinkedIn featured portion through a link. It'll be thelawschooloperatingsystem.com. You can just go on.
For me, my philosophy is that everyone should have access. So it's going to be $199. It's not going to break the bank, and students are welcome to utilize it and share it and give me feedback.
When you use it, give me feedback so that I can make it better for other students, and so it's not teaching you the law. It's teaching you how to learn the law. So I'll teach you how to outline, but I won't give you an outline, and I will give you samples so you can see what they look like, but I won't teach you Con Law or Torts or the First Amendment. We use all these examples, we use contract formation, but I'm teaching you how to learn those things at every step of the game, from the beginning to the end.
Erin:
Yeah, because the law is the same regardless. It doesn't matter. You're getting taught the same law regardless. Like you know, a murder is a murder. The rules of murder are this, the rules of robbery are this, like it is what it is.
But you can't learn those rules unless you know how you learn in the first place, like what's going to encourage you? How does your brain work to remember those? Whatever the steps of robbery are right, like you know…
Lisa:
To understand it, to memorize it, to know what your preferences are like, it has to be specific to your law school and to your professor. So I'm not teaching you this random, generic thing. I'm teaching you something very specific so that you thrive in your situation and meet your specific goal of success.
Erin:
Do you find that takes a lot of the pressure off at exam time? Do you find your students are just like, “Thank you so much!” Because when I think back about my time, like you think about the whole year leads up to this one exam and you really don't have any practice to speak of before that. You just sit down with your pen and your computer or that blue book thing which I still have nightmares about, blue books, but like you know what I mean. You sit down and you just go. So are you finding working with these students like they're much more confident going into the exam?
Lisa:
100% more confident, and so the results of putting in the work and understanding how you study and having a process and scheduling and maintaining, you know, keeping up on your time is that this process becomes automatic for you, and so the first time when you go in to take the exam, you're actually ready to do it.
You don't care what the result is, because you gave 100% every single day, and so there's nothing more that you could have done, and you can't wait to showcase your deep understanding that you've gained through your own learning process.
And so, really, what you're doing if you follow the nine steps, when you sit to take that exam, everything is done, except for the analysis and the conclusion in your IRAC for every issue.
Erin:
IRAC, Lord, that's a term I haven't heard in a long time. Lisa, Thank you for bringing that back. You're welcome. IRAC Lord, have mercy, Okay, yes.
Lisa:
So you're just plopping in. You know, your approach to how you're gonna write it and you're just supplying facts and giving fantastic analysis, which is where you're gonna get the points, and so you're ready to do it. You wanna do it because you just wanna be done with it already. That's what happens when you adequately prepare.
Erin:
That's awesome. So have you gotten feedback on how students have taken these skills and then gone into study for the bar exam?
Lisa:
I do, and one of the bonus tips on my program (you're awesome, Erin) is how to take the nine steps and use that as a process to study for the bar exam. I have a whole module on how to do that, and it's actually much more simple to study for the bar exam than it is in law school.
So because you don't have to read or brief or outline right, and so all you have to do is use you know your commercial or prep provider or, if you're not using one of those to study for the bar, your own materials that you've already prepared.
So it's so much easier to take the nine steps and study for the bar, and then I also show them what a schedule would look like for those 67 days from graduation up to the- you know, using the nine steps up to the bar exam, what a suggested process of studying with a commercial bar prep provider would look like with using the nine steps.
Erin:
And that's so helpful, because Barbary gives you this random outline and you're like, “Okay, wait a second.” Like today, it just says like con law. And you're like, “All right, and we're going to learn what today?” So you're still using the nine, they're still using the same nine steps, or just applying it to the bar exam and their way of learning. I love it.
Lisa:
Step one of the nine steps is to gain a big picture overview. So they've already got, you know, the outline that the provider of their law school has, that their law school selected to be on campus. So they're familiar with it already, you know. And so it's not going to be their first rodeo looking at those materials when it comes time to study for the bar either.
Erin:
And, more likely than not, the neuroplasticity created while in law school. Studying the way that your brain works would, to me, almost conclude that you're going to remember more information at the end of law school to be ready for the bar exam. Am I right?
Lisa:
Yes, you said everything. Exactly like that, is it? So you will spend significantly less time memorizing because you already understand it. Like if you already know how to ride a bike, you don't have to sit every single time and figure out how to ride that bike, because you just know. So it's all about that neuroplasticity, it's all about the framework and already laying that foundation early. If you understand something, the memorization is like a third or a quarter of the time that you'd need otherwise. So it becomes, “I can write this, I know it backwards, forwards.” It's just easier.
Erin:
Yeah, because I just remember so vividly, I would be writing essays over and over again, just because you're trying to remember. But I'm thinking like in my mind, if I had had an actual process that worked for me, I probably would have saved myself so much time and heartache studying for this damn exam, you know, trying to get over the finish line. It would have saved me so much time.
Lisa:
Yeah, and it's funny you say that, because one of the first things I have students do in the operating system is, “What is your current study process in undergrad?” And they're like, “What do you mean?” You know?
And so having them even articulate something they currently are really good at or that they just achieved in, or if they haven't been out of school for a while, when you prepare for a big meeting, for work, or when you, you know, whatever the case is, what is your process to be a good presenter or to articulate that information in the future?
And people don't really think about how to do that. Like, they don't think like, “Oh, what is it I'm doing?” You know, that's the reason I got off of academic probation. I sat down, cleared off my IKEA desk, and I was like, “Okay, like what am I doing here? Like what specifically am I doing? I'm spending 60 hours a week, but like, why is that translating to a 1.9 GPA? Like what is happening here? You know, so what is the process?
Erin:
That's a good point, Lisa. So if someone's listening to this and they're struggling in law school, or maybe they're on academic probation, what is what would you tell them? Because I really like that's a very great segue into advice that we can really give to our listeners. Like, if you're sitting there struggling or considering going to law school or any of the above, what is some advice that you would give that student?
Lisa:
I would say embrace it. And the sign, your adorable frame behind you: “Believe in yourself,” right? Like, first and foremost, I go towards the feelings and addressing the shame you feel, the disappointment you feel, the anger, the being scared because you have loans accruing, because you have priorities and they're not being satisfied. Your path is being diverted.
Address that first. Stew on it. Don't give yourself more than you know, a week or 2 to stew on it. Pick yourself up and then move forward with identifying specifically what you did to get that GPA that put you on probation and what you can be doing to make changes.
And you can figure out what to do to make changes by talking to professors, your academic success department, people like me… There's so many people that want to help you, that believe in you, right? And so that’s how to make tweaks in your current process to get you over the hump and to get you to start seeing results that every single person that believes in themselves can attain.
Erin:
Yeah, and I think it's really important what you pointed out, the quality of the questions you ask yourself is the result of the quality of your life. So what are you not being honest about? Right?
I think if you’ve gotten to law school and you've gotten to this point and you're committed, and this is where you want to go, you have to take a real honest and intentional look.
If something isn't working, to figure out what's not working. Figure out what you can change. And maybe that's a mindset, maybe that's a perspective, maybe that's a process, maybe it's all three. But if you don't stop long enough and start asking questions, not only of yourself but of others, then you're just going to find yourself on a hamster wheel and again.
Women, like you and I, there are so many people in the law who want to help. I think there's a narrative that we have to do this all on our own, and it has to be so hard, and we have to drag the damn cross over the finish line by ourselves - just all the things. Like two miles in the snow barefoot, all the things.
But it doesn't have to be hard if we actually embrace where we are, like I don't even want to use the words, “embrace the suck,” but we're embracing this hard process. But we're also there. People are there to help their processes, to help. There's a mindset to help. There are answers. It doesn't have to be hard.
Lisa:
Exactly exactly, and I think that fear of not being enough precludes people from speaking to experts. You know, when we first started our law firm over 10 years ago, we didn't know what we were doing. We were good lawyers, we’d been practicing, you know, seven, eight years, but we had never run a business.
My husband and I co-own our law firm, and so we went and spoke to… graciously, lawyers were willing to speak to us, review our offerings, review our pricing, review our website, our marketing materials, and say, “No you guys, like no, no, no.”
And the best advice we got was “simplify.” Like, simplify your offering so that you become really, really good at these things and then you are the go-to person for those things you know, as the lawyer in your town or in your area.
And so having someone else give us that, like that 20-20 vision that we just didn't have at the time, it's something I always want to give forward to students and lawyers. Because it's like, I know where you are or I might be able to help you with what I've been through and the struggles we've had trying to get our law firm. Graciously, honestly, we've got so much work. We're so blessed, Erin, like we're doing great.
Erin:
But that's just built on community. You know? Like that is just built on community and connection and putting yourself out there, paying it forward when people paid it forward to you.
It's interesting. I had a conversation, well it was like over LinkedIn or whatever, and the person basically responded, it was another female attorney, and she was like, “I've paid it forward enough in my life” and basically like, “I've overpaid.”
And I thought, what a shame. You know? I just thought to myself, what a shame because there's so much power in paying it forward and the power of community and how you can grow better together. Just think of the result that you're having with these law students, the result of your law firm, like there's so many people out there that want to lift people up in the law, and I think really at the core, I know it sounds almost like cliche, but I think that's the core of how we change the narrative in the law is one law student at a time, you know, having these conversations…
Lisa:
Absolutely and I totally agree with you, Erin. What you just said is so relevant. I think it's also time for us to start saying things that we all know exist in law school and in the legal field, but that we just don't say for fear of being ostracized.
Like there's a lot of arrogance in education and there's a lot of arrogance in you know, in the practice, and they surface. That arrogance and that elitist - you know, being and thinking that you're better surfaces in a lot of ways, and it's very hurtful to a lot of us. We just eat it because we don't want to be weak and not be able to take that.
And I think it's a real problem, and I don't know how yet, but before my career is over, which I think I'll always work, I'm going to address that on the grandest scale possible and just open that wide up so that we can really start making these changes so people feel good about themselves.
Erin:
Yeah, Well, please invite me to the table you're sitting at, Lisa, because I want to come for that. I will die on that hill with you.
Lisa:
I adore you, Erin. I love that about you. You're the best.
Erin:
Oh my god, I adore you too. Well, before we wrap up, I would love for you to tell our listeners how they can work with you. I am sure that people's ears are on fire right now.
Lisa:
If your ears are on fire, you can always email me. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm also starting to explore other platforms like Facebook, Tiktok, YouTube, and you can just message me. I'm super accessible through email or any of those direct messages and pretty soon you'll just be able to click on a link to take the online course, the recorded course, which will take you like four hours to complete.
I also offer office hours, which is a 90-minute session on Zoom together where we discuss all things success in law school and how you're doing as a human and just go. You can click on my link on LinkedIn under my About section. You can see it there. Call me too. You're welcome to call me, or you know, all my information is online, so you'll find me.
Erin:
You're doing such good work, Lisa. I mean honestly you're doing such good work. I mean there needs to be more of you, like so many more of you doing this work. And I know that every single law student's life that you touch is better for it, and they are better prepared lawyers and they are, just overall, better people.
So you're doing outstanding work, my friend, and I was so happy to have you on the show, but before I let you go, I always ask two questions. I didn't tell you this before we started recording, so now I'm putting you on the spot.
Lisa:
Let's do it.
Erin:
I love it. I always ask two questions of my guests before they hop off the show, so the first one is what is your superpower?
Lisa:
Oh, that's a great question. Humility and saying it like it is. You know, I'll just say it like it is. I'm really bad at faking, and I just don't have a problem just talking about really hard things, and even if I suck, you know, like I don't, it's okay.
Erin:
“Be brave to suck at something new every day.” Isn't that the saying? Yeah, be brave enough to suck at something new every single day.
And I think humility is one of the most beautiful, beautiful gifts, because it allows you to take something that could be seen as embarrassing or meaning something about you, but instead you flipped that entire narrative on its head. Not only did you do that, but you created a career, and then you created a platform to help other people, so talk about humility in its greatest full circle moment. I would say that is it, my friend.
And the last question is very apt for this podcast and for this conversation that you and I are having. So what is one thing that you would tell your younger lawyer yourself?
Lisa:
Oh, the path to success has a lot of twists and turns and it doesn't matter where it takes you, but what really is important is that if you stop and understand along the way the lessons to be taught at each of those forks in the road.
Erin:
Absolutely, and I think that that is one of the greatest gifts that I've learned as well is that life is never gonna look like the way you thought it was going to, but the sooner you just embrace these ebb and flows and be able to pivot with an open mind and open heart and a fresh perspective. The right mindset can take you places you never even imagined- like crazy places, which is the best thing about practicing and the best thing about being in the legal field.
Lisa:
People say it's not a good field and I know there's a lot of really negative things that are occurring. I believe it is the best place to be, and I love it, and I will always love it. The first thing I tell students will always be, “Congratulations. I'm so thrilled for you. I'm so happy for you to start your journey.”
Erin:
Yeah it is. There are definitely lots of problems, but I do think it's a beautiful profession and something that I am always proud to be as a lawyer, so yes, I love it. I love it.
Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show. I have just adored this conversation. Viewers, if you love this conversation, take a screenshot, tag us on social media, reach out to Lisa if you know any law students who need her brilliance and just her coaching and her counseling. Head over and slide into her messages and her DMs.
And for the rest of you guys, I will see you next week. Thanks for tuning in.
