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Selecting a Mentor
“Positive Absolutisms”
You are going to need someone that you trust so my best advice to you is to not
latch on to anyone too quickly, get to know someone and let it happen naturally. The
way law school is set up, some people may doubt themselves. But there’s no room for
doubt- no time for it at all. You need someone to believe in you; that you can talk with
openly and honestly. There are so many mind games going on in law school and in the
larger legal culture so, you need someone that can help you navigate through it all.
Someone that will be upfront and honest without any personal benefit, other than
perhaps your friendship, to giving you the information they are telling you. When
deciding on a mentor, look for someone who speaks in what I call “positive
absolutisms”. You need someone to be doubtless in your abilities...it’s not if you get
good grades it’s when you get good grades. It’s a step above the power of suggestion.
After a while, you’ll start believing it and naturally taking the necessary steps to make
the affirmations come true. Positive absolutisms are not some lofty unattainable goal
but something to realistically strive for. No matter what doubts I had about my own
abilities, they had unwavering faith that I could accomplish anything.
Selecting a Mentor
How well did their advice work out for them?
There is a natural inclination to seek out advice from those that placed at the top
of their class, the assumption being that their advice will guarantee the beneficiary a
4.0. I differ from that contention- I personally got the best advice from those in the
middle to lower end of their classes. A lot of people that were at the top had absolutely
no clue why they did well and/or had a vested interest in not telling me the full strategy.
Class rank may have been influenced by other factors and since one is graded on a
curve – relative to the other students in one’s class, it is an arguably reasonable
assumption that if the person was in another class (a year earlier or later, another
section, different professor, another school), that same person may have fared
differently, for better or worse. I think the more important thing – more important than
how they did in their class- is if they used their own advice and how did that lend to their
understanding of the law. For instance, if they say something like you must make up
your own index cards to understand the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure like they did
but they still don’t understand that a civil action begins with the filing of a complaint
(Rule 3), well then that’s something you need to take into account when deciding
whether to follow that particular aspect of their advice.
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