The Art of the Follow-Through

Mark Winthrop

Graduate Fellow

Law Career Development and Externship Programs 

           

I’ve spent the majority of my life playing basketball. Through all of the agonizing sprints, strength trainings, drills and practices, one lesson has stuck with me to this day: BLESH.

BLESH is the mnemonic I used for jump-shooting—Bend, Lift, Extend, Snap, and Hold. The first three create the power for your shot; bend your knees, lift (or jump), and extend your arms. The last two steps are considered the follow-through, Snap your wrist and hold your form. You may have the strongest legs and largest range in the world, but if you don’t follow-through, your shot will have a much lower chance of going in.

The same principles apply to your legal career. Throughout law school, you are developing your legal knowledge and capability—your balance and power, or BLE. During your classes, assignments and study sessions you learn the law; but if that is all you do, you may never learn how to behave in a way that reflects your goals or aspirations. See, law school is not only about learning the law but learning the legal field too. This takes more than just knowledge—it takes action, and action requires follow-through.  From job applications to networking events, meetings to assignment deadlines, follow-through is an ever-present and paramount facet of the legal community.

Nonetheless, following-through can be challenging. While we often know what we need to do, school, internships and other obligations wear us down. It’s easy to slip into a cycle of just doing enough to get by. However, it’s important to remember why you went to law school, what is really important to you, and what you want to get out of your education and work experiences. Poor follow-through is an enormous obstacle that affects individuals, firms, and society as a whole. So, I curated a few tips that may help make following-through a bit easier.

Set and Understand Your Goals

If you’re in law school, chances are you’re a goal-oriented person. You should keep that trend going—at the beginning of the academic year, semester, or new job, sit down and set a few goals for yourself. In order to reach those goals, create deadlines or check-in dates to analyze your progress towards achieving your goal. For example, at the beginning of your 2L year, you decide you want a light 3L Spring semester in order to devote more time to bar prep. To do that, you must take additional units for the next few semesters. At the end of each semester, you can check your total units to ensure you are fulfilling your goal.

By setting goal check-ins, you are more likely to take steps to reach your goal. You must understand that you are striving to accomplish something that will aid you down the line, but in order to achieve those goals there is sacrifice.

Find a System That Works for You

Whether that’s keeping a Google, Yahoo, or Apple calendar find an organization system that resonates with you to track responsibilities and deadlines. Or you can ditch the technology and use a physical planner, like GGU alumna and Boxer & Gerson partner Maria Sager. “I use a physical calendar or day planner, two-pages per week that tracks everything I’m responsible for—hearings, depositions, client meetings, even personal or social events.” The real trick, Maria said, was committing to a system. “I’ve used the same system for years, but whichever system you choose you need to buy in and keep it organized!”

Sacrifice

Every act taken in furtherance of one goal is time not spent furthering another. If you committed to an evening networking event, then that’s time not being spent skimming Instagram or binging your favorite Netflix shows. Appellate Advocacy deadline approaching? Sacrifice your evening and some sleep to finish the draft. Application deadline coming up? Perfect your materials instead of taking that weekend trip to Santa Cruz. This is applicable to much more than law school—skipping dessert to eat a little healthier, getting up early for a morning run, etc. Following-through inherently requires sacrifice, but a sacrifice will can lead to a reward later on.

Incentivize Yourself

More often than not, you had to sacrifice something in order to meet your obligation. You should also reward yourself for meeting it! I listened to a brief presentation by Steve Levinson, author of Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start, where Levinson describes a man that left his only stick of deodorant in his locker at the gym. If he didn’t hit the gym in the morning, he went without deodorant for the entire day. I’m not suggesting boycotting personal hygiene—just reward yourself for hitting a milestone. Finished those application materials? Buy those shoes you’ve had your eyes on or go out to dinner with a few friends. 

Don’t OVER Multi-task

I’m confident that the majority of law students have seen job-postings stating something like: “Must be self-motivated and be able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.” Something close to that, right? What if I told you that too much multi-tasking is actually keeping you from following-through? Let’s say you have five things to work on today. You spent the day working on all five, but by doing so you finished zero assignments. Now, imagine spending your day on one assignment and finishing it. You are rewarded with a sense of accomplishment, and will be more motivated the next day to complete another task.

Again, create a calendar with deadlines, events, assignments, etc. My suggestion: work on the first approaching deadline until it’s complete and move onto the next. If you need to, break-up one deadline into several in order to secure those accomplishments that will springboard you into your next commitment.

Meditation and Visualization

Meditating is a free and easy way to bring clarity, creativity and calm into your otherwise stressful and busy lives as law students. Try practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM). TM requires two 20-minute sessions of sitting comfortably with closed eyes and repeating an otherwise meaningless mantra in order to stay focused. Research has linked TM with reducing blood-pressure and stress-producing hormones. Instead of reaching for that second or third cup of coffee, try implementing TM!

Sager brought another tool to my attention—visualization. “I like to visualize the scene before I live the scene. I would walk-through the bar exam 30-40 times. I would visualize the entire process: eating breakfast, getting ready, driving to the test center, day one, day two… even what I would do right after testing concluded.” Sager said that practicing this exercise gave her more confidence during the test; she had been there dozens of times before.

Following-through is imperative to your reputation. “There is no excuse,” Sager said, “it is devastating to your reputation, and it is nearly impossible to fix your reputation after damage has been done to it.” She’s right, and you begin building your reputation the day you start law school.  Your fellow students of today will become your colleagues of tomorrow and if you have a reputation of following-through, they may be more likely to work with you in the future.