These resources are organized loosely by topic. Whether you're trying to improve your grades, reform your law school, understand why your law student buddy is so depressed, or get your own mental health under control, I bet there's something for you on this list. Have a suggestion for something to add? Share it .
Happiness and Well-Being in Law School and the Legal Profession
Mindfulness, Focus, and Stress
Meditation Apps
Productivity Apps
Improving Your Law School Performance
Diversity in Law Schools and the Legal Profession
(Even more resources coming soon.)
Happiness and Well-Being in Law School and the Legal Profession
- Hidden Brain podcast, "You vs. Future You; Or Why We’re Bad at Predicting Our Own Happiness." 2016. One of my favorite episodes of Shankar Vedantam's wonderful podcast.
- Krieger, Lawrence S. 2014. The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress: Avoiding the Mistakes That Create Unhappy and Unprofessional Lawyers. Exactly what it sounds like, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
- Krieger, Lawrence S., and Kennon M. Sheldon. 2015. “What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Law School Success.” 83 George Washington Law Review 554. An empirical examination of the factors that predict lawyers’ happiness and how these relate to legal education.
- Levit, Nancy, and Douglas O. Linder. 2010. The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law. Discusses the causes and consequences of lawyer happiness, and how you can make sure you're one of the happy ones.
- Young, Kathryne M. 2018. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School. My own book, which I certainly hope you'll check out. I draw on hundreds of law students' experiences to help you think about how to create your law school life.
Mindfulness, Focus, and Stress
- ABA For Law Students Webinar: Learn About Mindfulness Meditation. 2016. Explains key benefits of meditation.
- Cho, Jeena, and Karen Gifford. 2016. The Anxious Lawyer. Eight-week program of reflections and exercises to help anxiety-riddled lawyers learn simple meditation and other tools for increasing mindfulness.
- Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 2018. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Talks about the reseach underlying flow, which I discuss in Ch. 3.
- Dweck, Carol S. 2007. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Read to learn more about fixed and growth mindsets, which I talk about in Ch. 8.
- Everyday Zen website: for sharing "the Zen attitude, spirit, and practice with the world.”
- Gallagher, Winifred. 2009. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. A compelling behavioral science book full of accessible explanations about the key research related to focus and attention.
- Harris, Dan. 10% Happier podcast. If you're not sure where to start, check out Episode #43, featuring Judge Jeremy Fogel, a federal judge who writes about the connections between mindfulness and judging. Harris has a book, too.
- HealthChampion's Mindfulness Resources page. Wonderful source for practicing mindfulness from home. (Special thanks to readers Martina, Nicole, and Jenae for pointing me to this one!)
- Love, Hallie Neuman, and Nathalie Martin. 2015. Yoga for Lawyers: Mind-Body Techniques to Feel Better All the Time. A beginning yoga book written for lawyers, by lawyers.
- McGonigal, Kelly. 2015. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It. Learn to channel stress for your benefit.
- McGonigal, Kelly. 2012. The Willpower Instinct. Written like a do-it-yourself class for increasing your willpower.
- Mindful Lawyer Conference. The website contains some great talks from the 2010 conference.
- Rogers, Scott L. 2009. Mindfulness for Law Students: Using the Power of Mindfulness to Achieve Balance and Success in Law School. Rogers also writes the Mindful Law Student website.
- Rogers, Scott L. 2009. The Six-Minute Solution: A Mindfulness Primer for Lawyers. Helps lawyers figure out how to incorporate mindfulness techniques into their super-packed schedules.
Meditation Apps
- Aura. Super simple and gives you a different 3-minute meditation every day.
- Calm. This app has several different meditations you can try and is big on relaxing sounds, too.
- Headspace. Designed to teach you about mindfulness in a few minutes every day.
- Insight Timer. A great place to start. It contains over 4,500 guided meditations with over 1,000 different teachers(!), so there’s pretty much something for everyone
Productivity Apps
- 30/30. A deceptively simple app I reference in Chapter 9 that lets you make to-do lists to which you assign blocks of time, then use it as a timer. I use this almost daily.
- FocusList. Lets you make a list, estimate the time it will take to do each item, and work toward it in 25-minute increments with 5-minute breaks.
- Hours. Lets you track how you spend your time over days, weeks, or longer.
- Pomodoro. The “pomodoro method” generally means working for 25-minute blocks with 5-minute breaks between blocks of work, and a 15-minute break every three blocks. There is also a web browser version.
- Strides. Lets you keep tabs of everything you’re working toward, from weight loss to your Crim Law outline.
Improving Your Law School Performance
- Ayers, Andrew B. 2013. A Student’s Guide to Law School. Students trying to improve their grades will benefit from reading Ayres’s granular analysis of everything from issue spotting to whether to cite cases by name on exams.
- Fischl, Richard Michael, and Jeremy Paul. 1999. Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams. Fischl and Paul's book contains detailed advice and examples about issue spotting and exam taking.
- Garner, Brian A. 2013. The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (3rd ed.) A navigable reference book on legal style, The Redbook is the perfect weapon against legalese and poor grammar.
- McKinney, Ruth Ann. 2012. Reading Like a Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert (2nd ed.). Strategies, exercises, and time-saving tips for becoming skilled at reading legal texts.
- Schwartz, Michael Hunter. 2008. Expert Learning for Law Students (2nd ed.). If something about your learning style is preventing you from “getting" in law school, this resource is for you.
- Shadel, Molly Bishop. 2012. Finding Your Voice in Law School: Mastering Classroom Cold Calls, Job Interviews, and Other Verbal Challenges. Help for the times in law school when oral presentation is important.
Diversity in Law Schools and the Legal Profession
- American Bar Association Diversity and Inclusion Portal
- Counsel Women of Color
- Hispanic National Bar Association
- Leadership Institute for Women of Color Attorneys
- Ms. JD
- National Asian Pacific American Bar Association
- National Asian Pacific American Law Student Association
- National Association for Law Placement, Diversity, and Demographics
- National Association of Law Students With Disabilities
- National Association of Women Lawyers
- National Bar Association (the “oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges” in the United States)
- National Black Law Students Association
- National Latina/o Law Student Association
- National LGBT Bar Association
- National Native American Bar Association
- South Asian Bar Association of North America
- Student Veterans of America
- Women of Color Research Initiative
(Even more resources coming soon.)