Even if it only makes a slight or marginal difference — “Doing the right thing” is about as cliche a motto or theme as you can imagine. But I want to harp and stress it anyway, to myself among others, because acting on the right thing to do can actually be very difficult in real life, when all incentives point to…

A reflection on frequent lapses in judgment — I don’t think anyone likes writing something like this, or that no one enjoys airing out all their mistakes openly in writing. But I’ve recently been having more lapses in judgment. They’re usually social blunders that could have easily been avoided and where I said or did the wrong thing…

Are lawyers obligated to protect proven liars and thieves? — “A lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent…” — ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, 1.2(d) Lawyers have an ethical obligation to not help their clients commit crimes. The other day, my class and I…

Unsurprisingly, an intensely adversarial system takes its toll on people — I got in at 6:30 at night in what I thought was going to be my most boring class: professional responsibilities. As an evening law student, I come into class after a whole day of work, like many of my peers. But the class didn’t start the way most classes…

Be a facilitator in someone else’s story instead of a hero in your own — “Are you going to be my teacher next year?” “No,” I responded. “Why?” The student asked. My student, John, showed up to class every day in the 2020–2021 school year. As a ninth-grade student, he participated often and grew from a Kindergarten reading level to a sixth-grade level in reading…

When you fall short of your ideals — Very early on in my teaching career, I was telling a more experienced colleague about making phone calls to parents. She asked me something that I found a bit jarring: “Did you put phone calls in a contact log?” I said I didn’t, but I called parents almost every day…

Tommy Shelby tries, time and time again, to be better — “I’m just like you now, you and Arthur. I was dead in that noose, and then I was saved. So everything from now on is extra. What I didn’t understand until today is when you’re dead already, you’re free.” — Aunt Polly to Tommy Shelby While the Don Drapers, Walter…

Is obsessing over performance a part of upbringing, or is it innate? — When my grades came back from my first semester of law school, they could have been a lot worse. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t at the top of my class. I simply beat the curve, and I was above average in all of my classes. …

Divorcing someone’s actions and beliefs from their actual character — Three years ago, I wrote an article about how I thought everyone is a good person. Not that many people read it, and it didn’t seem too controversial. Now, I want to reiterate that point, even though that belief has been battle-tested by three years of experience, a world that…