Winning in Law School with ADHD

About Author:

This article is written by 1L success consultant Franklin Sims. If you are planning on starting law school soon or want help landing a job out of law school contact Franklin for law school success tools that work.

---

It’s not surprising that law school – at least for some of us – is boring. We do it anyway because we know that a legal education is what we need to achieve our more exciting career goals. But when boredom impacts the very way we learn – as it does with ADHD learners – it’s important to approach law school strategically so that our learning style doesn’t prevent our academic and career success.

We have all been bored. For some of us, law school is a unique blend of boredom and challenge. The first year especially, law school consists of humdrum lectures, pages upon pages of reading and laborious research and writing assignments. While these characteristics contribute to law school being boring, it is the fast pace of the constantly accumulative assignments that make law school equally challenging.

Although this reality is difficult for most students, it is particularly troublesome for students with symptoms of ADHD because they are all the more prone to procrastinate when bored. In law school this can be a recipe for disaster and poor grades.

As a 1L success consultant I have had to seek solutions for clients who believe that the way their mind works should not impede their success in the legal field.

One term I have reflected on over the years when developing strategies for law school clients is what doctors call “executive functioning”. Whether or not you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, as David A. Greenwood writes in Overcoming Distractions, executive functioning is the brain’s “store manager”. In other words, it’s the part of our brain that keeps us organized, helps us manage our time and achieve goals. Essentially, it’s the part of our brain that gets things done and some people are higher functioning than others.

In law school – and especially the first year – there are so many competing tasks that high executive functioning skills are an advantage to some and a pit fall for others.

Fortunately for adult learners with ADHD, despite their propensity to turn in to work late or procrastinate, students with lower executive functioning have other gifts that give them a boost in this academic setting. As a coach my role is to help clients find their sweet spot in law school and unlock unrealized exam performance.

There are two gifts commonly found in ADHD learners that can be game changers for law school success. The first is creativity and the second is hyper focus. The key is to tap into these ADHD strengths by learning the law through methods that capitalize on the learners innate abilities.

Here’s an example. While reading a law school case book for hours on end can be agonizing for a student with ADHD, putting legal concepts into a visual exam narrative taps into the learners creative side. ADHD learners are often much better with visual or hands-on learning. Additionally, because ADHD learners have an incredible ability to see outside the box and come up with great ideas, they can do well on exams which reward students for quickly unearthing less obvious legal issues. Using practice exams as a stimulus, we can keep the learners’ attention by focusing on their creative strength while also gaining much needed exam writing skills that focus on developing the student’s ability to organize the legal analysis.

The tough part is that law school professors only approach learning through case book and lecture. My clients and I have to compliment the professor’s course with tools that work best with our learning style. It’s an extra step but the rewards of top grades are immeasurable.

The best part about focusing on an ADHD learner’s creative strength is that it ties into their ability to hyperfocus. Research as shown that ADHD learners hyperfocus when engaged in activities they enjoy. When students get into the zone and begin to lose themselves in the task they can cover an incredible amount of ground and produce tremendous results. By learning the law through a lens that motivates the learner we can improve performance and improve grades.

The truth is that you don’t have to be an ADHD learner to benefit from strategies like these. The reality is that far too few law school students take practice exams despite the fact that almost their entire grade in a course is based on performance on one exam. Thus, whether or not you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD it’s a good idea to step out of the casebook and apply what you’ve learned to the big picture or an exam context. The difference, however, is that if you have ADHD learning the law in ways that stimulates creativity keeps you engaged in the material so that you can best meet the academic and career goals most important to you.

#ADHD #LAWSCHOOL #adultadhd