476: Executive Functioning Skills for Law Students with ADHD (w/Emily Haan)

Together, we're the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta. I also run The Girl's Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and rating on your favorite listening app. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can always reach us via the contact form on LawSchoolToolbox. com, and we would love to hear from you. With that, let's get started.

Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast. Today, I'm excited to have ADHD and executive function coach Emily Haan here with us to talk about some techniques students can use to be successful in law school. Welcome, Emily.

And sort of around that same time, my child was diagnosed with ADHD. And so I started doing a lot more research about it and thinking more intentionally about it, and realized that there's a whole practice around helping people with tools to manage ADHD, especially in school and work settings. And that set me down a path of pursuing a certification in ADHD coaching and doing this on a more professional and full-time basis.

So, I started my own coaching practice earlier this year and I'm now doing that as my primary job.

And we know from a lot of research now that the sort of constant amount of stimuli that are coming at us is actually causing people who might not have a formal diagnosis of ADHD to present certain traits that we associate with ADHD. So, everything that I talk about today would apply, regardless of whether you have a formal diagnosis. But law school, as probably many of your listeners know, hasn't really changed that much since the days before social media and other technology.

And so, law school was built in a very analog world where you really could just sit down and read your casebook, and write your briefs, and take an exam without tons of other information coming at you at all times. And now, all of a sudden, we have social media, we have tons of TikTok videos about the day in the life of a law student, and it's just so much to process on top of the actual work of law students.

And what I'm seeing, and what I've seen is law students now, like many other young people, are just having trouble figuring out how to filter and compartmentalize all of that information and then fit it into this box of what is a pretty traditional environment. You know law school is still being done in the same way it has been for a very long time.

And then it becomes very easy to procrastinate for that final exam, and then you're rushing to cram everything in into the week before the exam.

Do you have any ideas for how law students, whether they are diagnosed with ADHD or just more generally, can set themselves up to successfully handle this type of workload that for a lot of people is really new?

I really feel like one of the ways to control and manage ADHD is to know as much as you possibly can about it - about how the ADHD brain works, about things that are and aren't going to be helpful, because with that knowledge, then you can sort of make informed decisions about how to study, how to take breaks, how to structure your day. I really recommend that anyone who has an ADHD diagnosis read or listen to as much as you possibly can about it.

There are lots of good podcasts, if reading is hard, but there're also a lot of good ADHD books that are written for people with ADHD, so that they're a little bit more accessible in terms of reading. I think that the other thing that new law students can do or folks who are going to law school can do is figure out your best calendar and reminder management system. There're so many tools out there, and every calendaring system is going to tell you that it's the best, most organized one.

And that might be true for one person, and it might be terrible for another one. So, it's useful for you as a law student to spend some time thinking about, "How do I best receive and remember information? Is it the calendar app on my phone? Is it a physical planner? Is it Post-it notes all around my house?" Spend some time thinking about that, because you don't want to be trying out a new system when you're in law school, because there's already all this new information coming at you.

So, figure out what that is and then set yourself up for success. If you need to have a physical planner, get it. If you need Post-its, make sure that they're accessible. Start using your calendar app, if that's what you like to use. The other thing that is really helpful, and I know that so many people say this, but building in an exercise routine is essential.

There's actually a ton of data and studies about how much exercise can actually lessen the negative effects of, or the negative symptoms of ADHD. So, exercise in some cases can be more effective than medication, and there's a lot of data to support that. So, building in a consistent exercise routine and using whatever your calendar system is to calendar that into your day and sticking with that is a really great way to set yourself up for success.

It's frustrating to me because I want to get everything done and I really try, but I'm just never successful and it makes me want to give up, but then I'm even more behind. Do you have any ideas?

So it's very easy to get behind, in part because it is hard for ADHD brains to manage information and deadlines without having some sort of external deadline flashing at you. So, what you really need to do in this situation is be your own deadline creator.

The first thing to do is to sit down and chunk out your time, figure out the categories of things that need to be done reading for your different classes, time for lunch, time to go for a run or whatever kind of exercise you want to do, time to relax, time to watch your favorite TV show. So, you need to really figure out what those different chunks are and then put them actually into a calendar, right? So, from 9:00 to noon, you're going to be attending class and catching up on reading.

Noon to 1:00 is lunch. And make that time visible as much as possible. So, time blindness is something that you hear about a lot with people who have ADHD, where if they don't have a reminder of time that's passing, it's very easy to have an hour pass by and realize that you haven't got anything done because you didn't even realize that an hour had passed.

So, set alarms, set things that are going to flash at you to tell you, "Okay, now is the time that I need to start my reading" or, "I need to go get lunch." And really just make that visible. And then it's really starting to sort of break down the tasks into the things that feel more manageable.

If you're already feeling overwhelmed, the best thing you can do is sort of figure out what all the tasks are and then say, "Okay, what can I get done right now?" Because often it is the getting behind and getting overwhelmed that makes it harder to get anything done. So, even if the only thing that you feel like you can get done is reading five pages of your Torts casebook, make a commitment to do those five pages and then it will start to feel more motivating to do other things as well.

But without this chunk system and just sitting down with the whole array of things that you have to get done in a law school week, it is a recipe for overwhelm.

But I do think this idea of taking it piece by piece... I mean, I always go back to Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird, where her brother or something had an overwhelming project and was freaking out and her parents said just, "Buddy, you've got to take it bird by bird." So, I always go back to that when I'm just sort of like, "Oh my gosh, I have no idea what to do next." And I'm staring down this huge amount of stuff.

Well, the next question I was going to ask you is a little bit related, but go ahead.

So, I really recommend that you actually break down on paper, or on whatever digital format you use, all of these things, so that when you do sit down, you can look at it like a menu: "I can do my Torts reading right now, or I could do my Crim Law reading right now, or I could write a page of my LRW memo", whatever it is.

But just the fact that it was a habit, it wasn't something I had to think about. It was just, "Okay, you're finished with dinner. You've done the dishes, so now it's time to do your reading." That to me always felt helpful, versus trying to kind of fit it in here and there.

But think about what you want to be doing the day before, which might just be a final readthrough. If it's just a final readthrough, then what do you have to do in the week leading up to that to get to your final readthrough?

So, start backwards planning, until you get to sort of where you are now, which is, "What do I need to do to get to the next step?" I think that can feel less overwhelming than forwards planning, because sometimes forwards planning, you actually have to think in bigger chunks and it just feels like, "Oh my gosh, that's so far away, I don't know how to even manage that." But backwards planning actually can help people think about it a little more concretely.

I also encourage people to really think in the tiniest possible steps. You should be backwards planning to the point of like, "I have to open a new document on my computer." That is a step that you need to do. "I have to create headings." Breaking things into tiny steps and then achieving them actually can release dopamine in the brain and then can encourage us to keep achieving those steps.

It's the big steps that can feel really overwhelming, because there're usually five mini steps built into each big step. So we need to really break them down into the tiniest steps. I also often encourage people to think of what needs to get done now and what can wait. So, one of the things that you have to do for your Legal Writing brief is write section headings, right?

That often can happen at the very end, but it's easy to get bogged down in like, "Oh, what am I going to call this section heading? How am I going to title it?" I try to encourage people to think about things that can wait until the end and things that need to get done now, because often it's the things that can wait that we're spending our most time perseverating about. And if we just say, "You know what?

I can do this three days before it's due, I don't need to think about this now", it opens up our brain to think about other things. Also, asking for help. I think that sometimes people just need a model, right? So, if you're a 1L asking a 2L, "How did you structure your time? How did you manage writing this?" Asking your professor for what a good timeline would be. Sometimes seeing what they think would be appropriate for the paper.

Sometimes just seeing on paper an example timeline can start our brains and putting one together for ourselves. You don't have to do any of this alone, and so asking for help is always really, really useful.

And then I start going down the path of, "Well, should it be Dropbox or should it be somewhere else?" You can do the same thing with your software, where the table of contents, like, yeah, you want to make sure that you have a tool in place so that you're not manually creating that. But that can also become this whole Internet spiral of like, getting the perfect table of contents. So, how can we balance these things and just actually make a decision?

Anytime you hear someone say, "Well, don't think about that", it's really not useful for anyone who is used to going on deep dives into these things. The idea is just to contain it and to give yourself some time boundaries around it. So, that's what I would recommend. Also, putting it aside for later again, like writing down, "Oh, I need to figure out where I'm going to save this. I need to figure out what I'm going to use to make my table of contents."

Sometimes just getting it out of our brain and knowing that it's, I like to call it an "external brain". Figure out where your external brain is, so that you can get it out of your physical brain. That can actually help us also feel like we don't have to think about it so much, because we know it's somewhere external for later.

It doesn't need to be long, but it should be getting away from the physical space of whatever you're doing - jumping jacks, or going and having a drink of ice cold water or something that's really going to sort of jolt your body and your brain out of whatever probably sedentary task you were just doing. And doing that pretty frequently. And other things are just mixing up how you're studying. So, for some people body doubling really helps.

That's when you're actually in a room with someone else, you're not working together but you're working side by side. It doesn't work for everyone, but some people find that just being in a room with someone who is working helps them work and focus as well. So, doing things like maybe this day you're going to do your reading on your own, but tomorrow you're going to do your reading in a study room with a classmate. Of course, you should find a classmate.

Body doubling works best with someone that you're not really good friends with, right? It works best with someone who you don't necessarily have a lot to talk about. You're just sitting in a room together. I have a neighbor who has ADHD, and I sit in a cafe with her every so often. We just work independently, but it really helps her to know that she has that time to work. The other thing is using rewards.

We think about rewards as something that we give to kids, or there's that Parks and Rec "Treat Yo Self" episode, which I think about a lot. But rewards actually really work in training our brain to do boring tasks.

Whatever is rewarding to you a small reward, like an M&M or a piece of candy - you can build it into the Pomodoro method or something like that, like, "I'm going to study for 30 minutes, and then I'm going to eat this thing that's really satisfying and rewarding to me" or, "I'm going to study for 30 minutes, and then I'm going to catch up on a short episode of TV", or something like that.

Something that feels like a reward to you that's obviously not so extravagant that it's going to bankrupt or affect you in other ways. But that actually, again, increases dopamine, and over time, if you were doing that consistently, your brain would sort of be expecting the reward, so it would want to do the boring task. So, I encourage people to think about how they can sort of reward themselves in small ways for doing something that feels really boring.

I know that especially during 1L year, it can feel very scary to approach certain professors who don't seem approachable. But my experience, both having been a law student and working at a law school, is that professors are generally really willing to give feedback. So I always encourage people in this situation to get really specific feedback from their professors.

The other thing is that the best way to counteract the surprise element of an exam, or just the sort of overwhelm of an exam is to actually practice taking exams. And to do that, you need to set yourself up to take exams under timed conditions. So, one of the most frequent pieces of advice I gave students that I worked with when I was at the law school was that, midway through the semester, you should be taking a practice exam, probably every week, under timed conditions.

It doesn't mean that you're going to write a perfect exam answer, but it gives you the experience of having taken it, and so then when you go into the real exam, there's some muscle memory of what it feels like, what it means to organize an exam. And by the time you're taking that exam, you will be at a point with your practice exams where you're practicing organizing your thoughts, instead of having the real exam be the first time that you need to organize your thoughts on paper. A

And yeah, you don't want to have that realization of, "Oh my gosh, I have no idea how to do this" on the exam itself. You want to have that bad feeling weeks or months earlier, hopefully. Exactly.

It's really just about the practice.

And so, I really encourage people to treat the building blocks of learning and learning about their brains the same way that you're treating learning about the law, right? That it is trial and error and figuring out what works. I also really encourage people to do some sort of strengths assessment. There're a lot of really good ones out there. People with ADHD can also often get into negative cycles about like, "Oh, I can't do this. It's too challenging."

And so, before you get into that cycle, it's really good to keep a list of your strengths nearby, so that you can return to them, because we also know that ADHD brains are highly creative. They can hyper focus on things, which can be super useful for law school and the law in general. They're passionate and dedicated. And so, reminding yourself of that when things feel really hard can be a really great tool. So, there's one strengths assessment called the VIA, that you can take for free.

That's a great one. But there are a bunch, and I just really encourage everyone to do that and keep those nearby. Getting a coach is a great idea, just to have sort of an external person to help you if you need some advice. And then the last thing is just in addition to exercises, sleep we also know is so essential for everyone, but especially people with ADHD. And so, building a really good sleep schedule and good sleep habits.

It doesn't mean that you have to go to bed at an early time - as you were saying, Alison, you thrive at night - but making sure that you're getting the sleep that you need.

I know it feels like a super high-stakes environment, but it's actually a lot lower-stakes than when you're actually out working, and you have clients and things like that who want you to get stuff done.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!