Sunday, May 19, 2019

LSAT Class

One of my goals for the year was to teach an LSAT prep class. Mission accomplished as of last week!

I taught my first LSAT class back in 2002 (yup, 17 years ago) and "retired" from teaching a few weeks before I took the bar exam in 2010. In the intervening years I worked at law firms and did not have enough control over my schedule to teach, but last year when I went in house I started thinking about teaching again and returned to the classroom to prep students for the November 2018 LSAT and June 2019 LSAT.

Why teach an LSAT class at this point in my career?
  • Ownership. In my full-time role, I have very little ownership over my matters. This bugs me. In the classroom, I have full responsibility for student comprehension and I can measure my effectiveness by tracking student score improvements.
  • Public Speaking. The curriculum I teach currently includes twelve three-hour lectures. No matter what my future holds, it's great to practice communicating clearly, thinking on my feet, and engaging an audience.
  • Connection. In my full-time role, our manager structures our workflow in such a way as to deliberately stymie the development of attorney relationships with client teams. It's isolating. The LSAT classroom gives me an opportunity to work with the same set of students over the course of a few months and watch them progress. It's rewarding.
  • Cash. When I transitioned from a law firm salary to a gov't salary, I created a hyper-aggressive budget so I could maintain the amount I save each month, which required cutting out all the extras. I earn $70/hour teaching LSAT classes. I've used this money to pay for my Peloton, dinners out and "extras" for the house (e.g. shades for the bedroom--finally!).
There's probably only one more LSAT classroom course in my future--the classroom course business has been cannibalized by online course offerings.

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