I slacked off in law school. Which is why I got good grades

Do less to do better? Can that really be true?

The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.

-Miyamoto Musashi¹

I was embarrassed by how little I studied in law school.

Not to say I didn’t study at all: I prepared for class, I outlined for exams. But compared to many of my classmates, this felt like the bare minimum. Some people seemed to always be studying. They’d eat lunch with their nose in a laptop; conversations with them happened between page turns of their textbook. Their efforts had a manic, breathless quality about them—like if they stopped treading water, they would go under. Which put me face down at the bottom of the pool.

I under-studied by conscious choice. I knew I was prone to stress and overachievement, so I had decided beforehand to prioritize my well-being over my grades. The stakes were low, because I had modest goals: I just wanted a small job back home. Because I was at a top law school, I basically could have done this with straight Cs. And I didn’t expect to do much better than that anyway. Curve grading means no grade inflation, and I knew I was entering an elite pond where I would be a medium fish at best. I resolved to just work a reasonable amount, hope for decent results, and enjoy the experience.

And that’s exactly what I did—especially the last point. I loved law school. It was intellectual heaven for a hyper-curious person (s/o Paul Millerd). I was not only learning fascinating concepts—least-cost avoiders, meeting of the minds, jurisdiction—I was learning an entire new way of thinking. It scratched a deep itch I didn’t know I had all my life.

Even better, I was surrounded by incredible peers—thoughtful, razor-sharp, and open-minded. I found myself frequently drawn into conversations with them about what we were learning. These are easily my favorite law school memories: the countless hours spent analyzing what we were learning in little circles after class. Like a lion cub at play, I was practicing moves that had been modeled to me by our professors, like constructing hypotheticals, taking arguments to their logical extreme, and steelmanning a position you disagree with.

Occasionally during these conversations, I’d feel a pang of guilt and think, boy, I really should be studying right now. More diligent students would pop immediately to the library after class to do more reading or cramming. I assumed I’d pay for it come exam time, but discussing ideas with my friends made me happy.

Then, at the end of law school, a very strange thing happened: I graduated with honors.²

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I puzzled over this outcome for a long time. But in the years since law school, I started putting together some of the pieces.