Journeys Through Law School
Or I have no idea what I’m doing
Well here it goes, my first ever post on Medium. Please excuse the rambling. I have no idea what I’m doing. Also, I’m on these crazy meds to tackle some serious tension headaches, which make me feel a bit like I’m launching upwards at an exceedingly rapid pace in the elevator of a tall building.
I’ve wanted to write something on Medium for a while now, so I figured, why not write about the thing that consumes a ridiculous portion of my life? I don’t want to write about all the things I should have done in law school, or all the things a prospective law student should do. Instead, I want to write about the unexpected things, the things that they don’t tell you in forums or on orientation day. This is by no means an exhaustive list (true words of a law student).
- Watch out for the curve.
Prior to law school, I had never experienced a grading curve. You either got a good grade or you didn’t. Maybe the prof only handed out a certain number of A range grades but he or she certainly didn’t have to hand those out. In law school, it’s all about the curve. Personally, I find this ridiculous and don’t think it’s the best indicator of who’s going to (or not going to) make a good lawyer. Professors have admitted there’s no real difference between a B+ or A-. The big thing is, professors have to give out C range grades. I mean, they have to. What happens if you just had a bad night’s sleep the night before the exam? That B- you might have had? Nope, someone else has it now.
2. Legal Writing Is Not Like Normal Writing
I have done a lot of writing in my time. I even have a Masters in History of International Relations from a world class school. But whatevs, that doesn’t matter. It seemed that the kids who did the best in legal writing were those that worked at law firms before law school.
There are also really strange things about the way lawyers write. For one thing, they love Courier font. What gives? It is the actual worst font (aside from all the other worst fonts). And if it’s a single spaced document? Forget about it. I have no clue why lawyers love this font. Maybe it’s a last ditch effort to cling on to age old technology (typewriter) since the world is dead set on going forward. It’s sort of like, “Fine, we’ll adapt, but we won’t fully adapt.”
The last thing about writing, which really bothers me, is the process of citations. In history, there are certain guidelines writers are supposed to follow. However, at a certain point, it’s the actual source that matters, not the format. In legal writing, the citations are a big effing deal. Did you forget to put that book title in Small Caps? YOU FAIL AND ARE INCOMPETENT! What on earth? I suppose this is what happens when too many Type A people get together.
3. You will change, in ways you never imagined
During college, I spent a semester in Buenos Aires where I acquired a “no te preoccupes” (don’t worry/bother yourself) attitude. If I stop for coffee I’ll be 5 minutes late to class? No te preoccupes. Someone cut me off? No te preoccupes. Okay, this phase didn’t last forever. But there was a small element left. This whole thing vanished within one month of law school. No, I will freaking preoccupes if I damn well please, about anything.
The issue is that if you hang out with other law students, there will be both people who never even had a “no te preoccupes” phase and others who haven’t gotten over it yet. The former people will strike you as overly intense, uptight, and psychos who need to remember to breathe. The latter will be incompetent ingrates who are incapable of multitasking and will drive you up a wall. Are you really part of the happy medium in the middle? Most likely you fall into the former category for some and the latter category for others.
Another change — you will see potential lawsuits at every step. Before, a puddle of water on a sidewalk? “Oh, that could be dangerous, but I’ll walk around it.” Now? “The property owner needs to take action immediately. He or she needs to put out a sign, make the puddle obvious, and do anything he or she can do to clean it up. Otherwise, I call tort!” I’m not joking, this actually happens. It fades after a while, sort of, but you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Eventually you’ll start learning about a new area of law and the whole “ooo, arbitration clause, I think this one’s unconsconiable” will start again. Unconscionable. What even is that word? Type of thing only a lawyer would use.
4. The rumors are true, we like to drink
My school gives out boatload of free beer and wine once every other week. It also sponsors multiple networking events with booze. Need I say more?
5. What’s important is knowing how to look stuff up, not actually knowing the stuff
One thing we all learn pretty darn quickly at law school is that we have to be able to find things quickly. Sure, it helps if you easily understand a topic or have some prior experience with it, but when it comes down to it, it’s those who can look stuff up that will succeed. Law school reading isn’t really all that tough. There’s a lot, which makes it worse. But, it’s not like we all get together and try to decipher Foucault or mechanical engineering. This is one aspect that makes dealing with the curve so hard — almost everyone (key word being “almost”) is pretty smart when they get to law school. But if they don’t know how to look stuff up, they’re not going to get very far.
I’m reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell right now and he pretty much confirmed all this stuff about looking things up. Not about lawyers or law students in particular, but about humans in general. We don’t memorize all the phone numbers of everyone we know. Instead, we remember where we stored those phone numbers, such as in an address book (as if) or the contacts list in our phones. Learning how to succeed in law school, at least the non-clinical, non skills based portions of it, involve memorizing sources on a grander scale. We remember the basics of tort or contract law, then we know to go back to those areas of law when we hear certain key words. For example, I may have forgotten what “respondeat superior” means (yeah, right, that ish is ingrained in my head for life), but I remember that I learned it in torts. So I go back to my basic tort knowledge and remember it has to deal with companies being liable for the actions of their employees.
Wrapping this all up
Okay, that’s all for now. Mostly I’ve run out of things to write, but I’m also concerned this will turn into a 19 minute read instead of a 5ish minute read, and that scares me more than it should.
