15 March 2008
11:51 AM
(click for the full article)
Don't go to law school: But if you must, take my advice.
By Dahlia Lithwick
"All this advice is probably extreme and excessive.
Your parents will probably set my house on fire for providing it.
But read it anyhow.
And think about it."
Some small fraction of every class is comprised of people destined to take the legal world by storm. These are the people who intend to get straight A's, outline every case, make law review, and spend the rest of their days in a leviathan corporate law firm where they will do whatever it is that's done in such places. These are the people law school was built for: people who think in zero-sum terms about everything—grades, jobs, and salaries. I wish them the very best of luck for the next three years. This advice is not for them.This advice for the rest of you—who applied to law school simply because you took the LSATs, and who took the LSATs simply because the MCATs were too hard. This advice is for the people who graduated college with the generalized sense that they ought to be doing good works on this planet but were uncertain how to go about it. In short, this advice is for those of you who, like me, went to law school hoping that the experience would be stimulating and/or mind-expanding; a liberal-arts grad school for political people. A. Know Why You Are Going
As noted, the majority of people who get swept up into the law schools of North America are there as a result of inertia, career confusion, or some combination of both, and not a searing passion for drafting complex discovery motions. But that same inertia that swept you into law school may just sweep you into a corporate career in which you never had any interest. But if you're there because you love writing, or you vaguely hope to do something about the rainforest, you'll want to work hard to avoid being sucked into the screaming centripetal force that is the corporate law firm.
B. Know Why You Are Not GoingIf there is one law of law-school thinking it's this: "If everyone else wants something, I must want it, too." Not since the days of the Malibu Skipper will you have so lunged for stuff in which you have no real interest, just because everyone else is lunging. And each step of the way, law students make choices—to interview with certain firms, take certain classes, apply for certain clerkships—based on an impoverished sense of other options and the fear that other people will get all the good stuff if you don't grab it. This is hard advice to give and harder, I expect, to take. Fear and conformity dig some pretty deep paths at law school. Don't just follow because they are there. C. Have a LifeI had, for the first six months of law school, only one vector. I traveled from the dorms to the law school. After breakfast in the dorms I went to class in the law library, and from there I went to dinner in the dorms, which led inexorably to an evening in the law library. Get out. Go to movies. Volunteer someplace. Make friends with the people at Starbucks. Get drunk but kiss someone when you're actually sober. Do anything to remind yourself that there is a life out there, and that missing one night of reading will not turn you into someone who lives in a garment box under the freeway. (haha)Life is short. Misery is overrated. If law school is what you really want, then do it as yourself. Learn, question, make a precious lifelong friend, ignore the guy in the bow tie. -
A very skewed take on some of our future ambitions, but I really enjoyed the writing. I will show this one to my mum.
