Any advice for an aspiring lawyer?
If you’re asking for advice on getting into law school, here’s a pretty good thread on the topic. It helped me out; I’m a 1L right now at a great school. Good luck to you!
The advice of most lawyers:
“Don’t do it.”
That being said, before you go to law school, be really sure you want to be a lawyer. Many people seem to go to law school because they don’t know what else to do, and figure, “Hey, a law degree can help in many fields.” A person should go to law school because they want to be a lawyer, and for no other reason. I’ve had many friends that got a “joint degree”, JD/MBA. Let’s face it, those folks weren’t getting a joint degree in order to help their legal skills. Not a single one is still practicing law, and every single one says they should have just got the MBA, and skipped the JD part.
The only reason to go to law school is if you really want to be a lawyer in a very obsessive sort of way. Don’t do it just to try it, if you don’t like law, being a lawyer if awful. I happen to like it, but I know lots who regret it.
Or as one speaker at my graduation said “Everyone has to be somewhere, and law school seemed as good a place as any.”
But, yes, figure out of you want to be in law school and how much you really want that and then figure out if you want to be a lawyer and how much you really want that, and weigh that against the cost in money and time it takes.
I suppose I generally agree, but I can tell you that regardless of what the practice is like (I’ve only been at it for two months), law school itself is a blast.
–Cliffy, Esq.
Let me disagree about the motivation to attend law school and the purposes of a legal education. A legal education is a first step in pursuing any number of careers, including the practice of law. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that if you go to law school you must be a practicing lawyer and that if you are not convinced that you want to be a practicing lawyer you should not go to law school. While you should probably not go to law school because you can’t think of any thing else to do, the intellectual rigor of a legal education should serve a person well no mater what they chose to do with their life.
I know many more middle age guys (of both genders) who wish they had taken a shot at law school than I do lawyers who hate what they have done for the last 20 or 30 years and wish they had taken some other path. Of the people I graduated with in the mid 1960s, I doubt if 50% went into the actual practice. The others are FBI agents, priests and ministers, corporate officers, bankers, real estate brokers, public and private administrators, politicians and Lord knows what else. Ever one of them that I have spoken to is convinced that the systems of thinking that they learned in law school have been critical to success in the field he/she chose.
Don’t let the fact that you are not sure you want a career in the law scare you off.
Well, I’m a programmer now and it looks like I’m gonna get laid off in about 8-12 months as soon as the company that just bought my company figures out how to kick us all to the curb.
I’m thinkin’ that I could do some environmental law or something. I’ve got a degree in chemistry already. Then I’ll move into politics. I’ve no doubt I’ll be so popular that I’ll get elected to be Ruler of the World. It’ll be great.
Vote for me and I’ll try to make a World Dopefest Day!!! I promise.
Anyway, I’m gonna run through this practice LSAT this weekend. What I’ve read on the Inet tells me I need to have this test officially taken by the end of next month if I want to enroll in classes next fall. Is that correct or is there a little bit of give on that deadline.
This belongs in the “IMHO” forum, so I’ll move it for you…
Jill
Yes. Always read the fine print. Stuff like “Got a factual question for the Teeming Millions…” is important.
Off to IMHO.
heh. Hope you don’t have any preconceived notions about the glamor of environmental law…it’s not all about cracking down on Big Business for getting oil on the grebes. More like, “you’re representing a big factory that produces industrial waste and dumps it into the local river. A child has died, and your factory is being sued. Assuming X is the number of children who will die annually if your factory keeps dumping, and the average settlement is Y, figure out how many children you would have to kill every year to make paying settlements less cost-effective than disposing of your waste responsibly.”
Pretty chilly, eh. Anyway, regarding the OP: like the others said, be sure it’s what you want to do. Also, consider what kind of person you are, and what kind of person you want to be. Maintaining your humanity through law school is harder than you might think.
Sincerely,
Max Torque, 3L
I would join Spavined Gelding’s opinion, and also Cliffy’s opinion.
Yes, I know several people who went through law school and then found they didn’t like the practice of law enough to stay with it as a career - but they all found rewarding alternatives, and it’s easy to see that their legal training helped them get to those other careers. [Note: I don’t know any law/MBA half-elves. I expect they’re in a special case.]
Like **Cliffy,**I had a blast at law school! Intellectual stimulation, beer, cute smart girls, beer, and oh, did I mention beer?
One bit of advice: most people go to law school with the trial lawyer as their paradigm. Actually, the number of lawyers who go to court regularly is very much a minority of the bar, in my experience. Most lawyers end up doing solicitor work, not barrister work. I’ve had to reassure potential law students who say something like: “I think I’d like the law, but I don’t like public speaking, so I couldn’t go to court, so maybe I shouldn’t go to law school.”
That’s pure piffle. A law degree can equip you for a wide variety of legal work and you may never see the inside of a courtroom for years, if you’re not interested in that aspect of the law.
On the other hand, I personally love court work (appellate stuff, mainly - I’m not that interested in trial work). And I’m surprised by that - when I went to law school, I was thinking of solicitor type work.
I guess my advice boils down to: go into it with an open mind, keep your options open, and don’t abuse your liver too much.
Scott Turow, the author of Presumed Innocent and other novels, wrote an absolutely fascinating book,One L about his first year at Harvard Law School. I am a layman but found it really absorbing. Hope your library has a copy.
I’m not a big fan of the “go to law school and you can choose to do something else with it later” camp. That is, if you currently know that you like something else. In most (not all) such cases, I’d suggest applying the time and money directly towards your interest, instead of towards law school.
Having said that, law school can be viewed simply as a generalized master’s degree. And in the US, there are legal implications of just about every aspect of your life that you might otherwise be unaware of. So it is not entirely without interest or use.
Don’t plan on doing any particular kind of law until you have studied it and gotten some experience at it. The vast majority of lawyering is not exactly thrilling. Basically spent in the library (on the computer these days) or on the phone. Some court work is interesting. Other is frustrating and a downright waste of time. (Go over to the 11th floor of the Daley Center for an open [cattle] call to experience the thrill of “law in action.”) Moreover, no matter how much you might want to work in a particular field, there’s no guarantee that someone will hire you to do it.
If you want to do environmental law but don’t want to be a corporate whore, consider working for a governmental agency. You’ll pe paid less than private practice or corporate, but there are other benefits to government work. Much public interst law is very poorly paying, yet there is tremendous competition for the spots. Fine, if you find it sufficiently rewarding and do not need the salary to retire school debt.
Also, realize that the quality of life for lawyers at private law firms is not for everyone.
I personally feel the value of law school education is vastly overrated. Law school grads are pretty much incompetent to practice law until they get sufficient on-the-job training at their clients’ expense. Basically they teach you a superficial vocabulary for a number of isolated topics, while providing way too little instruction/experience in what it actually means to be a lawyer. It is far too easy to graduate from law school without ever having drafted (perhaps even seen) a complaint or an answer, entered a courthouse, dealt with court clerks, discussed billing, etc. In the Dinsdaleverse, law school would be a one year accelerated program followed by one or two years of clinical study.
If you are going to law school, I recommend going to the best law school you can get into - but also weigh this against piling up more debt than you need to. If your grades and test scores are not that great, you may end up going to a lower-tier school. No matter how good your grades are, the school name will not be much help when looking for a job. Meanwhile, some mediocre (by rep) private law schools can be pretty pricey. The last thing you want is to graduate, get a low paying unfulfilling job, and have a pile of debt to pay off.
If you go to school, look for opportunities to get experience.
Clerk for a local firm (usually in 2d or 3d year).
In most states 2d-3d years can get a limited license to practice and you can get internships with local gov’t offices and interest groups.
Build up a relationship with a prof which can help in the future.
Explore the possibility of teaching or research internships to help defray the costs of tuition, etc.
See if your school has a program for dual degrees. When I went to law school, I simultaneously got a masters’ in public admin simply by going summers and taking a slightly higher courseload. Limited amount of credits were applied to both degrees. Other folk spent an extra year and got an MBA. This will increase your flexibility and marketability. I’m a strong advocate of, when possible, getting your advanced education out of the way at one time. While it is possible to go back to school either part- or full-time, it can bee difficut when you are used to a certain income, or have the stresses/demands of work, a family, a home, etc.
Oops, I forgot. You are at an advantage having a useful undergrad degree. Lawyers with knowledge in the hard sciences are generally in some demand. Far better off than a law grad with mediocre grades and a BA in speech com or some such.
Dinsdale reminded me of something: if you’re serious about going to law school and want to do something related to your chosen field of chemistry, consider patent law. Chemical patents are big business these days, so it’s a field in need of talented people. But, be warned, patent work is very very very tedious.
Yeah, no doubt. Especially compared to the thrill a minute world that is contract litigation. Or stiffs and gifts (estate law). Or …
Wherever there’s good, there’s also bad. I think I want to be a trial attorney. In order to do that, though, I must wade through the absolute most mind numbingly boring class in the history of the Milky Way: Civil Procedure.
Yes, Civil Procedure. A class where you get cases with great setups like “X murders Y, a blind cripple deaf mute using a piece of rope and a swizzle stick. In the meantime, he’s president of a corporation that dumped 500,000 tons of raw sewage onto Y’s backyard just because he could.”
Then the issue is “Must Y invoke his 12(b)(6) argument against X before defending with a Rule 9(g) and can that be claimed affirmatively through a Rule 8© or should it come after the 12(b)(6) and, if so, how long will he have to file the appeal with a writ?”
I have no idea what I just said there. Then again, I have no idea what the hell I’m learning in Civil Procedures. But I’m pretty sure I need to learn it.
One point that needs to be emphasized is that the actual day to day practice of an attorney is like nothing you may have seen on television or in a movie. As a personal aside, I’m counting the minutes until Ally McBeal no longer graces the primetime airwaves.
Even litigators spend a lot more of their time in meetings, on the phone, drafting and reviewing documents, and doing research then any of the glamorous activities typically depicted in the media. At a private firm, add to this the crazy billing requirements and long working hours, business development, and CLE.
Its been said already in this thread, but if its something you are really interested in, pursue a career in the law. If this is a means to an end - aim directly for the end…
In the thread Gadarene kindly linked, I posted a bunch of replies, all of which still stand. A few more pointers, however.
Since July 2000, I’ve started a new job and, as of August 2001, been laid off from same. Fortunately it was more $$ than I’d ever made before, so I’m not in a total panic. The point is that an awful lot of folks go to law school as a backstop, but we have no way of what the economy will be like three years down the road. I applied for law school in fall of 1989, as the Reagan Boom was tanking; when I emerged in 1994 (I deferred admission for one year to teach English in Japan), the market was pretty disastrous. I’m afraid we may be entering a similar cycle now - I’ve heard applications are up everywhere, just as they were in '89.
Environmental law is a burgeoning field, which may protect you from a hiring downturn, but the positions that pay well are those working for private industry. If you’re a hard-core environmentalist, that may be a difficult compromise to make. Not to exaggerate The Evil Corporate Defenders - much of private environmental practice consists of helping (or getting) your client to comply with the law. But do take time to research and understand the dynamics of your particular desired specialty.
If you want to go the public-interest route (like Jodi, for example), I’d highly recommend looking at state schools with strong environmental law programs. If you know in advance that you won’t be happy working in the private sector, make your law degree as cheap as possible so you won’t get sucked in by accident. These days, three years of private law school, including housing, board, transportation, interview suits, and everything, can easily cost in the $140,000 range. In many places, that’s a house. State schools often offer quality education for much less. (Also, state schools are more likely to offer night classes, if you want to earn-n-learn.)
Oh, and Dinsdale is quite right about the quality and usefulness of law school for being a lawyer. I got the degree mainly because I liked learning the legal mode of analysis; the fact that at graduation I was all but useless for actual legal practice didn’t faze me. The reality is that most of the skills you will need on a day-to-day basis can only be learned by doing, and at the top private firms, you in essence are an intern at an exorbitant salary (and commensurately exorbitant work hours).
One last point: it’s normal for people to hate law school. The old saw has some truth to it: those who like law school tend to hate practice and vice versa. If, however, you not only hate law school but aren’t doing well despite your best efforts, for your sanity’s sake get out! “Thinking like a lawyer” is a peculiar endeavor, and not one to which everyone is inclined (thank god! :D). I’ve seen people in torment trying to wedge themselves into this profession and it is not worth it.
Oh dear, I’m sounding very down again. I’m really not - I’m glad I got my law degree, and although the market’s not great right now I’m a cheap date, looking to leave law anyway and can be pretty flexible. That’s the beauty of law - if, like, me, you’re not sure what you want to be when you grow up, you can treat it as a “general masters’ degree” (what a great description, Dinsdale). As I was leaving my firm (which handled my layoff as graciously as possible), one of the partners said to me, “I don’t know a single person who regrets leaving the practice of law - no matter how much they liked it.” Sure, you can view that negatively, but I see it as something to look forward to.
Best of luck
Oxy, f/k/a Xtnjohnson