Law Schools

Dear God, Don't Go To Law School Unless You Know What Lawyers Do

Also don't go because you like "analysis," or because you want to "help."

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A couple of days ago, Shane Ferro offered her advice on how to choose whether or not to go to law school. She wrote, in pertinent part: “A lot of people who are lawyers will tell you that you should only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer. This is bullshit advice unless you happen to know intimately what it means to be a lawyer.”

Well then! Allow me to retort.

You should not go to law school unless you are pretty sure you want to be a lawyer. And if you don’t know what “be a lawyer” really means, you should absolutely invest time and energy figuring out what that means long before you give any one of these law schools an application fee.

Law schools want you to believe that you go to law school to learn how to be a lawyer. That is false. That is their great trick. That is their origin lie. Law schools do nothing of the sort.

A law school doesn’t teach you what it’s like to be a lawyer any more than having a niece teaches you what it’s like to be a parent. In both cases, YOU CAN GO HOME. You can leave your theoretical kids or theoretical clients to someone else’s ultimate responsibility. Like an actual parent, the job of a practicing attorney involves a lot less “let’s go on an adventure,” and a lot more “oh my God, if you don’t shut up I’m going to murder you.”

Law schools thrive on the common misconception that the life of a lawyer involves lots of… thinking. Check out this line from Ferro’s piece:

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What a lawyer does, mostly, is close-read long pages of text that are very dry and analyze them. Then they argue over whether the word “and” actually means “and,” or, alternatively, means “or.”

No. Noooooo. That’s what law students do. That’s what judges and their clerks do. It can be dry, but it can be intellectually fascinating and stimulating and… HAS NOTHING AT ALL to do with client representation.

If you like “reading” and “analysis” and “debate” and “critical reasoning,” being a practicing attorney is probably not for you. Oh, you’ll get to do that sometimes, and you’ll cherish the hell out of those moments. But nobody, no client is paying you to THINK. And if you do “think” there’s actually a very small chance that the client will listen.

No, clients are paying you to organize. They’re paying you to file this paper with that person and that paper with this institution. They’re paying you to do their homework so they can spend their time doing fun things like… thinking and making money.

“Legal research,” that part where you read lots of pages and parse the difference between synonyms, is such a rare opportunity for most lawyers that it’s a GIFT when it comes around. “Holy crap, I spent the whole day thinking about the law! And I could actually bill for it. I’m so happy!” There are very few lawyers whose practice involves a high amount of what a law student has been told is “lawyering,” and those jobs are coveted. Appellate litigators, corporate structuring attorneys, tax lawyers for multi-national businesses. Sure, most law students would love to be that kind of lawyer. In related news I’d love to play centerfield for the Mets.

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But for most lawyers, their skill is not in being the most creative legal thinkers in the world. Their skill is serving up solutions perfectly tailored to their clients specific needs and desires, and then showing up to battle having put their client’s s**t together. “Oh, you want to kill your neighbor’s tree? Um, okay, first, you need to file this complaint with the zoning board and… wait, you already cut it down? Alright… when the cops come you’re going to want to fill out this bail application and…”

Law school teaches almost NONE of that. Here are some law school classes that would be offered if schools were serious about preparing people to become practicing attorneys:

“Rainmaking: How to convince rich white guys to tell you their secrets if you are not already a rich white guy.”
“Get The Hell Out Of My Office: How to spot a dogs**t case that will never pay out.”
“Templates: How to find the ones that are right for you.”
“Wellness Seminar: What to do when the state murders your client and you feel kind of responsible.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are lawyers, many of them, who honestly love what they do. It’s a noble and prestigious profession that serves a critical purpose in our society.

And Ferro makes an excellent point that if you don’t know a lawyer — if you are not pretty much related to one — it’s really hard to get a sense of what being a lawyer is really like. But the difficulty in knowing what lawyers “really do” is a fault with the legal profession, and a fault that law schools do not help you overcome. Before committing three years and potentially a quarter-million dollars to the effort, it’s really incumbent on the prospective student to find a way to overcome this deficiency.

Absent personal connections with practicing attorneys, I always like to point out that “court” is “free.” YOU CAN JUST GO THERE. You can sit in the galley for days and days just listening to what lawyers do, how they prepare, what kinds of questions they get asked, and what seems relevant. Obviously, actual trials are as rare for lawyers as any other “fun” aspect of law, but at least it’s an aspect of being a lawyer you can literally see for yourself. You don’t have to watch that on T.V. or read about it. You can go see motion practice, in action!

If you happened to go to an undergraduate institution that is attached to a law school, you can also approach the law school career services offices and inquire about shadowing an alumni lawyer for a day. Note, I said “career services,” not “admissions charlatans.” Going to an admissions person is like going up to a hungry wolf and saying “I’m succulent and defenseless.”

And, of course, there’s always the lightly-paid internship. That’s, I know, the option of the privileged who can afford poverty, and I know most law firms don’t take college-educated interns. But some do. And some legal services organizations do. Hell, I know a person who took a job as a receptionist at a law firm just to get a feel for it before she took the plunge into law school.

It’s extremely hard to get a handle on what lawyers do before you actually become one because the law school mafia has kind of set it up that way. They want to be the gatekeepers to this kind of knowledge, so you have to pay them before they bring out the e-Meter and tell you how many Thetans you have.

But you should try. You should try really hard to know if you want to be a lawyer before you go to law school. Because law school is just going to spend three years telling you what it’s like to be a law professor, and by the time you’re done they’ll have all of your money.

Earlier: Another Person Giving You Advice About Going to Law School

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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