So, you want to be a lawyer? …
I’ll apologize ahead of time to those of you taking a few minutes to read this – it is self-indulgent. Well, more self-indulgent. I am switching law firms and tackling some new exciting challenges (more about that in the future) – and that process, as I have worked at cleaning out my little comfortable office, prodded some reflections about this job now that I’m 18 years into it.
Might as well start from the beginning …
I don’t think I’m good at arguing. I think I’ve been curious and willing to ask questions. I enjoy the process of pulling apart my positions and those of others and trying to locate the soft spots to either shore them up or carve them up. Some see this as being a ‘devil’s advocate’ or a desire to debate for debate’s sake. It is neither. It is a drive to see how things work and how they can work better.
Looking back, I probably should have applied that drive to coding or engineering or medicine. Instead, I applied it to ideas. The response from teachers from the sixth grade on? You like arguing. You should be a lawyer. Who was I to question them?
I liked L.A. Law, Perry Mason, Law & Order (the O.G. one), Matlock, and all those Grisham books, so the teachers had to be right. I also liked trying to resolve disputes – not mine, of course – other ones.
I guess being a lawyer became my general aim but I went through high school and college being careful not to over-exert myself.
History and Political Science seemed to be a great major because I really liked stories and did not have a lot of great academic advice. History and Poly Sci is the most versatile major if you are undecided and want to stay that way with registrar-support. An academic advisor is theoretically the person who says, ‘get it together.’ I asked mine for advice on a friend inviting me to explore multi-level marketing. That’s a softball for an academic advisor, right? Turns out my guy was hocking some vitamin-scheme out of his trunk. Wasn’t the ‘get it together’ I probably needed.
If I had a nickel for every time I hear about someone doing study abroad or taking an exciting internship or gap year and say ‘I wish…’ well, I would have a lot of nickels. I have come to really value those guidance counselors and mentors that push people to not only think about things but to think about those things they have never thought about before. Much of life, it turns out, is trying to figure out the bounds of what you don’t know – not necessarily knowing it. One thing I know is that if your academic advisor sells vitamins on the side you should ask for a new advisor.
I did things that came easy – and even then they usually took a push, figurative or literal. I could string words together speaking or on the page, and it was surprising to find out that many people couldn’t. But journalism or creative writing? Well, I had never thought about those things. The brass rings I grabbed were the ones put directly in front of my face.
Moving closer to the point of this post…
I eventually decided, a few years after college, to go to law school. It was either that, be a counselor, or teach. In truth, I wanted to build furniture and be a sports announcer, but it seemed like spots were full at my uncles’ cabinet shop and the one radio person I approached for advice about how to get into his line of work said ‘don’t.’ I don’t remember asking a follow-up.
I walked into my old college president’s office – a respected mentor then and now – and asked what was involved in going to law school. He told me about schools, tiers, and the LSAT. I asked when the next test was, he told me, and I signed up. I bought a logic games book and did crosswords in pen. That was my preparation. I wanted to do well but I wasn’t a fanatic about it.
My mentor put me in contact with Dean Anthony Sutin and Angela Dales at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia. At the time, the law school was unaccredited which could have meant my mentor wanted to encourage me but not be a fanatic about it. Dean Sutin and Ms. Dales were wonderful – with him providing reading lists and her providing admissions information. I valued their help long after I knew that Appalachian was not the right fit for me. During my first year of law school at Richmond, a disturbed student went on a shooting spree at Appalachian and murdered both Tony and Angela.[1]
Going to law school a few years after college was a great decision – well if it had been a decision it would have been a great one. I had a different appreciation for school, for the expense of schooling, and for the opportunity to study – an opportunity that is, practically speaking, out of reach for many.
I saw students break down in tears when professors asked tough questions – students act like they had stepped into law school directly from a keg party – and students who came from a family legal tradition and had their futures well-charted. By law school, I understood that, at their toughest, facing questions in a classroom is far easier than working the night shift at a printing company, filling orders for SYSCO Foods, or putting on vinyl siding in the winter. The Socratic method of teaching and its questions were fun.[2] Yes, fun. I loved it.
Though I had changed a bit, I was still me in law school. I didn’t know what I didn’t know (oh, I needed to go out for law review last year?) and I grabbed brass rings to avoid bumping my head on them (moot court, trial advocacy competitions, things like that).
I finished law school, and then there was the bar exam. I think law school is like teaching a bear to balance on a little stool. You learn how to do something you’ve always done (standing) in a different way. There is about as much correlation between law school and the bar exam as there is between teaching a bear to balance on a stool and teaching a bear to jump through a flaming hoop. None. Oh, many might tell you differently. I’m telling you the truth.
If law school prepared students for the bar exam – then students would take the exam right at the end of law school. Oh, you thought they did. Not so. Law students graduate with mountains of debt (most students, that is), a diploma, and the booby prize of having to take a months-long bar exam prep course (costing thousands more) to actually do the job they just spent three years preparing for. It might seem that I find that silly. I do. I also think it is ok – not the debt part, but the idea that law school and the practice of law are two very different things. I believe everyone should go to law school – I don’t believe everyone should be an attorney.
A legal education – being forced to look at issues from both sides – translates into any profession. It provides a valuable skill set for navigating life. The practice of law makes use of that skill set but requires so much more. Or should require so much more.
Too many attorneys bought the ‘you are good at arguing, you should be a lawyer’ line. Still others watched Jack McCoy give a closing or Tom Cruise go up against Gene Hackman or Al Pacino and came away thinking that was the job for them.
The legal profession is not those things. Shakespeare wrote “[f]irst, we’ll kill all the lawyers.” But the speaker wasn’t worried whether there were enough fancy suits and cufflinks to go around. No, Dick the Butcher wanted to bring down the world and lawyers were the last line of defense for the common good. Granted, that is tough to imagine when flipping from one Camp Lejeune ad to another or driving past a personal injury billboard – but it is supposed to be the real job. One that is tough, and one they don’t prepare you for in law school.
Lawyers should be the people willing to take on other people’s problems as their own and make arguments that others can’t. Along the way, there might be financial success or there might not –but regardless, the work is supposed to be the focus. In a way, the legal profession and medical profession are similar in that they are jobs where success or failure in a particular situation can have very little to do with the quality of work performed. Your worth is not measured by wins and losses because sometimes great work means simply less of a loss. To practice, you have to understand that and try to remember it when people around you are clapping like seals and acting like legal practice is akin to building widgets.
In practicing law, if you are doing it right, some of your best work will be done in service of a losing cause and some of your worst might be done for a win. That’s not the case with a lot of jobs.
I guess the real point of all of this is to simply remind myself in a public way about the way this job is supposed to work – where the focus is supposed to be – and the circuitous route it sometimes takes for us all to get to wherever we are. I bet whatever you do for work and the way you got to this moment is fairly similar. Perhaps if we spend more time reminding each other of that we will all be better off.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method