You Can't Know

Will Baude is trying to figure out where to go to law school. Here's the thing, Will. You can't know before you embark on a new journey just what are going to turn out to be the essential features of the journey.

Remember trying to choose what college to go to? I eliminated places for absurd reasons, and pored over things that didn't ultimately matter to me much at all (student/teacher ratios, I remember knowing a lot about, and cafeteria eating plans, as though those things would matter). I wimped out and turned down UC Berkeley even though when on the campus I felt delighted and excited and as though I was somehow truly 'home'. I chose Yale over Harvard, where I'd always expected to go, because I met some really stuffy people while visiting Harvard and some really cool ones while visiting Yale, and because at the Yale sailing center I could sail on waves while at Harvard I'd be sailing on a shifty river all the time. These were not good reasons (although sailing on waves is pretty fun). How did you pick your school? Were the criteria you thought were important when you were 18 what you would describe as the distinguishing features of your undergraduate experience when you were graduating?

It's true of choosing an employer, too, I daresay. I think about all the law students trying to distinguish among firms and wonder if they have enough information to make a decision about what will turn out to matter in their daily life practicing law. You can't know, going in. You just leap, and if you turn out to be wrong, you make a change and the change is made on the basis of what you've learned really does matter to you.

I expect Will will not need to change schools. He seems to know himself pretty well. Maybe this advice doesn't apply to you, Will, because you're smarter than I've ever been and you've got some pretty clear self-knowledge going on. But let me advocate for the gut's role in your decision. The brain is all well and good and you can make your two-column list of the student-teacher ratios and the cafeteria eating plans at all your schools but I think you'll discover, once you're happily enrolled where you're going to end up, that the best features of your school were invisible to you when you were trying to imagine them.

[There's lots of talk about law school rankings right now and some good things being said about their importance or lack thereof as a signalling factor for students and employers and professors. I've already said my piece about all that, I think, so am not going to chime in.]

Comments

[David Giacalone]

Well said, Sherry! For a change, I have nothing to add.

[Jim]

My stated reason for choosing the undergrad school that I chose was that it was way more affordable than the Ivy League alternative. That's true, but when I look back, I realize that other reason I chose as I did was that I visited on a perfect spring day that had sun, blue sky and happy students everywhere. But, it's from poorly reasoned choices like that that lives are changed. I certainly don't regret my choice.

[UCL]

Having read your 9/17/03 post in which you criticized Harvard law graduates, and speaking as a non-Ivy League graduate myself, I have to say that I agree with 90% of what you stated there. The 10% of disagreement comes from what I'd say is an overgeneralization regarding Ivy Leaguers.

I have met a few who are arrogant and who think they are better lawyers than they really are simply because of their degree. But I also know a few Ivy Leaguers who went to top notch schools, have excellent "pedigrees," and actually ARE damn good lawyers. Again, plenty who are not, but plenty who are also. One's quality as a lawyer is entirely dependent on individual skills, intelligence (however you wish to define that word), and (among the most important) motivation to be a good lawyer. These qualities exist in people who choose to go to Yale law school, and people who end up at 4th-tier California Western law school, believe it or not.

And in further defense of Yalies in particular, a good friend of mine is a Yale law grad who went to law school at the same time I did. When we chatted one day and compared notes after our first years were over, this Yalie ever so humbly declared to me that em's 1st year at Yale had taught em absolutely nothing compared to what I had learned at my 1st-tier (but not Top 10) school, primarily because Yale students aren't graded as 1Ls and em didn't study all that hard as a result. I know em was being overly modest and exaggerating, but such humbleness is at least one counter-example to what many complain of as pervasive Ivy League arrogance.

[WAB]

My experience was similar to Jim's, though with the added consideration that the Ivy League choice meant living at home while the state university allowed living away. I have also never regret the choice. As for Old Ivy, for me the only thing wrong with Yale is New Haven. (Though as I learned on a visit a week ago, the restaurant selections have improved markedly since I taught there many years ago).