All Request Day: Law School vs. Law Practice

Dave asks: if I don't like law school, does that mean I won't like the practice of law?

It's a great question. 

A law school classmate of mine, now practicing, espouses the theory that people who liked law school don't like practicing, and vice versa.  I'm not so sure I'm ready to sign on to that. 

I liked law school, but found myself hating it at moments.  I liked practicing, too.  But there were things about it I didn't like.  As far as workload, I think practicing is harder -- some of the things I had to do and the time I had to do them in made law school look easy.  But there's more motivation when you're practicing -- it's for a client, and you want to get things right, and you know why you're asking the questions or writing down your conclusions.  That motivation is strong, at least for me, and beats the law school motivation of seeking a grade. 

I see a few people who are happy in practice, and people who are overtly miserable, and people who are unhappy but are pretending to be happy.  I don't know how to compare that to law school.  There were a lot of people who were miserable, plus a bunch of people who pretended to be miserable, plus some people who liked it.   

I guess all I can advise is, tune into the things that make you happy, in work and in play.  And make sure you find a way to get them in your practice.  (And to make room for fun while in law school.)  You might not have them all right away, but if your mentors aren't happy, or if the path ahead of you leads to a place that doesn't look like what makes you happy, change course. 

Comments

[Bill Altreuter]

Law school was the most fun I'd ever had in my life to that point, and my present practice is, mostly, even more fun than that. They are different from each other, school and practice, and I can see hating one or the other. I know people who hated school and are fine with practicing: for the most part these are people who like the making money aspect of practice, adn are making piles of it.

[David Giacalone]

The concept of liking law school is totally foreign to me (and don't even ask about practice). I can imagine liking some of your classmates and the social context (mostly "we're all in the same boat", or "let's just party"), but I personally cannot recall more than a couple of people in 30 years telling me they liked the actual experience of classroom and study, or the relationship with professors.

The maxim while I was in school, to describe each of the three years respectively, was: Scare You to Death, Work You to Death, Bore You to Death. You put up with it to get the (no longer sheepskin) piece of paper at the end. And, then, most graduates put up with less-than-inspiring practice to get the green pieces of paper at the end of each pay period.

[PG]

Bill, out of curiosity, what do you do in your practice?

I am bored by contracts, yet this seem much more likely to typify actual practice than constitutional law is. Indeed, all the fun intellectual part of law school -- the arguing about what is the right thing for the law to do or be -- seems likely to disappear in Real Life, just as the fun intellectual part of undergrad did. Of course, there's the fun non-intellectual parts, like volunteering and doing law revue, and I hope that I'll remember to make them part of post-grad life, but I'd prefer to be living partly for my work, not just going to work because it pays for my hobbies.

[SF Librarian]

I really liked law school, but then I love research, and I spent most of my time in law school immersed in various large research projects. Given my penchant for research, it's not surprising that law librarianship turned out to be a better career choice for me. But I understand why others hated law school. The casebook/lecture method of teaching and the single examination system are not the best ways to ensure that students learn the skills that they will need for practice. And let's face it, the lecture method is one of the worst ways to keep adult learners engaged and interested over the long haul. I've just spent several days reading about educational theory and law school curriculum reform for one of my library school classes, and there are a lot of exciting proposals for making law school a more engaging and valuable experience. I think law schools need to think seriously about alternatives to the single-examination system. Even though I did very well within this system, I recognize that it does not afford students any opportunity for meaningful feedback from their instructors during the semester. There were plenty of people in law school who worked a lot harder in their courses than I did, but they just couldn't conquer the end-of-semester exam. Why not modify the system so that students get to work on a variety of assignments that emphasize different skill sets?

[OLS]

I'm one of the hated law school, love law practice types. And not because of the money.

I didn't really like the pseudo intellectualism of law school. I like working on real cases and helping real people. Law gives you the opportunity to get to know a little about a lot of different areas - you get a snapshot of your clients' professional lives. Or sometimes their personal lives, depending on what area you go into.

I think I like practising law because I like helping people. I like litigation because you can exercise your intelligence against another lawyer, but it rarely gets personal and you can laugh over it at the end of the day, regardless of the result. I suspect that, if I hadn't been a lawyer, I would have been a psychologist or something like that.

I think that to be happy in law practice, you have to consider your real reasons for going to law school in the first place and make sure that your work helps you to achieve those aims.

- OLS

[Ruby]

I agree this is much too simple a question for a complex subject. What kind of law do you like v. what kind of law you practice is an important factor in someone's answer ... as is what kind of background you had before you came to school, and what you tend to use as a default setting in terms of your reactions to certain stimuli. That said, it does seem that law school, unlike practice, seems to expect all things from all people and has no concept for the strengths and weaknesses that make up a team. And in that way it forms a unique hell. You can make the law review, be in the top five in your class, but if you try out for moot court and don't make the finals you are just not really that great and now everybody knows it. Likewise, you can be in the middle of the class, kick ass at your clerkship, win the regional trial competition, but your grades were not great so you are doomed to failure. One little slip up and everyone in your tiny community revels in the joy of writing you off ... crazy stuff, that, and in what other area does life work in that way? Where people are not allowed to admit they are great at one thing but not so great at another? I have a friend who described it this way: it is like the principal of a private junior high pulling aside the girl who is president of the student council, has a 4.0, gets into all of the GT programs, is pretty and fun and popular, and telling her "I'm sorry, you can't sing and you seem to be tone deaf, so we will let you muddle through (and we certainly appreciate your money) but you need to realize that you are never going to be great at life." It wouldn't happen, and we need to get to a place where we don't expect every law student to be every single thing in life. I am not sure how we solve that problem, or figure out a way to shift the joy people tend to feel in law school when people fail, but I do think that is one of the reasons why so many people hate law school. Craziness.

[Richard Ames]

Law school and law practice are nothing alike, at least they weren't for me. Law school was impractical, real heads-in-the-clouds stuff. Applying some holding to a given set of facts comprises, oh, about 3 percent of the business of law. The other 97% is made up of instinct, personal relationships, business savvy, the judges' mood on any given day, luck, an an honest escroe accounting. Law school is entirely useless regarding procedural matters, and so off-point for anyone who plans on practicing in STATE court rather than federal court that it's laughable (law schools see state courts the way liberals look at red necks). So fear not if you hate law school. When it's over, it is truely and forever over.

[Yeoman]

To start off with, I don't know that a large generalization like this can be widely applied. I doubt it.

Having said that, after the first couple of weeks, I really liked law school. Truth be known, law school is easy in comparison with some undergraduate degrees, and it was much easier and much more interesting than my undergraduate degree, which was in one of the hard sciences (some undergrad classes had an intentionally structured 50% failure rate).

I intensely dislike practicing law.

That may only say something about me. And here's why I suspect this is true for me.

I'm very bookish by nature, but I also like to operate basically alone, or in concert with one or two other people. I mind responsibility, but only in so far as it applies immediately to me or my family. I don't like fighting, and I don't like being responsible for people and causes to which I am simply assigned, and the burden of it eats me up.

So, I naturally liked law school, as it was very bookish and suited my intellectual curiousitiy and habits. I liked to read the cases and memorize the law, I never studied in study groups like some others think is necessary, and I just took to the study.

But in terms of practice, at least in litigation, it is mostly fighting and strategy on fighting. It is not an intellectual pursuit. The litigator is saddled with the heavy burden of other people's problems and hopes. I hate all that.

On the somewhat related thought that runs through here, it is true that law school does very little to prepare people for practicing law. Indeed, the law schools seem so devorced from practice that they're almost in different fields to a degree. In retrospect the best class I took in law school was Civil Procedure, as it was the most practical, and very well taught.

[Yeoman]

To add, just FWIW, I was in the very top percentage of my law school class. But I wish I'd never gone to law school now.

A cautionary tale? Perhaps, but perhaps only to this extent. Even while I was studying law and liking it, I had the suspicion that I would not like practicing it. I didn't want to be a litigator, that's just the job I could find. When I found the job, I thought I should give it a chance, as perhaps just the alien nature of fighting for a living was so strange to me that I needed to get used to it, etc.

Well, in hindsight, I should have quit practicing that first year when it was getting clearer that I wasn't going to like it. Better yet, I wish I'd quit that first week of law school, when I was unsteady about it, rather than take a three year vacation by hanging out there getting a JD.

[PG]

Yeoman,
Perhaps as the bookish, uninterested-in-fighting-for-causes sort, you would be better suited for academia or a law librarianship than for litigation.

[Yeoman]

PG, no doubt you are correct. But it largely seems lawyers end up where they end up, not where they hope to go.

[Doy]

Im planning to go to law school. Whats the best way to study and how to understand the classes and do well? Do you really have to spend every non class hour in the library? Thanks