Stay of Execution

A Summary Of What I Have Written About Going To Law School

1) Dont' go to law school just because you're not really sure what else to do.  It's too expensive for that, and debt is a big, bad thing that you need to think hard and carefully about before you load yourself up with it. 

2) The legal world attracts risk-averse, heirarchical, highly competitive types.  They frame a lot of the conversations about the profession.  Therefore, a lot of default expectations about where you should go to law school, what you should do while you're there (e.g. law review), and what kind of job you should knock yourself out to get after school, have to do not with the substance of the activity, not with whether it fits your personality, interests, or skills, but on the perceived "prestige" and exclusivity of the choice.  I maintain that this is a bad way to make decisions about your life. 

3) Law school is really fun.  I loved it.  It's hard, in a good way.  It can help you think very precisely.  You'll understand our government better than you ever did, and you'll come away with great respect for the system we've built.  (And you'll probably mourn harder the damage we're doing to due process with bills like this.) Learning to read statutes and legal language is useful: it means nobody can bully you.  You can parse out problems in a great way.  But these skills are not necessary to living a happy and productive life.  Incurring a great deal of debt to get them is not a good idea, unless you are certain that you can pay off that debt without doing something that you hate.

4) Most lawyers at big law firms hate it, wouldn't recommend it for their children, and wouldn't go to law school if they had it to do over again.  Pay attention to that.  Read this article.  It is these same people who mark this career path as extremely prestigious.  But they wouldn't do it again.  One speculates whether "prestige" is something that unhappy people use to prop up decisions that they regret. 

5) The happy lawyers that I know tend to be those in small or solo practices, those who are public defenders or prosecutors and who feel a strong sense of mission to their work.  The business model of the billable hour and the culture at large law firms makes it hard to have a balanced life, and lawyers at big firms are often unhappy.  This is consistent with happiness research, that suggests that people who spend their time doing things that connect them to other people, and that give them a concrete sense of helping other people and being part of a larger community, are more content in their lives.  Above basic subsistence levels, neither money nor "prestige" contributes to a sense of well-being.  We are wired to constantly chase things that won't make us feel better.  To be content, we need to recognize these tendencies, and not jump on the hamster wheel and try to run faster. 

6) I think the legal profession is often dishonest to aspiring lawyers, in what we fail to tell them.   The most shameful way is ignoring the impact of debt on the freedom of young people to shape their own destinies.  You have a lot fewer options if you need to service $150,000 of debt than if you don't have any, or even if you only have $40,000.  The platitudes about a law degree "opening lots of doors" is incomplete if it doesn't acknowledge all the doors that an extraordinary debt load closes. 

7) My posts about the culture of the legal profession are gathered here, and my posts about my own professional journey are here. 

Do You Miss The Law?

I had breakfast with my friend T, who was something of a good-natured nemesis of mine in law school.  I quit law review in disgust; he became the Editor in Chief.  I butted heads with lots of people, things, and concepts in law school, and he was always placid, wise, and accepting while I was impatient and frustrated and overwrought.  We would drink gin and tonics and argue with one another fairly regularly.  Anyway, he's down in a Big City and just left work at Anonymous Law Firm to take a more interesting job at a much smaller firm, and came home for a few days between gigs.

"Do you miss the law?" he asked me. 

No, I said, automatically.  Then I wondered whether it was true.  Well, I said, not very much.  There's a certain kind of thinking that you get to do when you practice law, a certain kind of puzzling through complicated concepts, with precision and rigor, that I do miss.  That's really fun.  And I don't have an outlet for that anymore.  I guess I have a little bit of intellectual hunger now.  I like my life, a whole lot.  But, yes, there's something I really liked about practicing law that I haven't found a substitute for yet. 

I'm reading a book called Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived.  The chapter I'm on right now is about something called "vital engagement."  Basically it is a combination of engrossment -- the pleasurable experiential state of becoming absorbed in something that is challenging but not frustrating, that requires your full engagement and activates skills and traits that you're proud of in yourself -- and a sense of purpose or vital meaning or contribution.  You can be engrossed in a game of foosball, but you won't feel that sense of larger social purpose or meaning.  People who regularly are engrossed in something they feel is worthwhile are the happiest people, it seems.

And I do think that law, at its noblest, can offer that to some people.  Certainly the nature of the work can be engrossing, challenging, and absorbing.  And doing it well can be a calling, and can connect you to a sense of greater good.  You need to be able to choose your matters -- not everything lawyers work on will strike a chord with your own sense of purpose and value and meaning.  But there are many paths of law practice that satisfy both of these components of vital engagement. 

I don't miss practicing law, or think about it very often, so my friend's question took me by surprise.  Writing engrosses me, as does coaching, and in both cases I think there can be some value to the world beyond my own absorbtion in the activity.  But I do admit there's a specific kind of thinking that you do in the practice of law that I really enjoy, and that's not part of my life these days. 

They're Hiring

If you've always wanted to work for Anonymous Lawyer, now you can.  Think of the money, the prestige! 

If You're Planning Your Law Career, Read This

Jill writes her observations about working at a law firm.  What she has to say strikes me as very wise, particularly:

I learned that it might be wise to be wary of organizations bottom-heavy with young, energetic people and run by a few older people with a lot of money and/or power.

And this:

I seriously no longer believe that what doesn't kill people makes them stronger. It can leave them weaker, more cynical, more fearful, smaller, more pessimistic and less able to see real opportunities for good.

And this:

And also, everybody's special.....Don't let anybody lure you into a hellish situation because you're special or they're special or hell will make you more special.

Read the whole thing.  She gives some questions that are worth considering before you start convincing yourself to ignore some of your misgivings in order to work in a prestigious, luxurious, elite law firm. 

LexThinking

Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann are extending on the LexThink project we did together last April.  They've put together an eclectic and free-ranging two-day conference on legal weblogging, and, like last time, have brought together some very smart and interesting people.  I'd been hoping to attend but unfortunately it conflicts with a good friend's wedding.  (I still haven't met Evan Schaeffer, darn it!)  I'll be watching and reading about it with interest.   Sign up for BlawgThink by emailing Matt or Dennis directly.  And I'll see you at the next one.    

Legal Training

On Friday night there was a dinner for PopTech speakers and organizers.  I asked one of them to give me a thumbnail sketch of his talk and almost immediately started challenging him.  We had a friendly but fairly probing back-and-forth.  It took the form of me questioning him, and him answering me, and me finding fault with his answers, and asking him to try again.  It was a bit like a professor grilling a law student with the Socratic method.  I liked what he had to say, and agreed with it at core, but thought he was being imprecise with his language, and wanted to push around to find the edges of his philosophy.  The topic was property, and I was trying to get him to drill down into the rights and obligations he thought were appropriate, and those he wanted to reject.  You can't just dismiss the concept of "property," after all.  It's a bundle of rights, and all that.   He was gracious about my challenges, assuring me he enjoyed being pushed, and although the subject matter was fairly abstract, the tone was warm and friendly. 

There was a small group involved in the conversation, although the primary back and forth was the two of us.  One of the fellows in the circle was a first-year law student, listening with big ears.  (Another was my friend S, who pulled me aside afterwards and said, "I love your mind.  I just love to watch you think."   That compliment, along with the conversation itself, was one of the highlights of my weekend.  I haven't gotten to think, where other people could watch and join in, for a long time.  I enjoy it.)  Partway through the conversation I began to wonder if I was being a legalistic ass.  Still, I didn't want to let go of my questions.  I didn't think his answers were clear.  I also began to notice that I found him very attractive.  I realized the attraction was distracting me, and I couldn't be sure whether I really liked his ideas or just his eyes.  I had to concentrate on what we were saying, while fighting the urge to reach out and touch his arm. 

A Morning In Court

I spent the morning in state court, beginning the project I discussed with my mentor, the chief justice.  I couldn't decide how to dress, first of all.  I didn't want to look like a lawyer.  I didn't really want to look like a client, either.  What is neutral clothing for a day in court, I wondered.  (Half of my closet is full of business apparel, clothes suitable for air-conditioned conference rooms with a view of the ocean.  I don't know what I'm going to do with those clothes.)   

Anyway, I picked out an outfit that was neither businessy nor casual, and packed up my computer and went to court.  Nobody had computers; the black leather bag marked me as an outsider.  Although they scanned it through the metal detector, nobody asked me about my bag or my cell phone.  They ask you whether you have a cell phone before you go to bankruptcy court, and if you have one, they ask you whether you are an attorney.  Attorneys get to bring cell phones in (turned off, of course), but nobody else does.  I never understood that small privilege, and had been wondering whether to admit being an attorney or disclaim my bar privileges if they asked me today.  But they didn't seem to care. 

I watched part of a divorce proceeding that I'm not sure I was supposed to be witnessing, and then went down to the criminal court to watch.  I'll be writing my impressions up later.  Since I've hardly spent any time in district court I watched the process as an outsider.  One thing I noticed was that the phalanx of attorneys representing the DA were almost all women (8 out of 9) and almost all appeared to be under 30 (7 out of 9).   All of the criminal lawyers were men, and varied in age.  Is this a typical arrangement? 

Assignment

I've just had lunch with my long-time mentor, a very smart and thoughtful woman who was a justice on the Maine Supreme Court when we first met, and has since become the Chief Justice.  We talked about lots of things.  I filled her in on my career meanderings over the past year and a half.  She talked about what she sees managing the court system for the state, and how she's trying to set priorities given the way-too-scarce resources the legislature allocates to the judicial system. 

How could someone like me help you? I asked her.  She said, "I'm not sure."  As we were talking about some other things she talked about the fact that approximately half of the people in the courts are there representing themselves, and some of those people don't read, and all of them are overwhelmed and terrified and don't know their way around.  She's thinking a lot about how to help them navigate the legal system, and understand what to expect.  She wants to develop some resources for them that will explain the process.  I said, "What if I spent a day a month in a different courtroom and watched and wrote about what I see?"  That would be great, she said.  She said attorneys aren't afraid to talk to her, exactly, but they're always deferential and very careful when they do.  So I'm going to venture, wide-eyed, into some of the courtrooms I never went into as an attorney, and see what I learn. 

How Not To Improve Communications

1) Decide you should create a group listserv.  Don't ask permission.  Add a group of people to it, because you're certain they will appreciate it.  You know how valuable this newfangled tool can be. 

2) Send the first email to the group, announcing the existence of the listserv.  Make this announcement email very, very long -- about 700 words is good --  and bury the technical information about the listserv (how to unsubscribe, for example, or the distinction between replying to individuals and replying to everyone in the group) deep in the body. 

3) Name the listserv something presumptive and possibly slightly offensive to some of people you decided to include as members.

4) Sit back and watch the fun as neophyte users reply, again and again, all day long, saying things like "sign me up for the list!" or "I think we should name it something else" or "great idea!" filling up the boxes of untold strangers with a deluge of unwanted email.

This just happened to me, when the forward-looking Maine Bar Association decided to create a Young Lawyers listserv.  Although they named it "Young Lawyers," I think they meant "lawyers recently admitted to the Maine Bar."  They didn't actually tell us what the criteria for inclusion was.  They didn't tell us much.  (What they did tell us, a huge bunch of people didn't read.)  They did tell us that this effort would "improve communications."  I eagerly await the promised improvement.      

What You Worship

Via PJM, I just read the transcript of David Foster Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon. Even if you think he's irritating, which I do about half the time, this is worth reading.   

Here's the part I really liked:

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.  Everybody worships.  The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.  It's the truth.  Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.  And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already.  It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story.  The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious.  They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're   doing.

I've had a series of conversations lately about this, in connection with my own professional reflections, about which maybe I'll write more later.  I didn't think I worshipped my intellect, but I was beginning to.  I think it's hard to be a lawyer without a certain amount of intellect -worshipping.  I didn't think I worshipped money or power, but walking away from a path that promised those things has been harder than I wish it were. 

But the point David Foster Wallace makes is so important.  We get to choose, each day, what to worship.  It's good to recognize that we have that choice.  And it's good to consider whether choosing something that will eat us alive makes any sense at all.