Going To Law School

what I need is basically someone who is willing to take me on as an NQ but accept that I've probably regressed to the level of a second year trainee. the worst thing is, I know 3 months hard work in a law firm would bring me right back up to speed it's just communicating this to employers without sounding like 'herp derp I've actually forgotten a lot of my training and I'm not commercially aware no more'

can you just bluff it, get in the door and then quietly bring yourself back up to speed

nb I know nothing about how any of this works

gah New York Civil Practice in 3rd year is like the part where you get to the top of the mountain and you can see the valley of shit below.

Volunteered as a fake-witness this weekend for the mock trial that was a Fourth-Year friend's Civil Litigation final. Was actually kind of fun, notwithstanding the fact that I was mostly doing it to avoid studying for Civil Property/Droit des biens or contemplating doctrinal nuances of arguments for and against no-fault product liability regimes in Quebec.

Midterms hit a week from tomorrow. Civil Property / Torts / Constitutional M / W / F, Contracts the following Tuesday. It's about to get very interesting... :S

Thank the lord this is almost over. I was just diagnosed with dyspraxia - I always thought I was just lazy and spacey (or as the fam would say, 'useless'), but makes sense considering the utter hell this experience has been. The only classes I've done well in require creative legal thinking (litigation classes mostly). Too bad finals asking to develop interesting ways to sue people were few and far between; not sure creative problem solving is even valued in the legal field, seems like school trains us to be mindless paper-shuffling drones, which I'm clearly very bad at being.

Anyone have any advice on getting litigation work with crummy grades (3.2 GPA)? Possible hope?

not sure creative problem solving is even valued in the legal field

it is. your GPA is fine. the problem is the difficult market for emerging first-year lawyers. keep your head up; you'll be okay.

Ugh, take-home exams are fucking hell. Now 28.5 hours left to write another 5 pages of my paper and cobble it into something coherent, then a brief episode of freedom tarnished only by having to edit my note.

i feel like a rotting husk of a former man. will law school give me back my humanity?

― burt_stanton

officially survived first semester, although final finals should never be take-homes - the impetus to actually bust yr ass on a 2500 word paper on philosophy of law, hart & fuller and the distinction between law and morality is not something easily conjured.

two weeks of freedom before diving back into the fray.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html

The problem is really the same in any professional field, maybe you'll make your mark as a student but once you get started in the workplace the people upstairs make no note of whatever might be special or different about you. This is a bad practice, it happened to my brother, but it happened to friends of mine in practically every professional field.

I think people single out law for this because attorneys are an easy target for people who can't succeed at anything. Don't let anyone discourage you in any professional field!

had a job
job fell through

sorry : (

sucks :-( do you have a backup plan?

:( That blows.

As of yesterday at 10AM I have officially finished first year (after a 24 hour constitutional take home exam) and am applying (semi-fruitlessly) for research assistant positions with profs. Law jobs aren't things people have, per se, until after second year, because the combined degree is a 3.5/4 year program, but still, the prospect of not doing something vaguely law-y for the summer makes me nervous. Foot in the door early, etc. etc. But all in all first year wasn't that awful. Hoping to end the year with an A- or two and some mixed Bs/B+s but I don't want to jinx it before marks come out in two weeks.

So yeah, looks like I'm graduating in the top 5% and jobless. Pretty frustrated right now. Will get over it. But feel like I wasted the whole year that I could have spent looking for jobs, lost the chance to apply for clerkships, etc. Also no idea how long it will take me to find something else.

In a larger sense I also feel like in my monomaniacal pursuit of grades (a not unreasonable pursuit considering the employment stats from my school) I've kind of lost sight of what I actually want to do or what I even want out of life.

Perhaps I'll have some time to reflect/regain perspective in the next few weeks.

oh dude...

i had a really good friend graduate from a decent but not top 10 school last year & the place she clerked the previous summer ended up not hiring her (they didnt hire anyone). it took her some time but she still found something great, keep your chin up.

haha i guess this also means that burt_stanton wouldve been graduating law school...

I now return from my self-imposed ILXile to issue the single most satisfying "I told you so" of my entire life.

I told you so, dude.

Now revive a bass technique thread and give us your second most satisfying "I told you so."

No, don't really do that.

And I drunkenly award TWU an OTM. OTM.

This, i assume, is like watching my future in slow motion. Managed to snag a part time research position with a prof for the summer, provided he likes my first week of product. Drawing blanks on everything else. Grades finally get released tomorrow.

Well in any case, I'm done. Woot!

Got a new job. Doing securities litigation -- plaintiff's side, meaning we'll be representing pension funds and such, so it actually even has a slightly public interest angle. Weird though -- I think the mind of 2001 me would be slightly blown if I went back in time and told him I was going to be a securities litigator.

will you write me a will if I give you an end table?

Yay for jobs! I'm writing memos about 18th century German contract theory and the evolution of individual rights. Which is slightly less public interest-y then I'd like, but once I get my summer schedule in order, I'm going to see if a couple of local NGOs need any pro bono research help.

will you write me a will if I give you an end table?

― Latham Green, Thursday, May 26, 2011 3:46 PM Bookmark

Don't know jack about wills. Although eventually I'll get to it in my bar study, so I'll get back to you.

i decided not to write on to a journal and am already feeling like it's a decision i'm going to regret. i wasn't eligible for law review, but hopefully not doing a secondary journal doesn't hurt me too bad.

Are Journals really that important? I feel like a decent number of people are involved with various journals up here, but there isn't the sense that it is *mandatory* for future success.

i'm honestly not really sure. law review is definitely a big deal, especially for judicial clerkships and biglaw, but neither of those are things that i want to do. i think they're definitely helpful in showing that you're willing to do thankless work and that your editing/writing skills are strong, but hopefully the fact that i spent a couple of years in journalism before starting law school does that for me instead.

I really don't have a good sense of how things work in Canada, but in the US Law Review (or whatever your school's main/top journal is called) is just unreasonably, disproportionately beneficial to your career, probably moreso than anything else you can do. Beyond that, stuff like secondary journals and moot court can help but are nowhere near the kind of benefit. It's partly just prestige for prestige sake, which is especially weird if you grade onto law review, since that makes the prestige kind of redundant to your grades.

However since you didn't do the writing comp, you might want to consider moot court/mock trial if you can still do it. Some litigation firms seem to value it.

Depending on what Moot you do, don't certain sectors pay attention? i.e. Jessup and international work, etc. etc.

Many days lately I've spoken almost no words to anyone other than my wife or people on the internet #barstudy

One foot in front of the other, man. Soon enough you'll be billing far too many hours for far too little money.

Studying for the bar exam has forced me to come to the conclusion that I do not want to be a lawyer. I'm going to finish this out because my family and friends have been supporting me, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to do this for a living. Probably should have developed my original career in retrospect since ... I actually enjoyed that and was good at it. :{

When I'm in my suit sitting around other lawyers and students I feel like a ticking time bomb wrapped in houndstooth.

Whoa whoa. Bar exam study is NOT the time to decide that. It's a little bit like being in the last mile of a ten mile spring training run and saying "This last mile has made me realize I don't want to be a baseball player"

TBF I don't know if baseball players actually do 10-mile runs -- seems like it might be excessive for their sport.

I think at the end of each mile there's a lawn chair and a beer, and they get 2 hours to complete the whole run.

The reason I thought this is because even in my internships I was miserable. I found the work boring, painful, and unfulfilling. The thought of becoming a practicing lawyer has in my mind the same place as thinking about the end of my life. I'm single, I'm in my late 20s, and I'm a total weirdo. It feels like I'm giving it all up to do something I don't really enjoy that's a huge personal commitment. I think to myself, "well, maybe I'm just being weak! Or I'm afraid to grow up!" But my first job was at a huge corporation managing massive creative projects, and I enjoyed that challenge and responsibility. Law feels like a wingtip shoe pressed against my throat.

Full disclosure: I did not think about these things before entering law school, and repressed them while in law school so I could complete my work.

Oh yeah, and the community of lawyers is not to my liking at all. I'm a sensitive dude, and the whole super-aggressive, competitive environment just made me sick. I don't particularly care about possessions or money, and feel esteem comes from fulfilling inner potential (maaaan) rather than having a collectively-agreed upon icon of Success that takes red tooth and/or claw to acquire. Frankly, I don't know what the hell I want out of being a lawyer.

I understand how you feel, but I think the stress of the bar exam is really not the time to decide. Go study and pass the bar. Do you have a job lined up? If not, after the bar you can decide what kinds of jobs you want to apply for to minimize your misery. Maybe government is the way to go if you want a less competitive/alpha-male environment and an easier schedule.

I mean, jobs that are truly fulfilling are hard to come by, and just earning a living is hard enough in this economy. So you're better off with one more tool under your belt to earn a living. You could stick it out for a few years with a heavy savings plan and then put the savings toward being able to do something you'd rather be doing, just for example.

small-firm lawyers are gen. more chill than BigLaw lawyers (with notable exceptions such as our own Daniel Esq. :D) i dunno where in the USA you are, Spectrum, but i've also found that lawyers in NJ are MUCH more civil and willing to help than their NYC counterparts.

of course, small-firm paychecks are pretty shitty even during good times ;_;

small-firm lawyers are gen. more chill than BigLaw lawyers (with notable exceptions such as our own Daniel Esq. :D)

thanks, tad. i've been with both, and prefer a small firm. but all firms -- big or small -- have their own cultures; you may yet find something you love. or at least something you can tolerate.

watch this instructive video to help guide your career

of course, small-firm paychecks are pretty shitty even during good times ;_;

not necessarily.

I'm taking the NJ bar exam, so that's an option. I worked at the AG's office in Jersey one summer and I loved the people I worked for; they were super smart, nice, and a little on the odd side (as opposed to the Brooklyn DA's office where my supervisor was like one of those lesser demons from a D&D manual, and the other intern trash talked me to the supervisor to gain some imaginary edge in her mind, as if doing a good job wasn't enough).

The problem is, I haven't found any area of the law to be interesting at all, and the work itself is painfully boring. I used to write huge manuals about inter-office communications systems and I found that more interesting than Con Law, writing memos, etc., mostly because I was tackling the project from an "aesthetic"/communicative perspective, so to speak. All the things I find interesting in life aren't really present in the legal profession, plus a lot of crap that I find dreary.

But all your advice is good, and I'm going to finish out this out as best as I can. There's no sense not to. Maybe I need a day off.

where in NJ are you, Spectrum? north, central, or south? there are def. some differences in "the way things are done" b/w North Jersey and South Jersey (in law as in everything else). you can make a good living concentrating on NJ law, though the pay isn't generally as high as in either NYC or Philly (at least for BigLaw).

as for what area to concentrate on eventually -- there are definitely areas where someone who isn't super-competitive/hyper-Alpha Male can thrive. i'm thinking of areas like elder law, trusts and probate, some real estate, etc. if you worked for the NJ AG's office, i'm assuming that you like litigation? if you don't like conflict and drama, one area to avoid would be family law (not just in NJ, but anywhere).

also, good luck on the NJ Bar exam. the year i took it, we didn't have any questions on NJ Civil Procedure (prob. better that y'all be tested on that subject, since there are some major differences b/w the NJ Rules and NY's CPLR [i dunno anything about PA civ. pro.]).

I'm from Northern NJ, so that's where my base of operations would be.

I think it's interesting when I said "sensitive" that it was taken with the connotation of being "weak" or "submissive", ie, not the alpha-male type. The way I meant it is that I feel this intense empathy for other people, like it's this instantaneous chain reaction in my mind that people have all these levels of emotion, pride, family, friends, etc., and so it becomes difficult for me to act in a "negative" way towards them. I also get sickened when I see people who put themselves in a better position at the needless expense of others. When I was a kid I used to stand up to bullies in school who I saw doing that because even as a kid it made me intensely angry.

I thought these personality traits would be good in law ... defending people who were wronged, and helping make things right! Unfortunately, that's not how it goes, as far as I've seen. I've represented about half a dozen clients in court so far and it makes me feel like my idealism was misplaced. One client I successfully represented in a difficult unemployment dispute (2 hearings, 6 adverse witnesses, no witnesses on my side) and she was this aggressive serial harasser and bully who not only deserved to be fired, but said to me on the day of our final hearing, "I just spent all my money on Christmas presents, so you better win this for me!". I just wanted to throw her case in the garbage at that point.

I also helped a serial wife-beater get even less probation than my PD office was asking for (with the help of clever on-the-feet tactics). At the DA's office I worked for prosecutors who verged on sociopathic - I watched one prosecutor lie through her teeth during an client interview, and I thought, "did anyone else catch these ridiculously inconsistent statements?" They were also miserably cruel, which annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion, who knows, I just feel things really intensely. Especially stress. I hate that stuff.

Anyway, thanks for reading me vent, I feel it's hard letting this crap out to my friends and friendly since they're dealing with so much themselves ... so uhhh, thanks ILX!