March 17, 2004

Lithwick: I Went to Law School for This?

These are all good reasons to go to law school. But they are also bad ones. If more people went to law school knowing that centrifugal forces being what they are, they would someday end up at a law firm doing work they don't much care for, many fewer people would go to law school.

The mistake many (possibly most) make is treating law school like a second BA -- a second opportunity to put off making a concrete career decision, a general "broadening degree" that will make us employable in any field. Don't get me wrong; one can treat a law degree as a great all-purpose second degree, a chance to learn to "think like a lawyer." But somehow, something happens to that thinking almost before we tear the shrink-wrap off our first contracts book: We start to let fear drive us instead.

The article here includes the best advice I can offer about fighting fear in law school -- and about understanding the ways in which our fears funnel us into summer jobs, clerkships, journal positions, law review competitions, and ultimately into law firms. But it is perhaps too cynical. It doesn't mention how magical law school can be if you bite your cheek and ignore the fear.

I went to law school, hated virtually every minute of it, dropped out, dropped back in, and bitched and moaned like a toddler. But law school ultimately allowed me to do precisely the job I always most wanted to do: be a writer. I could not do what I do today -- cover the courts and the law -- unless I had gone to law school.

The huge irony is that if I had known back in law school how happy I would be 8 years later, I'd have had the time of my life! I would have loved my classes, taken more interesting ones, never gone to an event I hated, done even more clinical work, learned to salsa dance, and made better friends. It would have been like undergrad, but in better shoes. The reason I got stuck was because I let myself feel stuck, thinking that unless I treated law school the way everyone else treated it -- as a dark tunnel to the world of corporate law -- I was doomed.

The best thing about law school is that it really will blow open a thousand career doors for you. But you need to see them. You need to tap your way along the dark tunnel -- feeling for soft spots, and listening for folks on the other side to tap back. You need to be true to your heart; true to why you went in the first place. And you need to do whatever it takes to fight the fear and the sucking noise that will otherwise pull you into a life you may not want. That means being proactive: find mentors who are doing weird things with the law. Work for a professor who isn't doing ordinary research. Volunteer someplace that needs lawyers. Cold-call lawyers you read about and find out how they got their jobs. Keep doing the stuff you found interesting before law school.

I am completely glad for my JD. It gives me exactly what I once hoped it would: a bit of knowledge, some credibility, an all-purpose ability to read cases and statutes. But the best thing about it is that it was a means to an end, and that end was becoming more myself, not less. Go to law school for the right reasons, or the wrong ones. But be certain you are more yourself, not less so, when you come out the other end.