Things You Should Know About Law School
1. No, a ‘tort’ is not a muffin. Surprise, surprise.
2. If your highlighting marker still has ink after the first week or so, you might as well drop out
3. Forget about a personal life … law students will gossip about something in your life even before you knew it happened there in the first place
4. Your new life mantra will soon become: F**k the Socratic teaching method [we don’t use that much in Canada]
5. If you are a law student, there is a 50% chance you are an alcoholic …
6. … and if not, you probably are a pot (and/or crack)-head
7. For our “inspirational” speech during law school orientation, a judge told us, “Law school can be very difficult. During my first year at law school, three of my classmates jumped off a three story building to their deaths.” True story.
8. If you put a sandwich in the cafeteria communal fridge, IT WILL be stolen
9. Get ready to hear “jokes” only a law student would understand (‘Was that an offer?’, ‘How was your mens rea today?’, ‘An intervening cause ate my homework’, etc.)
10. Trying to avoid your professor’s eyes is like waving a red flag
11. You will learn that there are three types of professors:
- One who will answer every question, no matter how dumb, bring in cookies for the class, act like she cares about your feelings. Do not be fooled: the minute you take that first cookie, you just fucked yourself (the ‘I bought the ones with sprinkles’ Professor)
- One who will just completely ignore you (the ‘Put your hand down idiot; that was rhetorical’ Professor)
- One who will make you s**t yourself each time he calls on your name (the ‘I thought I told them not to admit you’ Professor). This is the one you continuously chant your mantra to (see above)
12. Remember how, for that one undergrad final project your senior year, you stayed up until 4 in the morning finishing it? Cherish it because it probably was your best night of sleep for a long time to come
13. There is a good chance they had to tear down an entire rain forest just to publish your book’s table of content
14. The only extracurricular activity in law school is walking from your class to the library
15. You know how in jail, you are only known by a number? Well, welcome to law school, row 3, column 2 (Ã la your professor’s seating chart)
(Thanks to Dawud Shakir of New Mexico)
More Things You Should Know About Law School
1. Unless you want to clerk, a 3.3 GPA is good enough, and you can get that without doing much at all.
2. You don’t want to clerk.
3. If you don’t make Law Review, skip the other journals and write on to Law Review.
4. Don’t apply for the editorial board of Law Review–you want Law Review in one line on your resume, not running your entire freaking life.
5. Do moot court. And win.
6. 95% of the books they want you to buy for law school are useless and not necessary for the class. To be safe, just skip all of them. I stopped buying books in my 1L year and never missed out on anything from them.
7. Use that money instead to buy Examples & Explanations and commercial outlines. Use these thoroughly and you’ll be fine.
8. Don’t stress about law school. If all you want out of it is a JD [or LLB] and a good job, 68% of the work is just showing up. And even that part is optional.
9. Don’t even think about the Bar Exam until after graduation (other than registering for it!).
10. Make 12 great friends and make sure to keep them for life. They are the best take-away in all of law school! (Right, Section 4 + Brookes?)
(Thanks to A. J. Sharp, Northwestern Law ’07)
Some of those hit a little too close to home (e.g. #9: about 64% of my jokes nowadays involve some form of the word “estoppel”). Some don’t (e.g. #11: I don’t see the view of professors as monsters as very apt). Some can be nitpicked (e.g. #1: tortes are more like cakes than muffins).
But some were actually a little disappointing: #s 6 and 8. I know all the lawyers, hell I’ve probably told most of them. But law is supposed to be an honourable profession, certainly we’re supposed to aim for that standard. I don’t want to debate the drug war, but cocaine is, y’know, illegal. I don’t think people who will be lawyers should take the attitude that laws are for other people. It was said jokingly but it’s kidding on the square joking. Still, law students like to stay up and argue so the cocaine thing at least has more of an element of a joke. #8 though seems a little more real, something that actually regularly occurs, and that’s why it was the most disappointing. The kind of person who would steal someone’s sandwich fridge is the kind of person who will overbill a client. I don’t think that’s a state of affairs that should just be accepted.