The farther I get into law school, the harder it gets to avoid the reality that, at some point, my education will end. And at that point the real world will begin. The real world will of course include bar prep, the bar exam, and some type of employment: unemployment, funemployment, part-time employment, under-employment, non-legal employment, or the elusive and mystical fulltime legal employment.
As that finish line inches ominously closer, I find myself in more and more conversations with friends and family and random strangers about what I’m going to do next. They ask what I want to do when I graduate, what kind of law I want to practice, what my plan is. Seven months ago, I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I still don’t.
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By sheer chance I’ve landed the 01 January spot this year, which probably means that most of my target audience is far too hung over to be reading this post. In the hopes that eventually a few of you will sober up (and because my editor will probably hunt me down and kill me if I just disappear again), I’ll plug along anyway.
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Thanksgiving is upon us once again and everyone’s coming up with schmaltzy reasons for us to be thankful, most of which don’t apply to law students. Instead of the after-school-special saccharine-sweet process of counting our blessings though, let’s take a look at what we law students actually have to be thankful for.
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Our brethren . . . errr . . . bloggeren (?) over at Lawyerist reported today that Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court has some advice for law students:
Take the bread-and-butter courses. Do not take, ‘law and women,’ do not take ‘law and poverty,’ do not take ‘law and anything.’
That’s cool. Very good of him to offer law students his wisdom on their course schedules. But is he the best source of advice for today’s law students facing a market like none other in history? Moreover, when was the last time he was out there in the market? 1967. 1967!? And he didn’t even make partner at this firm. Oh, what did you say, Tony? You had always wanted to teach, that’s why you left your firm before making partner? Yeah, sure. Face it, you couldn’t handle the real world – Mr. Supreme Court Justice! Just pathetic. Clearly, he’s a Bitter Justice.
Any who, is he the best person to be doling out law school guidance advice to the next generation of law-talkers?
Postscript: Tony sure doesn’t look like he’s been on a bread-and-butter diet these days.
Via Lawyerist.com.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are law students.”
No matter how many times you hear a law student complain about spending hours in the law library or some gunner wrecking the curve, the simple fact of the matter is that the problem isn’t law school. The problem is us, law students. Keep Reading ⇒
May is such a mixed bag for law students. First finals, packing, then graduation, then summer, all in a span of about 3 weeks. It’s a whirlwind of activity and emotion, and getting enough sleep is almost never an option. You’re studying for finals and taking breaks for anything, accepting all distractions. Probably packing for the summer when you feel like it—any non-study activity is allowed if it can be written off as productive in any way.
Law students are hearing 3Ls talk about graduation and the bar exam and getting a job while 1Ls and 2Ls talk about trying to get summer jobs, maybe taking summer classes. Then, faster than you leave the law school on a Friday afternoon, you’re right in the middle of a final. Finals always seem to sneak up on people, even though the whole semester is a steady march toward them. Then, as quickly as they snuck up, it’s suddenly all over, and you’re walking out of the exam room of your last final. The sweet relief of summer beckons—unless you’re taking summer classes.
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QI’m a first-year law student and just have a general question. A lot of kids from high school who thought they were “cool” ended up getting fat and stuck in dead-end jobs. That makes me wonder, what happens to gunners when they grow up? Do they ever make partner? Or do they just curl up into a ball of douchebaggery and die?
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