They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Which, if you’re in law school, means you shouldn’t let any of these ten rat bastards out of your site for even a minute.
1The Immaculate Altruist. She’s here to get a law degree so she can save the homes of poor immigrant whales from foreclosure. She disdains anyone who doesn’t dream of working non-profit. To her, law, unlike any other field of study, is either about spreading rainbows and peach cobbler to the corners of the universe or greedily snatching up money whilst helping Rich Corporation A sue Richer Corporation B.
Note: Her worldview only applies to law school. It’s okay if geology students don’t want to enter a career with the Peace Corps and dig wells for African tribes—they can just like rocks. But a law student without a Planeteer ring on is Greed Incarnate.
2The Master Debater. A typical conversation with him goes like this:
My parents always told me I should be a lawyer. You know why? Because I love to argue. I argue all the time about everything. And I always win arguments. Seriously, I’ve never lost an argument.
What he means: He’s a social retard who fights over everything and absolutely refuses to admit when he’s wrong. His parents wanted him to be a lawyer so he would finally find someone else to argue with and maybe stop being such an asshole all the time.
Listen for the following red flags repeated intermittently throughout his precious arguments: “Clearly,” “obviously,” and “it’s completely unreasonable to think that…”
What you won’t hear: References to facts, cases, statutes, or any other recognizable, non-self-centric authority.
When he loses his very first argument—which he will—one of two things will happen: (1) He will fall into a deep, inconsolable, self-loathing depression; (2) like Obi-Wan, he will become a bigger asshole than you can possibly imagine, blaming the loss on anything and everything except his own lack of ability.
3The Blonde Bombshell with Something to Prove. She’s as rare as a Giant Panda, but every few years she materializes in a 1L class like a succulent siren through the ocean mist. She has unusual numbers for law school admission: 36-23-33. She also realizes that she’s heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but believes that—like her heroine, the great “Elle Woods, Esquire”—she can overcome all stereotypes and prove herself as a valuable asset to the legal community. And she’s half-right about the asset part; however, she is doomed to either learn how to use her beauty to manipulate others and work her way up the law-school ladder, or to live in hopeless denial.
Addendum: Leave room for the possibility that an absolutely gorgeous and extremely intelligent female law student exists out there somewhere, but if that’s the case, the fact that she will never be my co-counsel is too much to bear. And so, for the sake of psychological self-preservation, I shall vehemently deny her existence.
4The Mighty Mouse. Who is he? Is he even in our 3L class? I’ve never noticed him. Did he transfer in? This person is likely in the top 5% of your class, if not flat-out Numero Uno, but you swear you’ve never seen him before in your life. That’s because he never speaks a word voluntarily, although when called upon he flawlessly utters the insight of a thousand Learned Hands clapping a joyous symphony of jurisprudence. He shows up for classes and exams, and then, like Batman, he disappears into the misty night. (No, he will not let you borrow his outlines.)
5The Drifter. Half the time he doesn’t even know he’s in law school; the other half he’s high. To him, law school is another three…maybe four…years of delaying the dreaded “real world.” In every court opinion, he can see how The Man keeps him down.
Lucy v. Zehmer: “WTF, man! You can’t take his farm! He was drunk, and he wrote the contract on an f-ing receipt man! That’s just messed up.”
Leonard v. Pepsico: “Oh yeah, corporate America offers a harrier jet thinking no one is going to accept. Then Joe Everyman gets enough Pepsi Points to buy it, and what do they do? They f-ing take it back. WTF, man?! And the law just lets it happen?”
After law school, he will go on to become a doctor . . . in something. He will continue like this until his absentee parents or Sallie Mae discovers him.
6The Wunderkind. He started working in a law office delivering interoffice memoranda at age 12. He learned Westlaw before Google. He was the all-star high school debate and moot court champion all four years. His undergraduate degree? Do I even need to say it? It was f-ing pre-law. To him, law school isn’t time to learn; it’s time to shine. After a decade of mentally bench-pressing volume after volume of Corpus Juris Secundum and memorizing the Federal Rules of Evidence, it’s time to oil up those muscles and flex. He doesn’t see peers, only hurdles.
7El Desperato. He’s in the library eight hours a day (ten on Saturdays and Sundays). He owns more Nutshells than Mr. Peanut. He has every professor’s open office hours scheduled into his BlackBerry. Yet, for the life of him, he can’t seem to pull even a C- on an exam. The reality is that he was never cut out for law school. Be it Nature or Nurture, he was designed for a different job.
The good news: He will realize this.
The bad news: At the point he does, he’ll owe $100 grand and will have lost most, if not all, of his hair.
8The Diversity Student. When she’s not busy posing for pictures for the law school’s website and viewbook, she’s enjoying the sweet life of a tuition-free education. How do you spell the name of that Native-American tribe again? Oh yeah, “f-u-l-l r-i-d-e.”
She doesn’t worry so much about preparing for class, taking exams, or career outlooks—and why should she? When her former classmates are sacrificing movie nights just so they can pay back the interest on their student loans, she’ll be relaxing in the comfy leather chair of her 45th-story downtown office. After all, you can only be a diversity student for three years until you’re a diversity hire.
9The Savant. What the hell??? This guy randomly decided to take the LSAT at the last minute and scored a 179 (and that’s because two pages stuck together). Our professor asks him a question about the Necessary and Proper Clause, and he takes the class on a glorious romp through the metaphysical world of constitutional intransience. Did he even read the case? Does he even outline his notes? Fuck it. I hate this guy.
10The Nth Generation Lawyer. Let’s just say that he likes to use his middle initial for things. In fact, he’s probably a “Something Something the Fourth” in his family, which is comprised completely of lawyers, legal scholars, a judge or two, and some wives of lawyers. He didn’t enroll in law school, he inherited it. You ask him what he would do if he wasn’t going to be a lawyer, and all you get in return is a blank stare.
Fun fact: He’ll be the only one at graduation wearing cuff links.
{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
Next Comments →
It’s amazing how often the Mighty Mouse and the Drifter are the same person. There’s always the one kid with all As who seems to only smoke so much pot to give the other kids a fair chance at competing. This is the kid Scalia was talking about when he said we’re wasting too many of our smartest people on law school.
It’s out of your “sight”, not “site”.
You forgot Gunner Extraordinaire…,. the guy/girl who takes every opportunity to talk and analyze any issue raised by the prof -solicited or not. They’re not only annoying with their self-important, superfluous bs ramblings, but they have a nasally voice too.
We had a girl named Missy in law school. She was a tall blonde with fake boobs and a swarovski crystal-adorned lap top. Ended up being an editor on law review -it was awesome, loved her!
Sight …. not “site”. I don’t think we’re wasting (waisting? ) too many of our brightest minds in law school….
Da: Wasting too many of our brightest only law school doesn’t preclude us from also wasting law school on too many of our dimmest.
I was #3, only I have ALWAYS have had chestnut brown hair. I have NEVER felt the need to go blond, as my family has always called me beautiful and smart. In fact, I was the best looking girl in high school, and had many men interested in me in college AND law school. But I have resisted the temptation to go blond, as then the men would not think of me as smart, but just a sex object. Since that is the LAST thing I want, I will not change my hair color.
All that and modest, too!
Way to tip-toe lightly into the “diversity” category with a “Native American” reference!
I feel like we’re also missing the “Anything to Get Ahead.” This person will rip pages from the books in the library after using them knowing that they are needed for the moot court brief, and will slyly tell you sure you can use their outline, only to extract key portions of it without notice. This person would sell their best friend out if it meant they could get up another grade position in the class. And chances are they’ve lost whatever girlfriend/boyfriend or husband/wife they had coming in because that person got tossed out with the garbage as well.
Outlines? I never understood the point of outlines. Just use your notes. And study groups…what a waste of time. Unless you join one as an excuse to socialize (but why would you want to hang out with other law students?)
Stupid article. Thanks for wasting my time.
WOAH–all was going along fine (if a bit flat) until:
“After all, you can only be a diversity student for three years until you’re a diversity hire.”
Wow–I’m just an average, kind of a prick white guy, not usually sensitive at all about race or sex, but that smacks of barely-concealed racism there.
I guess you have yet to have your first case before a judge who would not be there but for Affirmative Action. It’s not fun. Ours didn’t even know the finer points of hearsay.
This comment smacks of racism… in fact this whole article smacks of both racism and sexism. This depresses me.
I am a bit of many of these students. Too bad there is not a category for beautiful and smart women lawyers who want to get married, live in Ghana with me and bear me an heir and other children to placate my Aunt Ooona.
Is there anyone out there who has access to such a woman who can point her in my direction? I am tired of playing it cool, waiting for these women to materialize. I want them to come and approach me. I have money.
RE: Addendum to Bombshell…they do exist, in a small law school in Portland, Maine… Hell, we had about a dozen of them in a class of 80 students…talk about a distraction. And to make matters worse, they were really smart. New England has a lovely gene pool.
they were really smart….for a small school in Maine
Yeah, no minorities are smart and deserve to be there. Great insight.
Hopefully i’m not El Desperato, but i guess we won’t know till I start in August!
Not to Spam but… check out this app(and vote for it!):
http://www.brickfish.com/Pages/Blogs/BlogView.aspx?bid=40135&scid=538&
It might help all of future lawyers get a leg up in classes/meetings with an app that uses voice recogntion to create note outlines during lectures.
I don’t think the author was saying that no minority students deserve to be there. Far from it. In fact, using this rather limited framework, most of my friends in law school, whether minorities or not, fit into one of the other categories. Thi diversity student, however, does exist. There are some who trade specifically on that and just never seem to be nearly as worried about the whole thing about their peers of all races.
I remember the Diversity Student. We had one who also starred as our closet gay dude. We also had a handi-capable type who doubled as the always-has-a-comment-no-matter-how-dumb law student. Yet our Mighty Mouse was African American, and there was an amazingly hot chick was two classes ahead of us. Agree that the list is missing the gunner who will sell his own grandmother’s kidneys to get ahead.
Oh shit, I just realized that I was El Desperato.
El Desperatos “graduate” in law firms to become “perma-service senior associates.”
The most recent “juicy” case I just pulled? Defending the firm from a discrimination lawsuit filed by another recently fired Desperato.
My favorite? Number 8. You forgot to list the privileged majority students that give minority students the “you don’t deserve to be here” glare in passing. Its a shame all the majority students scored the highest on the LSAT and are the only ones that deserve to be gainfully employed after law school. Damn those (insert non-white group)-Americans.
So true! Except the “majority” students at my school received lower LSAT scores while the minority students worked their asses off to get inF
Next Comments →
{ 1 trackback }