Five Things My Law School Must've Intended To Tell Me - But Forgot

Five Things My Law School Must've Intended To Tell Me - But Forgot

It's hard to imagine that law schools would purposely neglect to tell their students these five critical things, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they forgot. Or maybe they just ran out of time? I missed a few classes in the middle of the Spring Semester of my 2L year to have minor maxillofacial surgery, and then another two days in my 3L year to drive to an NCAA tournament game - did they explain all these things then?

Five Things My Law School Must've Intended to Tell Me - But Forgot:

1) U.S. News Rankings are meaningless. No employer ever cared or even knew whether the law school I went to was ranked 34 or 42 or 53 or 67. I can’t even remember what my school was ranked. Everyone knows that list is arbitrary and artificial - except of course for law students.

2) Faculty who graduated from the country’s top law schools do not necessarily make the best and most qualified teachers – but they do cost a lot more and drive the cost of tuition way up. Turns out a group of 100 professors who graduated from an Ivy League law school will have roughly the same number of great, terrible and average professors as a group of 100 professors who graduated from any other law school.

3) Success in the legal profession will be contingent upon your ability to attract clients, not aptitude for legal practice. They forgot to tell me that within just a few years of graduation, all that would matter was the size of my book of business - legal skill is barely a factor.

3a) How to attract clients.

4) I had no chance of working at a large firm. As soon as my first semester 1L grades came in around the B median, that dream was over. Would have been nice if my law school had remembered to tell me that I needed to revise my plan, shared by pretty much every law school entrant, so we could make better informed choices from that point on.

4a) Working at a large firm was not such a worthwhile goal to begin with.

5) That real world legal practice is not so much like My Cousin Vinny as it is like my cousin, Vinny. Vinny is struggling professionally.

 

Matthew Litt, Esq. is an adjunct Legal Research and Writing professor at Seton Hall Law, bestselling author, and the founder of Lincolnesq - Career Counseling for the Bottom 90% of the Class

Yelena Yakubova

Litigation/Trial Attorney, Personal Injury/Insurance Defense

9y

While I do agree that law schools focus more on prepping a student for the bar, and not as much on giving practical skills, I cannot say that I agree with the post. 1. Students making a decision on whether to enter a law school should take initiative to research certain things, like prospects of working for big firm, for instance (or working in legal industry in a given economy, generally). The information is out there. You have to hustle as an attorney - might as well get used to it being a student. We are, after all, complaining of school not giving enough practical experience. Perhaps this was intended to be one of them. 2. Yes, attracting clients is important. But I wouldn't write off one's aptitude for legal practice so fast. You have to retain those clients after you attract them and you have to get them to endorse you and recommend you to their friends - not gonna happen with an incompetent attorney with no aptitude for legal practice.

Like
Reply

Points 3, 3a, and 4 are valid. Points 1 and 2 are sour grapes from someone who attended a mid-tier law school.

Like
Reply
Jacob Goodelman

Litigation Attorney at Mintz

9y

Hahaha this is great

Like
Reply
Rich Haber

Managing Partner, Northeast Litigation at McCalla Raymer Leibert Pierce, LLC

9y

Nicely done sir

Like
Reply
Luke Ciciliano

Frontend Developer at Modern Website Design

9y

You hit the nail on the head when you say "think like business people" Susan Cartier Liebel. Attorneys always say "I'm a lawyer, not a business person." If they take that attitude they don't have to worry about it as they will be out of business soon enough and the problem will then have taken care of itself.

Like
Reply

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Explore topics