Says Who?

In addition to my own thoughts and advice, I relied (and imposed) upon a number of colleagues for their critique and suggestions. Among these colleagues are “dream” lawyers: partners in national firms. These are, in short, the types of lawyers that few students will ever get the chance to learn from directly. While that is not, in the words of the law, dispositive as to the wisdom of this advice, it is an important process: I modified and often added sections based on their commentary, resulting in a body of advice that is far superior to what would have been mine alone.

My role here is someone who, as the saying goes, has been there and done that. I’ve taken the LSAT, worried about money, attended a top law school, worried about money some more, made law review, got an amazing job, passed the bar, and, well, that just about sums it up. Many others have walked this same path, and, to judge by the dozen or so books out there, the advice that’s available to someone such as yourself isn’t quite as uniform—or helpful—as it could or should be. It certainly wasn’t for me.

My own first years in law practice were not what they could have been, mostly because I didn’t particularly want to practice. I wanted to teach, but for a number of reasons that path was closed to me. And so, even though I grew to enjoy practice, at the time I took an approach that proved ultimately harmful, to both the firm and to me. I escaped even further from the shores of Hawaii—which might strike you as odd indeed—to spend two years in Micronesia assisting in the development of a new court. I very much enjoyed the professional challenge and personal adventure, and took the time (almost literally on the edge of the Earth) to write a guide for the new attorney, The Young Lawyer’s Jungle Book: A Survival Guide, as a catharsis of sorts.

A reader in turn wrote a book of his own, Planet Law School, which began a decade-long professional conversation with its author, “Atticus Falcon.” For the record, Atticus and I have had a prolonged falling out, which I hope serves to strengthen the advice I give here about its contents and my recommendation to read it and to follow its advice. [It is soon out of print, though its author might revive it in different form.] The approach and objections in that book served as the basis for a change in my own thinking about law school, which itself is unusual; most attorneys forget, try to forget, or simply glorify in a false and perverse way their own law school experiences. Sure, they’re proud of having survived, and enjoy basking in others’ admirations—but in the privacy of their offices, late at night, many look at their three years with a mix of sadness and hurt—if indeed they ever look back at all. Even those who “made it” often did so with academic cuts to their karmic integrity—cuts that start to sting all the more, years later. This should not be, and I have Atticus to thank for my own evolving perspective.

I am decidedly more Establishment than Atticus: I have gone the more traditional route (though hardly as traditional as many), and am constitutionally less inclined to take a partisan position. Yet in conversations over the years, I too share many of the concerns that he writes about—as indeed many jurists and legal educators share. I part with him in some of the particulars, but most are matters of interpretation rather than genuine disagreement.

Why so much about another book? Because I had never intended to write this one. In part this was simply because Planet Law School served, for me, as the Alpha to my book’s new-associate Omega. While radical, Planet Law School covered the basics—and then some. Yet something happened upon the publication of its second edition…a something that would sow the seeds of our falling out. While I grew more convinced of many of its main points, I felt that it began to veer too far off the path that most readers could appreciate, particularly as they were starting on their path in law school. (This I was sensitive to as I felt The Young Lawyer’s Jungle Book ran and sometimes exceeded the same risks.) Planet Law School seemed to lose at least some of its sense of charm and humor, and its animus towards the law professoriate seemed both misplaced in the context of a guidebook, and ultimately dangerous. Most importantly, it seemed too unyielding in its conception of the proper approach to legal education.

Okay then. Still, why so much about another book?

When I first toyed with the idea of writing yet another book on law school—this was after my first reaction, “You must be kidding…Me?!”—I took a jaunt to the local bookstore to have a look at the other guides now on the shelves. In a surprisingly short time at the bookstore I got a sense of what it was that Atticus was so vexed about. In short, a sufficiently worrying percentage of advice out there dealing with issues of any importance in law school…is appallingly bad. Not all of it, to be sure, but enough to cause a far-removed attorney and educator such as I to take a deep breath. No wonder law students are in such a mess.

I will not attempt here to repeat all of the advice in these books. To do so would be unfair, and also unwise: it would bury the more important points, the why behind the what. So, I assume that you will read these other books as well. Many contain much general information—such as first-year sections, FAFSA forms, and so on—all true, but hardly of great importance. The acid test as you distill advice is whether it is reasonable, reasoned, and relevant. So please don’t take this as the end of your preparation; it is, instead, a map for the beginning. Nor should you take any advice as the final word. The more important question is whether it is the final word for you…or whether instead it leads to the next question.

So which books should you pay attention to? (Note: I didn’t write buy. It’s fine—don’t tell the publisher—to borrow a book from the library. For free. If they don’t have it, ask them to order a copy. Chances are they will, and you’ll have a brand new book almost at your doorstep. This will, as a side benefit, help you to think about these points earlier.) You might also search on Amazon for law school books as a rough judge of their quality. Good so far. Yet there is an interesting trend: several books have bland written all around them. One title, for example, has mostly-glowing reviews; another has a love-it-or-hate-it collection. The love-it-or-hate-it book (Planet Law School) is far better. And no, I’m not saying that because I know its author. It is simply a vastly more detailed look at the mechanics of law school, and in several respects it tells deeper truths while the other book glosses over the same issues and rehashes well-worn frivolities. Planet Law School is a radical book; thus, the numerous hate-it comments.

So, be careful before writing off any book. Or piece of evidence, for that matter. Sometimes the unloved is the better.

* * *

Much of the advice out there is innocuous enough: how law schools rank, when to take the LSAT, and so on. But that’s hardly the stuff that will make or break you. And it hardly imparts the reality of law school or of “making it” or being “broken”—which hits law students all the harder for its suddenness and seeming lack of warning. As I read through book after book I stood there in the stacks and then in an easy chair, and I almost couldn’t believe the poor advice in some of them—including one that apparently is the most popular of all.

On vastly more important topics—such as how exactly to spend one’s time in law school—these books were all over the charts and filled with often downright silly suggestions. No, silly doesn’t quite cover it. For anyone who has graded hundreds upon hundreds of law essays, the result of these tidbits is both insulting to students and professors and dangerous to the legal profession…and to clients.

That irks me. And it should you too. After all, you’re the one who will suffer. Because you’re spending your time, and perhaps money, on this book, I’ll be direct: advice such as “here’s how to brief each case,” or “color coding,” or “how to impress your professors” is not just wrong, it is palpably wrong to anyone who has either taught or practiced law. It’s not just that these are dumb—it’s that these are a waste of your time when you do not have time to waste.

There’s another reason this advice is so wrong. That is because it is so seemingly reasonable. When students read about, say, color-coding their cases, as many have used highlighters before—or seen others use them—it seems to “fit” within what advice is supposed to be about. It seems like good advice. But it is not. It is horrible advice. And perhaps the only way to know this—short of actually wasting dozens or hundreds of hours color-coding cases and then bombing your exams—is to ask a handful of 3Ls. Seriously. Ask. These will be some of the most important conversations you have. There are two problems with even this: if you wait until law school starts, you will already be starting with precious little time to spare—making tricks like color-coding seem the only reasonable alternative—and it’s hardly possible to run a scientific survey of and be able to corroborate any 3L’s actual exam results, absent law review membership. (This would, however, make for a fascinating study.)

Color-coding is not just a waste of time—as indeed it is—it is a distraction from what you do need to be doing: learning black letter law in preparation for learning how to use it. Why does color-coding not teach black letter law? Because that’s not what black letter law is. The case is an example. It is a fact pattern upon which black letter law is built, and with which one can explore that black letter law. But by itself it’s not the donut; it’s a hole. And through that hole you can waste an entire semester, not realizing how little black letter law you have internalized—and how much you need for exams—until it’s too late.

You can learn the law, well, in less time than nearly all of these books’ advice will lead you to spend. The answer is so simple that it shouldn’t take someone such as I to spell it out—and I hardly have the intent that Atticus has to overturn the system. Broadly, Planet Law School stands in opposition to these other books, which he views as part of a vast—yes—conspiracy. As mentioned, in my opinion Planet Law School is its own worst enemy. True or not (and it is, in the main, true), its message is overshadowed by its diatribes, and it sets up a system of study that few are willing, seriously, to undertake or maintain. The result for individual students is an almost-certain backlash: “it can’t be true,” and “this is just too much work!” My suspicion is that many of its readers gasp in shock at the array of sources and lessons laid out. While I don’t dispute his reasoning, I believe there is another approach: a middle ground that is both more achievable and, in the end, stronger. In fairness to him, this approach relies on his work as an anchor. And, as I will recommend, so should you.

The approach in this book is thus to impart the importance of a mastery of the law with as little effort as possible. Yes, you read that right. This will seem odd indeed, certainly as it is phrased. Yet this is important: learning the law should be about efficiency as well as mastery. In practice, you simply won’t have the luxury—though it won’t feel like a “luxury” in law school—of spending hour upon hour thinking about a simple point that can be confirmed in minutes. The practice of law, for those who succeed, is fast-paced, and assumes a command of basic legal principles. Your approach to law school can and must match that, to a better result with less time and better effort. Law school should be an environment in which all law students learn both the theory and philosophy of the law and at least the basics of what it means to actually practice law. In other words, knowing why a rule is important, and having a sense of how that importance will play out in an actual case. And this should take less, not more, time than is currently spent. It is possible. This book will show you how.

So, rather than tell you which books are “better,” I leave it to you to decide. I encourage you to read Planet Law School. Take whatever pieces are useful to you, and re-read sections as needed. Chances are good that as you progress through law school you will come to appreciate its advice with increasing clarity. Indeed, you probably won’t appreciate it fully until after you’re out of law school. The other books each offer advice of varying quality. Again, most is fair advice, and even books with advice that is to me shockingly bad also have advice that is sound. In the process of reading this book, I hope you’ll get a sense of which elements, in my opinion, are worthy and which ones are not. In the end, as with all matters of legal decision-making, it’s up to you to weigh and decide. I will lay out a set of opinions that are not mine alone, and that have as their purpose a realistic set of guidelines. I will not seek to duplicate what these other books already do, but will instead serve a different, overarching function.

* * *

There’s yet another way to look at this—a way that is most useful in practice as well as life: Ask what the other side’s interest is.

What is my interest? I will be neither harmed nor helped by your performance—except in the most indirect way of proving or disproving the validity of this advice, and in the karmic pleasure I would gain by your success. I thus encourage you to consider what I write as true (or not true) for the reasons self-contained herein: each piece should stand or fall based on its inherent reasoning and soundness, as applied to you. To dismiss any of the advice (actively or by neglect or cognitive dissonance) is part of a larger issue of Getting Good, and by getting good, Getting the Gold.

Much of what troubles law students isn’t a lack of intelligence—this should be clear, as you are by your very presence among the most highly intelligent students on campus—or a lack of effort (usually). Rather, it is a lack of direction and focus. What I will do is to lay out that direction, and to put this all into focus, for you.

I might, just to restate, strike you in some of what I say as a bit brusque, if not downright rude. I’d like to borrow from another colleague, Morten Lund, author of Jagged Rocks of Wisdom and partner at a national law firm writing for new associates:

…[S]ome rules may strike some readers as unfairly harsh or brutal. If so, I also do not apologize, because that is just too bad. This book is here to be honest, not to be fair. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to law practice.

Jagged Rocks of Wisdom is a book for new attorneys—which I highly recommend, by the way, even though it “competes” with my own—so it’s written in a sharper tone than is perhaps appropriate here. I will thus try to temper the advice that should be given to anyone about to embark on law school. Sometimes that advice needs an edge if it’s to have an impact. We’ve all disregarded advice because we didn’t believe it, often because we didn’t want to believe it. Sometimes it takes a literary 2x4 to make a point.

It might sound corny, but in a real sense this book is my pro bono effort. It’s my way of giving back, of helping others. You. This will, I hope, help many clients down the road through a better attorney. Also you. You’ll be better both as an attorney who has mastered the law, and better as a person, as you won’t be scarred in a law school process that is so often unnecessarily harsh. And it’s not just professors who make it so, at least not intentionally. Rather, it’s the environment and students’ fears and maladaptive reactions within that environment.

In a similar vein, please know that all of us—even the authors of books with advice I happen to disagree with—write with the intent and hope to help. Where we sometimes get a bit carried away it is with the intent to make a point. This is also tinged with memories of our own painful lessons, a danger we hope vicariously you might avoid. Sometimes, that point does need to be delivered with that edge lest its meaning be lost. I’ll also admit that I can get carried away, writing this as I am on, ah, “vacation.”

In all of this, please take the advice in the spirit intended: to guide and ease a path for you that was, too often, quite hard and harsh for us. May this thus make your journey better for you than it was for those who’ve walked the law school path before.

Okay then. Ready for law school?

This is from the preliminary chapter, “Getting Ready,” on pages 19-26.