Law School
Getting in, Getting Good, Getting the Gold
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Table of Contents
Sample Chapters
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Law School: Getting In, Getting Good, Getting the Gold

Sample Chapters

Sample Section #1: Thinking Like a Lawyer
Sample Section #2: Says Who?
Sample Section #3: The Most Important Pre-LSAT Test You’ll Ever Take
Sample Section #4: Soup or Stew?
Sample Section #5: The Perfect Personal Essay
Sample Section #6: Law School Rankings: Attitude and Altitude
Sample Section #7: Law School Prelude

Law School Prelude

Law school should be an engaging, immensely satisfying adventure. For many, it is not. It is, instead, an adventure that begins with great promise…and ends with heartache.

This is no exaggeration. Nor is it written just to scare. Talk with any group of 2L or 3L law students, and chances are than nine out of ten will—after you’ve chatted a while—tell a tale of gut-wrenching woe (if not for them than for at least a few of their compatriots). I know of one fellow student in particular, a decent and very smart guy, whose spirit was crushed in law school. He was a shell of a person even years after. More than just hopes and dreams are dashed—the realization that those tens of thousands of dollars in student loans loom large, and there might not be the high-powered job to sweep the debt away. Even that doesn’t quite capture it: this is a deeply personal wound for many, including my friend above.

First we’ll consider how law school is for many, if not most, law students. Then we’ll consider how law school could and should be, for you. These sections tell no great secret, by the way. Law school administrators and ABA officials have studied the darker elements of this reality. It is a reality, and one that senior leaders have lamented for decades, yet despite everyone’s wish that it would go away, it won’t. There are too many reasons that law students fall into these traps, like so many trapdoors on a stage hidden from view until you’re on top of them. Many don’t recognize them even then, as they’re disguised to look like solid foundations from habits that worked before. The first step is to recognize them as the traps that they are. Let’s then take a peek, to pull the curtain back on what goes wrong.

Setting the Stage: Or, How to Do Law School Wrong

Here’s the scene: a group of eager new law students file into the front doors of a law school sometime late in August. Filled with nervous energy, they’re nearly bouncing off the walls with excitement. The halls bustle with this energy. Anything seems possible. Yet much of this energy is channeled negatively. To cover intense feelings of inadequacy and nervousness, nearly all seem to blurt their life résumé when meeting each other: “Hi!…I’m Chip!…Yale undergrad and Exeter!…Heard of it?” “Hey!…I’m Suzy…just got back from my second summer in [pick some Third World spot]…guess it helped me get in here…did I mention I went to Princeton?” It’s amazing more students don’t pass out; they’re so busy racing through their life accomplishments they don’t seem to have time to breathe. And so it goes. For anyone within earshot (which is nearly everyone, as voices rise to eardrum-piercing levels), each self-flattering declaration causes, simultaneously, even more self-conscious nervousness, pangs of inadequacy, and, more than occasionally, dry heaves. Like electrons, students bounce nervously from one to another, eager to electrify others with their impressive credentials. Like spastic, autistic caricatures of themselves, many morph into almost-unrecognizable, egocentric boors. “Me, me, me!” Someone then mentions that the assignments for the first day’s classes are posted, and more than a few students gasp. Huh? You mean we really were supposed to have prepared? Quickly they make their way to the poster (or web page), jot down (or download) the assignments. They grab their casebooks, and start reading. Ohmygod. This isn’t like any reading they’ve ever seen. They attend a presentation on how to brief a case, and of course are eager to get started. They already have a dozen to do! Okay, they buy the extra highlighters and start to brief cases. Dutifully. Painstakingly. Man it seems to take forever. Each case seems to take hours—and it’s sometimes hard to focus halfway through on what was just read. Their minds start to wander ninety seconds into the first “hereinafter.” A holding? Huh? Procedural history? Gah! In the first week it seems that they’re spending every second of free time reading and briefing cases—and they’re supposed to go to class too! In class they take notes. Lots and lots of notes. Surely this will help to make sense of the Greek (well, Latin) they’re reading in the cases and hearing from the profs and other students. Oddly, the notes don’t seem to help. At the end of the week, they look at their piles of notes and it’s hard to tell what they’re even about, much less to help understand the cases. If they forget to put the class name on the note, they can’t even tell what the subject is! If they get out of order, they’ve no idea which way they go. So they put them in a stack that grows ever more disheveled, and on and on it goes, week in and week out, as they bumble through their first week, second week, and then first month. Someone mentions another task—outlines!—and now they’re starting to panic. How can they possibly do more?! The cases are taking all of their time, and they’re struggling just to keep up. Class is getting to be a joke. It’s fine to pretend to know what’s going on, but they’re worried about getting called on and goodness that is a sure killer, right? Then they’re called on. Ohmygod. I’m dead, they’re thinking. If only I understood that case! The facts! The holding! What are they getting at?! The prof must think I’m a real moron, you fear silently. Everyone feels this way—even the cocksure gunners (who hide their fears by having their hands nearly constantly raised). Surely they know how lost we are and will help. Now it’s a real panic. It’s the middle of the semester, they’ve been attending classes like clockwork, the professors are certainly nice, but it’s just not making sense. Gosh it’s hard. Hmm, outlines have been forgotten…there’s no time!…but with exams just around the corner, they know they have to start doing something. They’ve also read they’re supposed to practice with exams, and gee-it-would-be-good to have a study group. No way! This is a madhouse. It’s hard enough to keep up with the readings, much less deal with others and their peculiarities. Especially not those assholes! Didn’t you see how so-and-so looked at some other so-and-so? Exams! They’ve always done well. Surely these won’t be that bad. The semester is drawing to a close, and panic hangs in the air. Students are wide-eyed with fear. In just about every class something is said that brings utter dread: what are they talking about?! Some are like the undead…they’ve never come close to failing before. But will they pull this off? The law still isn’t making sense. It seems mysterious, even bizarre. All these phrases they’re supposed to know. What do they mean? Well, cramming worked before, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much choice now anyway. Exams are right around the corner! So, just like in a scene in The Paper Chase, cramming it is! “I’ll show them!” says nearly everyone to themselves, silently. More silently, they’re praying just to make Bs. Maybe one A, just to keep some dignity. Students huddle together and separately (this might seem an oxymoron, but that’s what will happen…like an academic fetal cry for comfort, students will almost hug themselves). Some will seem as if they’ll burst into tears at any moment. Others have distant looks, as if they see something important far, far away. Anywhere but here, they seem to say. Just let this be over. Taut faces and even shorter tempers give their fears away. Panic is contagious. Even those who were doing a good job and who do know the law succumb to a foreboding dread. Like cattle to the slaughter, they file into the exam rooms. Even with polite chatter, they can sense their impending doom, and the certain knowledge that they’re just not ready. If only a meteor hit, destroying the exam rooms and giving them even just 24 hours more! Perhaps ancillary fires will engulf the neighboring buildings, buying a week! Sadly, no meteor hits, and three and a half hours later they leave the exams knowing they could have done better. If only, if only…. Their thoughts trail off, and they pray that they’re not one of the ones in the bottom half, as by now they’ve seen and heard what happens to students in that dreaded statistical pool. Now starts the bargaining. Just give me this, Oh Lord, and I promise I will be good. Even committed atheists begin negotiating with deities great and small for their future lives. Like a bad science fiction movie, they stagger the hallways, putting on a show but knowing all the same that their dreams for a high-paying job are dead—along with how they feel. Many start acting out, and many of those go to the dark side—secretly planning to cheat, lie, or otherwise do whatever it takes to reverse the fate that’s been so unjustly handed them. Or they profess never to have cared at all. But they know better. Before, they’d been the best. Everyone had said so. Now they were a whole heap of nothing. Not just fighting for a good job—fighting for any job. With anyone! Pleeese? It’s so humiliating. The winter holiday is hardly worth enjoying as the stress of the semester never quite leaves—how can it with exam scores still hanging in the balance? Somehow, they eat the turkey and smile weakly through the family accolades. The new semester starts, and one by one grades start to come in. The reactions are painful, and predictable. A few positive surprises, but mostly very, very long faces. With the curve’s uncaring median, nearly everyone is seeing grades far below what they would ever have expected—or have ever gotten. For those hoping for an “A,” it’s a long, long way down. From undergraduate classes where nearly everyone gets an “A” or a “B,” in law school even a “B” seems shockingly rare. It’s as if hundreds of students are hearing the worst news they’ve ever heard—and for many, that’s exactly right. Classes are already a few weeks underway, and in a sort of post-traumatic shock, the whole process starts up again. Cases. Briefs. Notes. Panic. Frenetic worry. More notes. Panic. Cramming. More panic. Another, final set of exams. This time, however, the exams count. Spring fills with even more intense dread, if that’s possible, and for most, very little that’s remotely positive or productive. In less than a year, hundreds of the most intelligent, most decent individuals who’ve excelled in college have been reduced to a quivering mass of despondency—a surprising percentage of whom have suicidal thoughts. (But who won’t confide in a counselor for fear of an impact on bar examiners’ committees for fitness to practice law, which can investigate even intensely personal counseling.) Even the lucky few who actually did well—if you asked them privately—would find it hard to explain just how they did it. So the next year somehow starts with the undead wandering the halls, putting on their brave faces, and watching as an eager new crop of law students bounces off the walls with excited, expectant faces to class.

* * *

The above, admittedly way-too-long paragraph might seem unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It certainly was to me, and to everyone I knew. Yet this is what happens, year in and year out, at every law school.

You’ve been at the very top of the academic heap. You’ve been praised for sixteen years for your intelligence, qualities, promise. Why should the next three years be any different? Although you read variations of this story in nearly every book about law school—each telling you that it is different—you still don’t believe.

That’s understandable. This is a reality that doesn’t quite hit…until it hits. And, for at least half of every law school class, the “hit” will be very much like a mental version of what we see after a train derailment. Tens of thousands of tons of metal, twisted at places beyond recognition, all because the wheels somehow jumped the track.

If you follow the above screenplay (and fall into even one of the above trapdoors), chances are high that you will fail. This is not mean that you will literally “fail” (usually), but you will be lucky to earn “B’s,” and will probably see more than you want of “C’s” and even “D’s.” And, believe it or not, you’ll have no idea why you earned each grade…but you will know, deep down, that you didn’t really deserve a better one. I suspect that, if you’re like me, a “C” is worse than failure. Even an “F” can be explained away a little less awkwardly—you were deathly ill, you were prescribed the wrong medication and being wheeled into the emergency room, the exam was held in the wrong city. Just try to explain away a “C.”

This is a crushing experience for a dismaying number of highly talented, intelligent, caring individuals. An “A” might be an expectation, but law schools strictly limit number of “A” grades. That means that just about nine out of ten of those highly talented, intelligent, caring individuals—you and your future colleagues—are about to experience one of the worse experiences in their lives: failure.

Break this pattern. If you sense any of the above happening, stop.

Stop! Something is wrong. This is not the way law school should be. It is especially not the way law school should be for you.

This is from the preliminary chapter, “Getting Good,” on pages 151-158.


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