quartz/content/Essays/law-school.md

title	tags	date	draft
Law School is Broken	essay seedling	2024-01-04	false

...and here's how to fix it

Warning

CW: Law school, mental health, references to US politics. TLDR law school bad.

Law school is a concept that deserves scrutiny, both as an institution and for the type of culture it creates in the workforce. In this essay, I aim to question the issues I've observed in applying to law school, the 1L year, and in practice. Places and names are omitted to preserve the privacy of my classmates. #Homework/Further Reading.

I don't have a central thesis for this entry, and there isn't really anything profound about the content. I just want to point out what law school does wrong and suggest some alternatives that do or should improve the experience for students.

[!hint] Law school as a process usually looks like this: Take the Atomic/lsat -> apply -> first semester -> 1L job offer -> Second semester -> 1L summer job -> 2L job offer -> second year -> 2L summer job -> career offer -> third year -> career.

Sometimes job offers will be delayed, as it depends on the type of employment pursued. I talk about this more in the #Job Prospects section.

Applying

I was one of the lucky ones that knew I wanted to be a lawyer right out of the gate.

With law school, a substantial minority of applicants are on their second career ("nontraditional students"). Quite a few also view law school as a backup plan after job prospects from their recent degree didn't pan out. Teachers and former aspiring history professors are plentiful in this degree. Others will go to law school because it feels like a logical step from their previous degree, rather than out of an actual desire to be an attorney. Unfortunately, the lack of easily accessible or common knowledge about law school harms both of these groups. For those not fully committed to being a lawyer, there is nothing in place to inform prospective students that their attitude would be detrimental to their performance. And for nontraditional students, the system is outright hostile, as it requires considerable time to be carved out of a working adult's day to navigate the steps for starting an application, on top of the time spent studying for the lsat entrance exam.

When looking at the LSAT, it first appears to be a type of aptitude test where you either "have it" or you don't. It's designed to be an indicator of success in law school classes, so this would make sense. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It's absolutely an exam that can be studied for, and one that you can obtain a substantially higher grade from than your first attempt. As such, many different "prep courses" exist which will walk participants through previous question solutions or provide general strategies for question types. Those who pay for a more expensive prep course will almost always do better than those who do not. This makes the test hailed as an equalizer really just another secret indicator of financial ability that hampers the fairness of the process.

In that process itself, it feels like every step is more daunting than the last. Applying in particular is again a race to see who runs out of money first, as most applicants will be applying to as many schools as possible at $80 a pop. This game has a few purposes for the applicant:

• Ensure acceptance to a school that the applicant would actually go to
• Hope for acceptance to a school that's good enough to lord over the schools the applicant wants to go to (to use in offer negotiation)
• Hope for a huge scholarship at a school that's worse than the schools the applicant wants to go to (again, for a bargaining chip)

As you can see, it's a lot more about gaming the system and obtaining leverage than it is being considered for one's merits. And law schools play into it: there's an institution called the US News & World Report, which rates every US law school by how selective they are. Not how good they are, just how much better they make themselves out to be. Remember that $80 price tag? Many of the more prestigious institutions will hand out fee waivers to vaguely uncompetitive candidates to entice application, padding their numbers so they can reject them anyway and drive down that percentage-of-acceptance.

• Disappointing sidebar: I mentioned being considered for your merits. Good luck being considered for anything else. This absolutely makes the environment worse by limiting the candidate pool. Echo chambers aren't fun.

As a result of all of this, the application process is terribly unfair to marginalized groups. And because the entrance exam is so off-target, holistic review is even more essential to law school than undergraduate admissions. Not everyone is going to think the same way in the real world, and any forcibly lessened diversity in an already-stagnating profession is going to be harmful in the long-term. I'd also appreciate testing and application reform to reduce the barriers to low income applicants currently in place. Testing fee waivers are excellent, but prep courses are as essential as actually testing, and most come at a high price.

Note that there is currently some testing reform taking place for accessibility reasons, which I fully support. Disabled lawyers exist and deserve recognition, and I'm confident that this change will improve the diversity of viewpoint that I wish to see in law school classes and the field in general. This reform does not affect the necessity of prep courses.

The LSAT purportedly serves as an indicator of success in law school. Yet nothing can prepare an incoming student for the method of study that they will soon encounter.

The First Year

The most important thing that I had to realize during my first year was that my classmates and I are all in the same boat. We were admitted the same way, and now nobody knows what's going on. Unfortunately, some have much better support systems than others (usually lawyers in the family). And more often than not, the culture, mechanics, and responsibilities of the 1L year will only add to the stress and uncertainty.

• Note that this section completely avoids discussion of when students are openly hostile to or intolerant of other students. My class year had its fair share of incidents between students, but unfortunately none were unique to law school. Idiots will exist anywhere, and I wish everyone the very best at pushing through the human obstacles in their life (law school or not).

Even at schools that attempt to create a culture that discourages open, toxic competition, there's always the background truth that you are competing with every other student you're on a curve with (or on a curve against, really). If everyone's final assignments are ranked, then you will be better than another student, and so on and so forth. This environment tends to create feelings of distance that make it harder to really connect with your classmates in a way that lessens the impact of the stress you're all under.

In my experience, the first year is about context. So much of the law in specific subjects (antitrust, IP, health, environmental, etc) requires a base understanding of all of the more broad areas (criminal, contract, procedure, regulatory, tort, constitutional, and more) that it's impossible to impart that knowledge on the former without having first learned doctrinal bases for the entirety of the latter. In my opinion, the first year of required courses is a necessity for that reason. Unfortunately, those broad areas also require context in the other broad areas. And if they were a directed graph, it would be full of cycles. As such, the very nature of the subjects contribute to the anxiety of learning the law. And the method of teaching does little to help.

The most common way courses are taught in the first year is called the Socratic method. Dating back to Socrates, this technique supposedly teaches material through questioning. The professor will pretend to know nothing, and instead ask questions of the students to guide the class through a case. The goal is to have the students reason through the opinion themselves, eliminating counter-arguments and arriving at the eventual conclusion of the court. This process means that students need to reverse-engineer the rule (the point of studying a case) from their analysis and the court's. Unfortunately, this will usually require recitation of the facts before delving into analysis. And the tool used to elicit the facts is one of the most stressful parts of 1L: the "cold call." In a true cold call, the professor selects one student at random to lay the groundwork of the case and sometimes even begin the dialogue about the reasoning of the opinion. It's harrowing because you don't know what the professor is going to care about. Remember, 1Ls know nothing—including what facts are relevant to a discussion. I've seen people have panic attacks leading up to their cold calls, and even one student that cried in the middle of theirs. The goal of law school is to teach students how to think like lawyers, which the cold call does not serve.

• Another thing that does not serve the goal is the grading structure. A single, curved final exam being worth 100% of your grade for a course do not have any particular benefit to teaching a way of thinking. Rather, incremental assignments with individualized feedback would much better serve the purpose. Likewise, absolute grading would make more sense, as nobody really thinks "better" than anyone else: we all think differently, which is what makes the practice of law so interesting.

One of the defenses to the Socratic method is that it teaches thinking on one's feet. I would disagree. Most professors see it as an exercise in rote memorization of facts before they take over to lead the reasoning dialogue, to which in-the-moment answers would not be correct. Furthermore, the classroom environment as a whole is nothing like the typical circumstances where a practicing attorney needs that skill. In fact, advocacy classes do a much better job of teaching responsive, dynamic argument and analysis. The point is that being argumentatively flexible is a skill that needs subject matter context to be applicable, which means it has no place at a time where that context is completely lacking.

Note that this relates to the pure, textbook cold call and Socratic method. Many variations exist that alleviate some of the broad-stroke pressure on a class. The professors that recognize this and adopt newer, more effective learning techniques are consistently rated the highest among students, because they allow students to focus on their other responsibilities when it matters most.

Job Prospects

By far the largest source of pressure during the 1L year is finding a first-summer job. For these positions, the legal field is split into two general halves: "big law" and "public interest." Those interested in big law will usually seek out summer associate positions at law firms, and public interest students look to aid groups, advocacy, or political agencies for their summer positions. Either may seek government positions under judges or prosecutors. Despite their disconnect, the firms involved in the big law recruiting 'game' make the environment worse for everybody.

• Please note that there is a lot more to legal careers than big law and PI, and this divide is really just what the market and most schools force on students during recruiting.
• I also don't want to speak to or sway anyone's career decisions here. That choice is for you to make, and you can find mentors in your school and potential field(s) that can speak a lot better to the pressure they experience on a daily basis than I can.

Big law recruiting is a rush for talent at all levels. As such, firms push for an earlier and earlier start every year to earmark candidates to touch base with once grades are published. Quick turnaround times are encouraged in order to sift through as many candidates as possible. Admittedly, it's an exciting hustle to be caught up in.

On the other hand, PI recruiting is much more relaxed. The opening and closing dates for recruiting and interview timetables are about a month further back than big law's equivalents. Unfortunately, this really does hurt those interested in PI exclusively. Everyone around you talking about their interviews and networking events for an entire month before PI even gets moving? Sounds like the perfect breeding ground for anxiety and FOMO. In fact, I've been part of the problem here: Watching my PI friends' mental state when I ask them about their career goals during big law recruiting season made me realize just how much of an effect being hamstrung for a month has on someone. Big law creates pressure on everyone just by being the way that it is.

There is one technique that I've noticed helps with recruiting pressure, and it has to do with support systems once again. My law school has an alumni mentoring program, where practicing attorneys will sign up to be connected with one or two students based on shared background or career interests. Those of us who lack support systems to prepare us for recruiting or to discuss options with can really benefit from an attorney to talk to specifically for those purposes. Some students even end up with positions through their mentors. For me, a first-generation law student (and first-generation college student, even), my mentor was instrumental in navigating recruiting and weighing my offers received. Recruiting season was still stressful, but the impact of that stress decreased, which meant I could focus on my coursework more intently. Which in turn led to better grades, funnily enough.

Detour: Constitutional Law

There are a few subjects in particular that foster a very toxic classroom environment, and I think con law is the most notorious of the bunch. Nearly every law student I've talked to absolutely resents the class for way they felt in it because of how it was taught.

The aforementioned Socratic method and its derivatives are primarily at fault for this. Most professors will teach the course chronologically*, which means you talk through all the obsolete cases Socratically until you get to current law, so that you can see how the doctrine developed. In con law, Socratic discourse means the professor splitting the class into sides* of the issue over each case and putting sides in conversation with each other. This method of pitting student-on-student tends to make the class very heated, especially when you have a very smart bunch of students that realize the importance of these old cases to new doctrine.

• *: Oversimplification. Without going too far into it, you have to bounce around a bit for context reasons. Some doctrines evolved at the same time, but it doesn't always make sense to teach them together so they will be separated. Con law is unique because its context dependencies aren't just external, but internal per-doctrine as well.

I'll refrain from discussing con law final exams because I think they're an area where you do kind of have to suck it up and write what you know, despite how it makes you feel to put the words on paper if you're asked to make arguments for both sides.

Con law is a depressing course to watch the evolution of different doctrines through, especially today. I can say for certain that I came out of it with a much more cynical view of judicial politics due to recent developments in state power, reproductive justice, and economic and regulatory judicial policy. Even looking back at historical cases, it's always disheartening to discuss a Justice's motivations for ruling a certain way when the class knows full well that they flipped their entire jurisprudence in order to rule along political lines.

Thankfully, there are ways to teach con law with respect to the first point that lessen the emotional toll on students. I'm a big fan of my professor's approach: he's the one that plays devil's advocate, rather than the students. When he asks a student on one side of the room a question, he'll immediately rebut their answer with an argument resonating with another. Repeat for every side of the room. That way, you don't end up fostering resentment between students for their opposing views on cases. It takes a very skilled and humble professor to be able to completely conceal their own opinions AND know the cases well enough to swap arguments at the drop of a hat several dozen times throughout a class period.

1L - Final Thoughts

1L, as mentioned, is about context. It does the best job it can at providing that context so that students are prepared to take interest area and practical courses for the next two years. However, that preparation comes with mountains of unnecessary stress on students that will lower performance for some and cause others to even quit. And this speaks little to how one will perform in their legal practice.

Practice

This section is admittedly short because I haven't had much genuine experience. Regardless, law firms are more than just recruiting entities, and pointing out their oddities is within the scope of this essay. Expect this section to expand in future.

Detour: Women in Law

Disclaimer, I am not a woman (much less one in law), so my observations do not reflect lived experiences, and there are probably much more profound accounts elsewhere.

Women in law are beset on all sides by resistance to their existence. The cultural barriers of the profession mean that it's usually senior men making decisions which disparately impact female attorneys. I'm not sure I can add a profound take on the male-dominated industry, so you should search for that elsewhere.

But just as pressingly, I’ve observed several women with established legal careers who are overly harsh and critical of young women attempting to enter the practice. I would expect someone who had a poor experience getting to their current position to attempt to uplift other women, but these women will seldom even provide support and wisdom about how practice looks for a woman. For example, a female federal judge brushed off my mistakes when I owned up and stood my ground, but the female advocate for the opposing party had to remain completely composed while the same judge flew off the handle at her for taking too long to answer a question. I’ve seen this happen more times than I can count in academic (“speak up!”) and professional (“why aren’t you…”) contexts. This practice is unfair to students and advocates, it pressures them out of the career, and just plain hurts them personally.

Literature on this subject (and complaints by female law students experiencing this in class) suggests that these attorneys, professors, and judges could be motivated by a subconscious desire to “prepare” young women for the misogynistic practice they’re going into. If that is the case, then it’s ironic that their behavior is pushing away the very people who could actually do something about how shitty the career is to women.

Conclusion

It's often said that law school is not meant to teach you the law; it's meant to teach you how to think like a lawyer. And if you can think like a lawyer, you can be a lawyer. But law school does not serve its purpose. Any attorney will tell you as much.

In fact, I think law school as a whole is more about adaptability and stress management. If you manage to survive your first year (or in some cases even your first semester), then you've experienced 95% of the stress of law school. It's unhealthy, but only for a fleeting moment on the grander scale of an entire career. And getting through that stress is a matter of mindfulness, reflection, and simple regimented academics. Yet a more tolerant and tolerable law school experience would lead to more productive, successful attorneys.

I recognize that there's an argument for a stressful, competitive law school experience. Using the coping mechanisms and time management skills developed in law school, we obtain a foundation for using those techniques in practice. But remember, law school produces the attorneys which shape the practice as an institution. If law school changes for the better, I'm certain the industry will change as well.

• Additionally, I recognize the rates of alcohol abuse among attorneys, so I'm not sure those coping mechanisms developed in law school are even effective. But the drinking culture is an essay by itself and outside the scope of this blog, really.

I'm not sure whether this essay functions more as an introduction to the pitfalls of law school or an important consideration for those already interested in it. But I do know one thing: Law school is broken.

Homework/Further Reading

• Feel free to peruse Resources/law-students if you're considering law school.
• Also geared to law students, but applicable elsewhere: How to be Sort of Happy in Law School by Kathryne Young provides subject-matter testimony from law students that gives a sense of what it's really like on many personal, professional, and emotional fronts. Some of what I talk about in the #Detour Constitutional Law comes straight from her book.