Going To Law School

ilxmailed u een

yeah, in my province you have to work at a firm for 3 years before you can get certified as a family law mediator

and i dunno. i had a very hard time learning to love the cutthroat stuff, although i did get reasonably decent at it. i came like SO close to actually loving it - or, uh, convincing myself i loved it. i have a beastmode trigger deep down that seems to go off when i'm in high pressure situations like trials. but, like... i hate that beastmode trigger, and i hate how it turns me into a ravenous adrenaline junkie. so yeah... here i am thinking about mediation. ok then

i did some regulatory law work for the ag's in my state ... i don't think there's a more boring area of law out there. it's like living inside the head of humphrey from yes minister. i did get to do some pretty cool corruption stuff, and i think i unknowingly assisted in some of it, but that probably comes with the territory... there was def an interesting vibe going on there.

fennel, if you're sensitive then i'd imagine you'd have to learn how to get a thicker skin or learn to be able to let go if you're going to be working in an emotionally-charged area like family law. i did some criminal law with a family flavor at the PDs office during law school and it was downright depressing sometimes. even when i was proud of myself for doing a good job, it was like "was I really right to do that?" like getting some deadbeat dad/serial wife beater a lighter than expected probation, I felt gross about it. conflict is pretty much the job of an advocate, both b/t the parties, and sometimes your own personal morals, and you're thrust into the middle of some of the darkest moments in peoples' lives. it's not an easy job, at least in my opinion.

oh yeah, various xposts

it takes at least a year to start feeling like the adversarial stuff is bothering you less. it's hard but it's always there so you just grow into it. interesting subject matter and stories and always something very absurd to laugh at is what keeps me going. i never, ever feel gross or guilty about helping someone who did something shitty, no matter how shitty it is. really. oddly i'm not sure how i'd feel about representing union-busting corporations or polluters. part of it is i never feel like the state is doing the right thing either, i guess. that's not all of it though. i don't think i get the existentially rewarding effect from anything, but i do get excited about people who do bad stuff. they're just interesting. you don't have to like what they do.

yeah, not everyone's made for it. i do understand some of that appeal, though ... everyday going into the office was like the intro montage to one of those old cop shows. crazy homeless people spinning around in the streets holding up traffic, drug deals in broad daylight, prostitutes hanging out on the corner, people playing dice on the wall of police station. it had this kind-of thrilling anarchy to it, but i couldn't stop thinking about the people involved when i actually argued matters... took away from some of the street justice/maury povich appeal.

turning point for me was when my supervisor was representing this guy who chopped up his wife and kids and threw 'em out in garbage bags like it was garbage day. being face to face with that guy made me want to throw up.

I'm p-side and I do a lot of investor litigation, so I never have to feel too bad about who or what I'm representing. At worst I might be working on a meh case that will do no one any significant harm, at best I'm helping a municipal pension fund recover from investment fraud or helping individuals recover retirement savings. I guess since it's all more financial and abstract I also don't have to see the ugliest sides of humanity, although the downside is that it can feel very detached.

Hope dayo dissuades anyone from going to lawl school praise Jesus

law_school_slayer

http://duncankennedy.net/documents/Legal%20Education%20as%20Training%20for%20Hierarchy_Politics%20of%20Law.pdf

This is really good

buzza! ;-)

hey, how's ls going anyway?

family law is as close to hell on earth as a person can get. plus family law clients don't like paying their bills. i don't know why anyone in their right mind would concentrate on that area if they have other options.

estate litigation can get just as nasty as family law, but usually at least you know there's some money there to make it all worthwhile.

fennel, what prov are you in? I always forget there are more Canadians on ILX than I remember.

Stuck in the final 24 hours of a factum for my Supreme Court advocacy class which was supposed to be fascinating and awesome and mostly is except group work is the worst and trying to write a 35ish page factum with four people is actually probably way more difficult/tedious than just doing it yourself. And thus. I'm resigning myself to not fiddle too much with the sections I didn't write and won't be arguing, esp because the class is Pass/Fail but it is taking substantial amounts of restraint sometimes.

Gonna slip blissfully in the mindless detail work of citations after scarfing down dinner and hope that helps destress.

hey alex, i'm in BC. vancouver to be exact. i assume you're at mcgill? what are you looking at after school?

had a nice conversation with one of my two real friends at law school. was a little reassuring. seems like something i might be able to ease back into. needs some thinking in the meantime.

i understand family law proper is hellish. but i wonder if family law mediation would be fundamentally different than family law. i wouldn't even have to practice family law 3 years to be a certified mediator in BC; it can be any area of law and then just a few accreditation courses.

Just need to randomly bitch about some litigation bullshit that is getting to me -- people I'm working with on a brief keep doing two really annoying things: (1) making what I'd call "gotcha" arguments, like "Defendants don't address x, therefore they acknowledge that our arguments on that point are correct" (so obviously not true! do you really think the court will fall for this?) and (2) neurotically addressing every single nitpicky point the other side raises. Sometimes you can just let a bad micro-argument go and trust the court to see it.

hoo boy, me no big lawyer no more, but i vaguely remember in one of my litigation classes you concede a point by omitting it in your answer when it's addressed in the plaintiff's complaint, which is really just supremely lazy since all you need is a one-sentence form answer to keep it alive ... is that what they're doing??

but it's a motion to dismiss, not an answer

you definitely do not concede a point by omiting an arugment on it from your motion to dismiss - you can file a motion to dismiss that addresses only one point and still preserve all other arguments

ok, i'm not even sure why they'd be bringing that up in the first place.

how do you like being a practicing attorney? i've been tossing the idea around of jumping back into it.

It's alright. I like being p-side, some of my work is interesting, and my firm is relatively humane with hours for a nyc firm. I'm still less happy than I was working in my bottom-of-the-barrel newspaper reporting job but that job wouldn't have supported a family. I get the feeling there are a lot of happier jobs than mine.

I think what I hate most about lawyering is (1) you are stuck in an office for many hours staring at a computer screen, which sucks to an extent no matter what you're doing and (2) you have to dervote enormous attention to boring details, which combines with the stress of all the consequences that follow if you fuck up those boring details.

(1) making what I'd call "gotcha" arguments, like "Defendants don't address x, therefore they acknowledge that our arguments on that point are correct" (so obviously not true! do you really think the court will fall for this?)

How common is an explicit "lol do you really think the court will fall for this?" in responses to such arguments? I've seen a lot of subtle working-the-refs-without-seeming-to on a legal blog I follow, and wondered if any of it blows up into actual "you gotta be fucking kidding me and kidding the judge too."

ppl who know what they are doing should strive not to do it. not professional and betrays insecurity imo. just write the argument. a couple days ago i found an opinion somewhere where the judges called out one of the parties for snarky tone.

er, insecurity betrays u? what i'm i trying to say? i'm so tired.

one of my major goals in life is to never go to law school. so far so good.

i think being a lawyer is cool for people who want to do it, but too many people like me -- who don't want to be lawyers -- seem to get sucked into it. i don't want to be one of those people.

Trying to edit an 80 pp brief down to 50 right now, and I'm fighting people attached to every insignificant little half-point-scoring line. I had a really annoying argument with a junior partner about a moment where he thought he was "using defendants' argument against them" but doing so was actually perversely kind of double-cutting back against us.

xp Tell everyone you communicate with regularly that if you say something like, "I really want to help people in a meaningful way, and I think law school is a good way to make that happen" they are to hit you in the head with something until you recant your statements. Same thing if you start talking about "alternative legal careers" (hint: there are like five job openings for alternative legal careers and all five of them were just filled while I was typing this).

hey, that line got me a nice scholarship at my law school! too bad I believed it at the time. :{

xxp to hurting. that sounds maddening.

i can kind of sympathize with the young buck wanting to approach his case from a more creative angle, which is probably what he thought the law was all about before becoming a lawyer

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323664204578607810292433272.html

if you don't have a subscription this link should work

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/10/31/number-of-lsat-test-takers-is-down-45-since-2009/?mod=trending_now_3

Here’s some spooky news for law schools. The number of law school admission tests administered in October is down nearly 11% from the previous year, according to new data from the Law School Admission Council.

October LSAT takers numbered 33,673 versus the 37,780 who sat for the test the year before. It’s the fewest number of October test takers since 1998 and the second-lowest figure going back to at least year the 1980s. The half-day LSAT is given four times a year in annual cycles starting in June.

The figures are the latest sign that the law-school bubble hasn’t stopped deflating. Law Blog reported in August that law-school applicants are down 12.3% and applications are down 17.9% compared to a year ago.

The number of test takers peaked four years ago and has been on the decline ever since. The total for June and October is down 38% from four years ago. And the October total alone is 45% below the 2009 peak.

Suck it, law schools.

thanks, obama

suck on my L-SAC

"I didn't always agree with Scalia, but he was brilliant," and other complete bullshit you learn to spout in law school, such as "I really want to do transactional work, although I think lit could be interesting too,"

Things I Have Never Said for $1000

but otm

should i become a lawyer?

Absolutely not

Why do you ask

facing a bit of career frustration, which i had a more directly marketable skill set, plus i think i would be interested in learning about more about the american legal system. also being a lawyer is about writing -- albeit, in a dry way -- and debating and hey

Those are the classic bad reasons for wanting to be a lawyer iirc

Haha no law school is about writing and debating

Lawyering is about whatever job you get after the bar and rarely is there much writing or debating afaik

When I was having some of those feelings you describe I went to a graduate engineering program instead because my employer would reimburse me for it and it turns out that was a much better decision