Bad Reasons
to Study Law
Why do people
attend law school?
Often for things
which have little to
do with legal study
or practice
BY ADAM LIPTAK
People go to law school for a lot of different rea
sons—and many of these are foolish I should
know My rationale for entering the study of the
law has little to do with why I now consider it
worthwhile Knowing what I know now, and think
ing back to what I thought then. I’m moved to help prospec
tive law students make their decisions on a sound basis. In
particular I want to clarify the misconceptions which lie
behind four very popular and bud reasons for attending law
school While, certainly, these may be valid for some people,
to a large extent they represent a willful blindness to the
central fact of law school: it is a trade school, and the trade
itself can be esoteric, dull and of questionable utility.
Bmmm yw got la. The law-school applications process has
an inexorable quality, like the gradual escalation of Ameri
can involvement in Vietnam. You decide to take the I<SAT
—I>aw School Aptitude Test—because it can't hurt and,
if you do well, it might expand vour options. You do well So,
you apply to law schools as a lark, figuring that if you get
in you don’t have to go and that it might be fun to tell people
you turned down Harvard Law. You get in.
And even if you defer and get a job, the job you get is, by
definition, entry level In addition to not making much
money compared to your parents, you get little responsibil
ity and less respect. You find yourself daydreaming ut your
desk about your undergraduate days and, the next thing you
know, it’s September and you're taking torts.
This ugly sequence can be nipped in the bud by sitting in
on torts—or better, civil procedure—while still in college.
He. ruHy. tht law It fasdMtiag. What you do in law school is
read cases, which are the published decisions of judges You
read hundreds and hundreds of these each semester.
You learn that judges write remarkably poorly. In most
cases, judges need give little more than a yes or no answer,
but they devote thousands of words in each instance trying
to sound reasonable and consistent From all their verbiage,
you are supposed to glean a pattern and pretend it consti
tutes a set of legal rules.
What law professors do is reveal the twisted reasoning
employed by all judges, excepting perhaps the one for whom
they clerked This mode of pedagogy does have its appeal:
students are invited to feel superior to the nation’s jurists,
who are made to seem at best ignorant buffoons and at worst
heartless manipulators of doctrine.
Surprisingly, you learn a lot about the premises and
methodology of the law by reading and discussing cases, but
this is not the kind of truth which sets you free This is the
kind of truth that makes you cynical.
"The Paper ('hase" to the contrary, law school is no more
demanding than other forms of graduate school, except
inasmuch as law students can work themselves into a frenzy
ofcom pet it ion The reasonably diligent student with a modi
cum of self-confidence and a good memory ought to have no
problem In fact, law school isn’t especially challenging or
stimulating. Better, if you can afford it, to lie low for seven or
eight years getting a Ph D. in something harmless—with
the added benefit that you don’t end up a lawyer.
k law dsgree Is a great credential tor anything (iod knows I hope
so, but I think the bitter truth is that if you want to do
something else you should do something else. I keep a
mental list of writers I admire who got admitted to law
school It’s a short list: seven names if you include Bob
Woodward, who got in but didn't go. In some cases, I guess,
law school may help you write about the law and some
aspects of policy. But a list as short as mine doesn’t support
the proposition that you can do anything with a law degree.
It supports the proposition that some people can find gainful
employment as writers despite the careful attention of a
battery of professionals bent on ruining their prose.
I’ve run into a number of people in law school who keep
similarmental lists of peoplewithlawdegreeswhoworkina
nonlegal field they’d prefer to work in. This is a bad sign.
The ugly truth is that almost everyone who goes to law
school becomes a lawyer. Because law school teaches you a
particular trade, you’re morely likely to practice it. The best
ploy, although still a disenchanting one, is to take a legal job
in-house at a company in the field you prefer and look on
wistfully as people nearby do the sexy stuff.
You can make a lot of money Doing a lawyer. .Now you re talking
sense. The latest round of salary increases at the big New
York firms has boosted first-year associate salaries to
$65,000 That’s a fortune, of course, but the funny thing is
that lawyers don’t make much compared to investment
bankers. And the salaries of associates carry fringe benefits
like 100-hour weeks, constant pressure and slim chances of
becoming a partner in the firm. The net result may be not
having enough time to spend the money you make and being
miserable in the process.
Consider also that it’s very hard to land such a high
paying job. As everyone knows, there is a glut of lawyers,
which means that there are unemployed and underem
ployed lawyers all over the place, and plenty are making
perfectly ordinary salaries. In order to get at the big salary
numbers you have to get into a top law school and push your
way toward the top of your class while there
Law school is not for the dilettante Business school is for
the dilettante If you need somewhere to lie low for a couple
of years and get a degree with no content but plenty of
"credent ial,” and get a crack at the really big money besides,
repeat after me: M B A.
Then why did 1 choose to study law? These same reasons,
of course. But, as it happens, and for no good reason, I count
myself umong the sizable number of people who are relative
ly content learning the law, even though it’s like doing a
very large Sunday crossword for three years straight. Even
if 1 begin to hyperventilate at the likely prospect of working
at a law firm once 1 graduate, for the time being I’m not
unhappy working through the intricate and decidedly mi
nor charms of a legal education. If I had to do it all over
again, I would do it all over again. But I would not lie to
myself about the glory days to come.
Adam Liptak is a second-year student at Yale Law School.