required reading for aspiring law students?

[crazyquik]

Originally Posted by RJman

No it is not. It is something like checking commas, being a glorified clerk, and being forced to do completely inane, ridiculous things by clients who think you are charging them too much. And that's if you actually get a job at a firm. If you don't you end up in a contract job being supposed to review documents with a bunch of very unmotivated/frustrated/angry people.

That's what I said, you just expanded on it.

Changing singular to plural, conforming subject-verb agreements, and making punctuation changes after an email came across at 10pm. Cutting and pasting clauses (or summary judgment standards) into a word processing file. Deposition summaries. Or, doing research to put together a few page memo that someone will glance across, toss into the file, and bill the client for. Putting together the CLE materials your senior partner is going to teach.

 

[Mr. Macaque]

OP says he's interested in doing PD work. life for a pd, is in fact sort of exciting. you're in trial all the time, the fact patterns are interesting, and you get to work with lots of colorful people. minimal paper pushing.

 

[Harold falcon]

Originally Posted by Mr. Macaque

OP says he's interested in doing PD work. life for a pd, is in fact sort of exciting. you're in trial all the time, the fact patterns are interesting, and you get to work with lots of colorful people. minimal paper pushing.

 

[TGPlastic]

Oh **** that's funny.

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by harvey_birdman

 

[scotsman]

Gerry Spence - The Making of a Country Lawyer

 

[Svenn]

I just graduated from law school early last week and my only recommended reading for you is a big LSAT prep book... in other words, get a taste for what the drudgery is like rather than listen to other people's generalizations. A law degree can get you all sorts of careers, law and non-law related, so don't assume being a criminal attorney or partner in a big city firm, which 99% of the advice is based off of, is all there is out there.

Face it, if you have a non-science undergrad degree you're pretty useless to the job market, so even if you have no interest in popular conceptions of the law, a JD will make you a marketable professional in a myriad of fields. Don't listen to the law school grads who can't find a job- there's thousands of them out there but those people just don't want to leave their california suburb or whatever overlawyered area they live in. Get through the education as fast as possible, and realize the LSAT and bar exam are really all that matter ...you can nostalgically reminiscent about how you should have been a more philosophical student once you're a practicing attorney

 

[judgesmails]

Not my area of practice, but my torts professor required us to read Damages by Barry Werth. Pretty good story focused on a med-mal case.

 

[MarquisMagic]

Paper Chase!

 

[odoreater]

Originally Posted by Svenn

I just graduated from law school early last week and my only recommended reading for you is a big LSAT prep book... in other words, get a taste for what the drudgery is like rather than listen to other people's generalizations. A law degree can get you all sorts of careers, law and non-law related, so don't assume being a criminal attorney or partner in a big city firm, which 99% of the advice is based off of, is all there is out there.

Face it, if you have a non-science undergrad degree you're pretty useless to the job market, so even if you have no interest in popular conceptions of the law, a JD will make you a marketable professional in a myriad of fields. Don't listen to the law school grads who can't find a job- there's thousands of them out there but those people just don't want to leave their california suburb or whatever overlawyered area they live in. Get through the education as fast as possible, and realize the LSAT and bar exam are really all that matter ...you can nostalgically reminiscent about how you should have been a more philosophical student once you're a practicing attorney

Welcome to the profession. Now get off of styleforum and get to work.

 

[Fuuma]

I only read this thread for the lawyerly trio of RJMan's detached disillusion, Lawyerdad's rational advice and odoreater blue-collar "gitter done!!".

 

[Verno Inferno]

Hey OP: you're not a fool if you are excited about the idea of being a trial attorney.

I'll clue you in on a little secret... I have a feeling that zero percent of us in this thread advising you to REALLY look into the legal profession before pulling the trigger actually took that advice. Nobody does. It's great advice, though. You should totally read a bunch of depressing books and hang out with divorced, alcohol-abusing disgruntled 8-year associates trying to make partner billing 2200 per year. But none of us did/do that, because part of being a trial attorney is being a bull-headed egotist. And even if you sit down with that 8-year associate or work with him as a clerk for a couple years, you'll never see yourself as him: stressed and complainy. You'll imagine yourself kickin' ass and takin' names. That's what I did. I clerked during the day and went to law school in the evenings (helps pay the way so you're less indebted to Sallie Mae) and I saw that dogged associate and I said, "I'm so effing brilliant that it'll take me half the time to do what he's doing. And I'm a workhorse. I've got energy to burn. I'm Secretariat, dammit. I wanna work all night and drink coffee and think hard thoughts and figure **** out and be the damn hero." That's just how young, single aspiring litigators think and you can't really put'em off it.

So just go for it. Attorneys have a great love-hate relationship with what they do. We complain, but most of us can't really see ourselves doing anything else. There's something about parsing out legal issues and dancing around what's fair and just that keeps even the most openly discouraged in the field. Some of us ***** about being away from family and friends, but I know when I was locked up in my office on a Saturday evening working on something interesting I was never irritated that I wasn't with my GF---I was irritated that I'd come home and she'd be pissed. I really didn't care, as long as it was something fascinating or a trial.

A partner at my old firm once asked me, "Why do people your age have to be happy all the damn time?" He was right. If you practice law and expect to be "happy" all the time, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Be cool with being interested and fascinated and happy some of the time. Be okay with being discouraged and exhausted some of the time.

Kick ass in your first year of law school. Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in your crosshairs and take them down. Just remember. They can buy anything. But they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you.

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by harvey_birdman

Bleak House by Dickens.

The Trial by Kafka.
Good reads touching on law, but bearing little relationship (imho) to the OP's description of what he's actually looking for.

Originally Posted by munchausen

To be honest, I'm constantly surprised by how often clients lie to their own attorneys. It does seem a bit more common in people with low levels of education, but even college educated folks who should know better do it. Makes me wonder if they're lying to themselves.
Undoubtedly, at least for me. For many people, it's clearly a pathology. I have often clients and junior lawyers that if the opposing party had the sense and discipline to choose one strategically important lie that can be conformed to the rest of the evidence, and stuck to that, we'd never be able to catch them out. Fortunately, though, people who are willing to lie under oath usually are habitual liars who just can't help themselves. They'll spew multiple, random lies that don't actually help them, but serve only to bolster their egos or the like -- thus making it much easier to trip them up. I have also won cases because -- or at least won them more easily because -- opposing parties told crucial lies that if taken at face value hurt their cases rather than helping them.

Originally Posted by JonHecht

HLA Hart's The Concept of Law
Excellent, but he'll get enough stuff like that as assigned reading. I don't know that it gives much insight into what it's actually like to be a practicing lawyer. In fact, I'm pretty certain it doesn't.

Originally Posted by Verno Inferno

I have a feeling that zero percent of us in this thread advising you to REALLY look into the legal profession before pulling the trigger actually took that advice. Nobody does.

Free professional advice: It's rarely a good idea to start an argument with an obviously false assertion of fact. In doing so, you risk losing all credibility with your audience regardless of how compelling or well-reasoned the words that follow are.

 

[RJman]

Originally Posted by Fuuma

I only read this thread for the lawyerly trio of RJMan's detached disillusion, Lawyerdad's rational advice and odoreater blue-collar "gitter done!!".

Think about what we three have in common.

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by RJman

Think about what we three have in common.

Vacations in North Korea?