required reading for aspiring law students?

Bleak House by Dickens.

The Trial by Kafka.

http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Procedur...1111089&sr=8-2
to see if you can stand this **** for three years.

Important to draw the line between a local public defender and the Federal Public Defender, though. FPDs have enough time to work up defenses and cases.

Their clients, however, are still often straight up trash and outright lie to them. Which can make working up a defense hard, when your client won't tell you the truth or all the facts you need.

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.

For a fun inspirational read, I enjoyed Grisham's The Rainmaker. Young attorney learning the ropes in a big huge civil case. You'll love it.

On the other side of the coin, I think The Destruction of Young Lawyers: Beyond 1L, by Douglas Litowitz should be required reading for law students---just so they don't feel alone or like a fraud when they graduate and are totally overwhelmed by all the stuff that makes being a young attorney so terribly stressful. It's about the absurd horseshit you will need to go through and pay for to make it. It's a bit depressing. But it's short and accurate and might give you insight into what sort of things you would like to avoid. If you are a civic idealist, for example, the chapters dealing with how the cost of education is so great that it forces smart idealists to take high paying, highly stressful gigs instead of what they really want: standing in front of a jury fighting to throw some menace in the slammer.

Meh. Don't read it now. It's truths probably won't be evident. But i'm thowing it out there anyway.

Verno Inferno <---(former disgruntled attorney, current happy attorney)

This website might have some helpful info:

www.top-law-schools.com/forums

Be careful about going to law school on a whim. Why do you want to be a lawyer? I'd recommend actually working at a law firm. Many people like the IDEA of law, but don't really understand what it's like to practice. Most books glorify it...because actual practice is usually not sexy or action packed. You may think you can live on 30k a year now, but, assuming you want a family, this budget may be unmanageable as you get older. Think very carefully before you attend law school. Most students go deeply into debt and don't really know why they are going. That is not a good way to jump into a 150k investment.

Originally Posted by younglaw

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This website might have some helpful info: www.top-law-schools.com/forums Be careful about going to law school on a whim. Why do you want to be a lawyer? I'd recommend actually working at a law firm. Many people like the IDEA of law, but don't really understand what it's like to practice. Most books glorify it...because actual practice is usually not sexy or action packed. You may think you can live on 30k a year now, but, assuming you want a family, this budget may be unmanageable as you get older. Think very carefully before you attend law school. Most students go deeply into debt and don't really know why they are going. That is not a good way to jump into a 150k investment.
thanks. since i've been in college i've really developed a good habit of reading alot. a whole lot. so i think that's going to help me with my decision making progress...i'll totally check out that link and try to absorb as much information as possible. when i say 30k...i think what i should've said was that i'd work for whatever amount of money, as long as i can live comfortably on it. and by that i mean pay all of my bills while living a modest lifestyle. basically the idea is that i am not interested in getting into law for the sole purpose of making huge coin. that's not what i'm getting into it for. as far as debt goes...that scares the hell out of me. i live in new orleans...so i was looking at tulane, loyola, and LSU. i'm really thinking that LSU would be my best bet. i plan to practice in state anyway and the tuition is incredibly cheap compared to the other options. i DO love the "idea" of practicing law...and wouldn't it be great to be a trial lawyer? that must be tons of fun. but i find many aspects of law interesting...legal research, writing, the type of work seems good to me. basically i'm not one of those people who watched a good episode of boston legal (even though i love that show) and decided "i'm going to be alan shore and make $400k, **** bitches, and destroy people in the courtroom". i'm pretty realistic.

On a daily basis, read Above the Law.

As a more general bit of advice, your legal career is a hell of a lot longer than your first job out of law school. In my experience (which was mostly obtained during brighter days for the legal profession), very few of my law school classmates (class of '98) are still working wherever they started. And the clear majority have made substantial changes (e.g., from firm to government, or in-house, or non-profit). It takes some time to find the niche in which you're most comfortable. I've landed in a very good place with an employer (a federal agency) that I am in no hurry to leave. But it was a little bit of a winding road to get here.

My wife is a lawyer and followed a similar path. She's now landed at the Federal Public Defender's office and loves her job.

While disgruntled lawyers are a dime a dozen, many are disgruntled because they haven't tried very hard to find a better place (or simply refuse to think outside of the "Associate-to-partner-to-retirement" box).

Originally Posted by rjakapeanut

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i DO love the "idea" of practicing law...and wouldn't it be great to be a trial lawyer?

Practicing law, for most young associates, is something like writing papers, every day. Exceptions, of course, for public defenders and young prosecutors.

And being a trial lawyer, even in a small firm where you're handling cases from day one, is 95% making phone calls and sending letters. Another 4% is answering and requesting discovery. .9% is depositions and mediations. And when you get to that .1% that's an actual courtroom trial, it's a lot less like The Practice than you imagined.

But that said, it is actually pretty great. If you're into that sort of thing. There were times early on when I thought that I had made a huge mistake, but after I left the sweatshop that I started out in and came to my current job, I realized how much I love doing this work.

If I could do only the type of work that I like doing (criminal defense), then I would be very happy as a lawyer. Unfortunately, I have to take civil cases too to pay the bills (actually make a lot more money on civil cases than on criminal cases), and I pretty much hate doing civil cases. But, my practice has been heading more and more in the direction of being able to only do the cases I like (though, it's hard to say no when someone comes up to you with a killer civil case or a killer retainer for a civil case).

Originally Posted by NoVaguy

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There are a number of Law and Economics books or pamphlets out there that might be worth reading.
Vile. OP needs to learn reason and critical thinking first or we'll end up with another idiot Randian.

Originally Posted by crazyquik

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Practicing law, for most young associates, is something like writing papers, every day. Exceptions, of course, for public defenders and young prosecutors.
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. OP needs to bear in mind there is a glut of lawyers in this country, plenty of law schools eager to take high tuition payments from people who will not have a job waiting for them at the other end.

OP, you need to go out and experience life and learn what you really enjoy, because I don't think you have any idea what being a lawyer and practicing law is really like at all. Try to work during one summer as a gofer in a law firm, talk to real-life lawyers in person, find out what they are like, if their personalities are personalities you tihnk you could be around.

In addition to lawyerdad and others' suggestions in this thread, I would suggest a piece published in Esquire in 2000 about practicing law.

http://www.esquire.com/killing-lawye...?click=main_sr

I would suggest also reading Double Billing, which is about the best you can hope to do once you graduate law school -- BIGLAW.

Originally Posted by RJman

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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. OP needs to bear in mind there is a glut of lawyers in this country, plenty of law schools eager to take high tuition payments from people who will not have a job waiting for them at the other end. OP, you need to go out and experience life and learn what you really enjoy, because I don't think you have any idea what being a lawyer and practicing law is really like at all. Try to work during one summer as a gofer in a law firm, talk to real-life lawyers in person, find out what they are like, if their personalities are personalities you tihnk you could be around.
Read and reread this post, amigo. The bolded is fantastic advice, and you would hear the same suggestion from many lawyers. Also, check out Philalawyer's blog.

HLA Hart's The Concept of Law