On Going to Law School
Justice Scalia worries that “we are devoting too many of our very best minds” to lawyering. Scalia mentioned people who seem to be happily employed — a brilliant “defense or public defender from Podunk” — but there are also some pretty smart people who get unhappily stuck. Young people who aren’t quite sure what to do, and think they might benefit from further study or a professional degree, end up going to law school because they haven’t thought of anything else. By the time they’re out, they’re saddled with debt and ushered into the law, where they’re promptly put to work reviewing documents. As Monica Parker, author of The Unhappy Lawyer, put it:
A lot of us went to law school by default. We’re people who don’t quite know what we want to do, but think law school will create opportunities. So we get sucked into a funnel of going into a law firm, and then, there you are! You’re miserable. You’re miserable because you didn’t choose this career. It pretty much chose you. You were never taught how to select a career, think about the possibilities, how to experiment, how to learn about what’s important to you.
It’s not the most efficient way to exploit our best minds.
A separate phenomenon is that legal education is becoming more interdisciplinary. This is probably not of particular benefit to the legal profession or to those who depend on it. A client, I would imagine, doesn’t much care if his attorney is schooled in sociology or in law and literature. Most likely, better and more responsible lawyers come out of an educational system that treats law as an autonomous discipline. But maybe legal education ought to account for the reality that many smart people who shouldn’t be lawyers end up in law school too. As the liberal arts become less interdisciplinary maybe a general education rooted in law, which is after all the organization of social life, isn’t a bad option.
When a Supreme Court Justice can publicly state that there’s no Constitutional right not to be punished – even executed – for crimes that you did not actually commit, it’s probably not the time to wonder if we have too many of our best minds in the law.
— Chet · Oct 19, 06:43 PM · #
law school? a mind is a terrible thing to waste…. :-)
— razib · Oct 19, 08:04 PM · #
Chet, the only rights guaranteed by the Constitution are 1) access to counsel, and 2) a mish-mash of fair procedures and prophylactic measures. What’s not guaranteed, what nobody in the history of criminal law has even thought to argue is guaranteed, is a right to 100% perfection in outcome.
So either you are the smartest legal scholar ever, and are sitting on a world-changing interpretation of our founding document and how it guarantees metaphysical certainty in matters of innocence and guilt, or you have no idea what a Constitutional right is and how to use it in a sentence. Tough call, but I’m going with the latter.
Note: this tomfoolery is emblematic of your entire oeuvre here at the Scene. You try to emulate a snide, knowing attitude, but you fall short with the ‘knowing’ part.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 19, 09:37 PM · #
Re: the post, I can give you my personal experience.
I was a science man, astrophysics and math. Saw what those dudes were doing with their lives at 30, changed to philosophy. Began the Ph.D route, disdained the culture, started worrying about university politics, petty tribalisms and a middling salary, wanted a boat and gilded leisure, went to law school.
Just got my license, now on my own, enjoying absolute autonomy and good money. Academia shmacademia.
But, you might ask, isn’t that a shallow existence? Mightn’t you have done some good by publishing the 732nd interpretation of Hart on Rawls? Don’t you want to improve the world? How can you live with yourself?
Well fuck you, that’s how. I’m not going to dent the world, and anyhow, we’re all dead in the long run and there’s nothing waiting in the hereafter. So, me uber alles y’all, and pass the salt.
Oh, and go Titans.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 19, 10:04 PM · #
“Oh, and go Titans.”
Better yet, go sailing.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 19, 10:12 PM · #
Ah, but KVS, the combo maths/law school thing would’ve been gold —a lot of big shots went that way. So, no, fuck you! Ha ha ha!
Incidentally, did you see this Chet gem? Good for hours of fun: the smarmy, how-can-you-be-so-stupid attitude, and totally wrong. Granted, his science works the same way, but I appreciate that some folks think science ignorance is educated or something.
I realize this is simpering but I will admit I have been looking for a chance to use “it’s like doing a line off of America’s tits” for days. I had one perfect set up but she wouldn’t have dug it if I had said that.
— Sanjay · Oct 19, 10:40 PM · #
That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about conclusive proof of innocence not being constitutional grounds for an appeal. Scalia believes that it’s not cruel and unusual punishment to be executed for a crime you’re not guilty of; that only legal issues, and not actual innocence, can be grounds for overturning a trial. That a trial that was not legally flawed yet produced a false outcome must nonetheless be upheld.
It’s abhorrent. It’s precisely because the legal system is not 100% effective that we should never confuse legal findings with actual truth, and be open to the possibility that a perfect trial can nonetheless convict an innocent man. It’s Scalia who seems to have 100% faith in the legal system – or, worse, he just doesn’t give a shit.
You’ve completely misread my post, though. Now that you’ve been informed as to what I was actually talking about – I guess I assumed a lawyer would know about the Supreme Court, so sue me (!) – would you like to maybe revisit your response?
Um, not totally wrong, Sanjay. “chan” is a diminutive suffix, like I said. (I assume, by the way, that you’re about to claim a Ph.D. in Japanese Studies.) I never said it was only for women. Who’s got the attitude+ignorance problem, again? While we’re at it, why don’t you tell me how Bell’s Inequality is about unequal bells, again?
— Chet · Oct 19, 11:14 PM · #
Although Sanjay I think your greatest hit has been your contention in the other thread that a few months of working with fruit flies has qualified me to be the attending medical professional during military interrogations at Gitmo.
And he think’s I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Classic!
— Chet · Oct 20, 12:17 AM · #
Not to belabor this (continuing from a previous discussion), but
“You were never taught how to select a career, think about the possibilities, how to experiment, how to learn about what’s important to you.”is symptomatic of the coercive education style we have in America. Growing up in a largely pre-programmed system undermines a child’s natural curiosity and autonomy. Since they never try things out on their own, they never discover what they like or what’s important to them. They then get dumped out into the world at 18 with no experience in self-direction. For many, college is simply a kind of “cover” for the limbo of self discovery that is natural to someone who grows up without any rights and then is suddenly forced to self-direct.
Mandatory schooling is a miserable idea. I hate to blame the Dems and teacher’s union, but that seems to be where blame belongs. After all, from K-12 you are living in a socialist environment- rules are made by anonymous boards of experts; if you bring a snack, you have to share it with everybody; you have limited personal choices; teaching strategies are applied to everybody, thus devaluing individual learning styles; and you are beholden to the state (the school, in this case) for everything. It is the opposite of the capitalist society they will be graduating into at 18 (or 22).
No wonder so many young people are socialists. It’s how they were raised. It is only natural to rebel against a capitalist society that you have not been prepared to enter. Why do they not teach economics in high school? Who decided that?? Leftist school boards, no doubt, whose only experience of life is within the socialist confines of academia.
Abolishing mandatory schooling is about the smartest things we could do for American education. Not that there wouldn’t be publicly funded schools to teach the poorest of the poor basic skills like reading and writing. But young people are capable of so much more than they are allowed to do in school. Opening the education field to competition- to see which approach works best for which students at what time would maximize the talent of the next generation. This is the only sensible public choice. Pity it will likely remain a fantasy for so long.
And, of course, we would have far fewer lawyers. . .
— D-Blog · Oct 20, 12:31 AM · #
Just for the record, Chet, becaase you seem enamored of your misexample, you defined “Bell’s Inequality, wrongly, as this (along with some other freakishly wrong physics). I pointed out, correctly” that a correct definition would be y’know, an inequality here (later describing that inequality). As usual you’re just wrong, but double down so we can see you’re clueless, and planning to fail out of another degree.
Y’know, KVS, I don’t know much about the solar system, but it continues to astound me that people read the word “hydrogen” and think it could possibly refer to a gas. It’s not “Hydro Gen”, like “Twelfth Gen”, it’s “hydrogen”, which even I know is a way to refer to lime-green mammals whose shredded seasoned flesh is available through public pipes as a utility in North Carolina in a way that references their little coiled tails. I don’t speak a word of chemistry, even.
— Sanjay · Oct 20, 12:33 AM · #
I didn’t define it as anything; I quoted directly a description of Bell’s Inequality as I found it from a number of sources. So your dispute is really with them, not with me.
The idea that Bell’s Inequality should be defined as two things not being equal to each other was your childish, absurd, and idiotic attempt to catch me in some kind of “gotcha”, but it only revealed that you had no idea what you were talking about. If you’re able to actually define Bell’s Inequality, you certainly did not do so in that thread.
Of course, every other example you’ve provided of my “wrongness” has either been your misunderstanding or your complete invention. I’m not wrong about evolution, I’m not wrong about Dawkins, and I’m most definitely not wrong about “chan” being a suffix indicative of diminutive familiarity in Japanese. Every example you have of my supposed “stupidity” is either your mistake, your error, or simply your misapprehension of the contours of the debate.
Nobody thinks you’re the one who knows what they’re talking about, Sanjay.
— Chet · Oct 20, 01:43 AM · #
Y’know, I think I have a crush on Sanjay. And I don’t give a damn who knows it.
And Tony, in a year or so. I promise. O lord, how I promise. But I’ve got myself a woman, twang twang. And I’ve counted to three.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 20, 05:40 AM · #
“…go Titans.”
We should all have a dream, Kristoffer. Tell Kerry Collins to stop peeing on yours.
I rejected law school for a clinical degree instead and found work with the state. I make far less money than I would have (my father being a founding partner in a prestigious firm), but find that I am much more intellectually stimulated. I get to go testify in court, meet with judges and attorneys, and generally plan how the intervention for my clients should look to best support them and the outcome the court desires.
I’ve had to learn about the legal system on the job, though. The intersection of law and psychology in grad school focused more on things like jury selection and witness reliability. Interesting stuff, but not really germane to my job. But then, no degree could have adequately prepared me for this job. And I would bet that, ultimately, most jobs are like that.
I’m a big proponent of studying what interests you — the jobs will flow from that. I very much want to know where D-Blog went to school or sends his children to school. I would wager that “leftist school boards” indicates the answer is “nowhere.”
— Erik Vanderhoff · Oct 20, 03:28 PM · #
D-Blog went to private school in New York. He also went to Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Curtis is where you go when you turn down Juilliard- it is an elite conservatory where everyone is given a full scholarship. This seeming advantage was actually extremely harmful to students who were warned that they were on probation for their entire stay at the school. A socialist set-up if ever there was one.
The complaints in my post above, however, were not directed at university level education (where I don’t believe there are school boards – leftist of otherwise). My issue is with curriculum selection in public school and, by extension, private.
E.V., I wouldn’t disagree with much of your post. I too am a proponent of learning what interests you (otherwise I, too, would have gone to law school.). In fact that is just my point. It is just that there is a wide variety of subjects that interest people which are not taught in school. In a non-compulsive system, students would have an easier time discovering what they like (and avoiding what they don’t), as you seem to have. Also the point that you make about learning on the job underlines much of the superfluousness of traditional schooling in terms of real world skills.
The point I was making is that 18 years of choicelessness and lack of autonomy don’t prepare you very well for making decisions like what you want to study once you get to university. That, I believe, was the point of the quote I cited in my post. perhaps you should read it again.
— D-Blog · Oct 21, 12:38 AM · #
I’ll note that crookedtimber had a go at this topic awhile back (http://crookedtimber.org/2009/07/28/why-do-you-want-to-go-to-law-school/).
My take is twofold. Anyone going to law school should probably try their hand at working in a law-office beforehand—it’s eye opening for many. Another powerful motivator for law school is that for students leaving college, it defers the terror of finding a job, and also offers a clear path to a job by doing more of what you’ve done so far in your life. It’s hard to overstate the terror of being 22 and without a plan, so many kids opt for what’s concrete.
— Justin · Oct 21, 07:31 AM · #
Huh. I tried to post an apology to D-Blog for the snark. It appears to have failed. Anyways, sorry, dude. I agree that our system is a mess. But I don’t think that the purpose of the system is to turn out college students at all. Most people will not go on to college. Given that, the question the system needs to address is “What skills do we need to teach our students in order for them to survive?” Turning out skilled college students is a distant second.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Oct 21, 07:30 PM · #
Funny, I just tried to post a response to Erik’s post, but it didn’t go through either. Too bad, cause there was some good stuff in there- as well as a gracious acceptance of the apology. Perhaps the post will materialize somehow from the subterranean cables. But for now, I’ll just leave it at this and save the wisdom for another time. Cheers. D
— D-Blog · Oct 22, 08:59 AM · #