Curzon on Law School

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the law

You wouldn’t guess it by the content on this blog, but I’m actually a law student and it’s now official: I’ve just finished my second year. Thank the dear Lord—I have one year left, but as far as the workload is concerned it’s all downhill from here. Truth be told, I’m not an exemplary student—if I were, I wouldn’t have the time to write this thing or do half the other stuff I’m involved in. Heck, at times I’m barely a law student at all. But in many ways that’s a good thing, and you—that’s right, even YOU, the lazy slacker reading this—can get through law school if you learn the skills I’m about to outline here.

First, a disclaimer. People go to law school for all sorts of reasons. Some want job security, others are following in family footsteps, there are even some who have wanted to be litigators since they saw Richard Gere strut his arrogant tush in court on the big screen. For me, I was drawn by a love of politics and the prospects of a high paycheck. But I was woefully unprepared for my archnemesis, the law school supernerd.

Take a typical law class, where professors call on students at random: “Curzon! How does Blackstone’s theory of promissory estoppel relate to the Dickerson v. Engersoll case?” As I fish for a bullshit answer, the supernerds are chomping at the bit. When I fumble and the professor calls on one of them, they shoot off a perfect answer. These are the students who ask the professor to repeat himself so they can make perfect their word for word notes whereas I’ve zoned out half an hour earlier. Being in the same classroom with these people can get really depressing really fast. How the hell can I compete with these people? I’m not a chronic overachiever. I’m not gifted. Is there any hope for me in this profession?

Fortunately, yes: those who love law school tend to hate legal practice. Professors who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard will warn students of law firm misery as they relate their own tale of woe working in the salt mines of Skadden Arps at the edge of the galaxy on a barren rock of a planet known as midtown Manhattan. Yes, they’d endured a few years before becoming professors and wouldn’t trade teaching the law for J. Lo drunk and naked in their bed. Yet when I was at a firm last summer, I loved it. The work was exciting. And when law school came up as a topic of conversation over lunch, the attorneys would whisper, “best of luck getting through that—just put up with two more years and all this can be yours!” It’s widely accepted that if you like school you hate practice, and vice-a-versa. The catch: even if the underachieving law students can survive at large firms, hiring is based on grades and academic performance. So how do a few of us slip through the cracks?

You have to master the art of taking exams and put yourself into the zone. When exam time comes as it did this week, I transcend the fourth dimension. Five exams over 12 days and I don’t know jack. The solution? I cramdown like few other human beings can. I pump the mental afterburner full of espresso and fire the cooling jets. I put my little grey cells into overdrive until I see red. With google as my faithful squire I track down all the material I need to plug the gaps in my notes, get together with some friends who in the same boat, and together, a band of faithful few who have slacked off for an entire semester learn an entire course in a few days, all while maintaining a decent level of quality control.

Meanwhile, the supernerds are sitting pretty and chilling out. They know this stuff down pat. They’ve rewritten meticulous notes every night after class. Their outlines, casebooks, and statutes are color-coded and indexed. They’re calmly reviewing their outline for the umpteenth time. The result? They’d walk into class and snatch up the A they deserve. Me? I’ll snag a B, maybe even a B+ if I’m lucky. When the exam is over, the supernerds congregate in the lounge and spend hours talking with a fervor seen only at anime conventions. They argue whether Lord Percy Kettleworth was a signatory to the 1722 Bristol treatise, or if the Dorkinboppel ruling applies to section 351 corporation formations. Meanwhile, me and my buddies are putting ourselves into booze-induced comas and have forgotten the name of the professor who taught the course, never mind the actual content.

Think people like me are bad for the legal profession? Far from it. The skills you learn during exam period are the skills that help you survive and thrive in a legal career. The supernerds might get the prestigious clerkships with federal judges and waltz on to big firms, but they soon realize that everything they bothered to learn in law school is useless. No one cares if they know the common law exceptions to adverse possession in all the lower 48 states. And no clients are interested in hearing about their analysis of subclause 4 of the Articles of Confederation. After a while, those who can’t adapt move on to other careers as professors, librarians, judges, whatever their introverted bookworm brains can handle. If my limited experience is any guide, it’s the outgoing networkers who get something out of the law firm jobs, and the overdrive exam cram technique learned in law school is far more useful than most of the dreck learned in law classes.

TOMORROW: Why it was worth it—stay tuned.