Yep, I must have been a great bullshitter myself as I did get offers and also had myself convinced that I wanted to practice. Or in the late 1990s firms were so desperate for bodies that the didn’t care. Likely both.

I remember one evening when I was a 1L spending a whole night banging my head against the wall trying to understand some dull, arcane, frustrating aspect of Civil Procedure in my school library. My classmates and I had spent so much time agonizing over and investing a great deal of importance in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and questions of jurisdiction, and venue, and whatever, and our understanding of the same. Feeling drained, I decided to take a walk to a grassy, empty area on campus and look at the stars. I remember looking at the Pleiades and thinking to myself, “there’s an entire universe out there, and in the overwhelmingly vast expanse of it, Rule 12(b) means absolutely nothing.” I found myself strangely comforted by this thought. Now, years later having escaped the practice of law, this seems obvious and banal, but at the time, it felt very subversive and liberating. I felt like I was, in a small way, deflating this image I had created for myself as a naive young law student of law being the the most important thing ever.

Another memory I have is of interviewing for my 2L summer associate position. I was interviewing at a big law firm full of not-terribly-pleasant people. I had prepared a more or less standard slate of canned answers to anticipated interview questions, but one associate at the firm who was interviewing me kept hammering me with the “why do you want to practice law?” question. I gave the standard set of canned answers like, “I like the intellectual challenge!” and “I liked that job I had one summer in college working as an intern at a law firm!” Unlike other interviewers who would move on from answers like that, she kept probing, asking “but how does that make you actually want to be a lawyer?” I ultimately didn’t have an answer that satisfied her, and I gained the palpable sense by the conclusion of the interview that I had not made the best impression. At the time, I thought she was just being a jerk, but reflecting on that now, she saw right through me for who I was – someone who wandered into law school because it was the supposedly safe default option for someone who was good at school, not someone who was ready, willing, or able to cope with the rigors, stresses, and sleep deprivation of big law. I’m sure she played a substantial role in the firm’s decision not to hire me as a summer associate. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have hired me then either.

More importantly for your exercise, maybe YOU find law boring. And that’s fine. It is not for everyone. And I don’t mean that in the sense that not everyone is capable of it. I mean that in the sense that not everyone likes what I like. I like being a lawyer. I find my work to be interesting, gratifying, and intellectually stimulating. But I probably wouldn’t like being a therapist anymore than you like being a lawyer. This shouldn’t be a criticism of either you, me, or our respective professions, but rather simply an acknowledge that different people require different things in a fulfilling career.

Again, I agree with many of your criticisms. Lawyers can be pompous, and law school (more than being an actual lawyer, I find) can get caught up in quite a bit of dochue-bagery. But law school, and the profession itself, is what you make of it. If you treat law school as a real learning experience, I found that you can get something out of it and even make a lot of great friends along the way. If you treat it like some soul-sucking warehouse where you go for three years, then that’s exactly what you’ll get. (I should know, I did it both ways). Even then, though, perhaps it’s more about “fit.” Some people should be lawyers. Some people shouldn’t be. And it has nothing to do with abilities or intelligence. It has to do with “fit,” and what makes a person happy. Different strokes for different folks.

I wish you would acknowledge this more in your writing because you do have a valid message to get across, but I fear that sometimes it is lost in the rhetoric.

But rule one should be: save yourself while you can by getting out asap. Run and don’t look back!

Anytime I meet someone who wants to go to law school I take as much time as I can to talk them out of it. Any other job will lead to a much happier life. Three different legal jobs (private practice, child welfare work, and criminal prosecution) in three years have led me to believe that law school was a big mistake.

What really makes my brain explode is that a lot of people realise in their first year of law school that the actual topic of law bores them and they still go on for another two years. Seriously, why? I recently had what I consider to be a crazy conversation with an American student where, when she learnt, I was a lawyer (UK) started chatting to me. She asked me what I thought of law in general and practice in particular. I explained that I loved studying it but that practice turned out to be less exciting than what I had envisaged. She then proceeded to explain to me how horrible she found the study of law and that her summer internship had terrified her. So I asked her why it was she was continuing since she was only 1L. Surely if she hated both the study and practice of law why go on for another two years? Her answer: “Oh I’ve started now, I should finish”… Surely at that point people have only got themselves to blame if they’re unhappy.

Finally, I’m still puzzled as to why American students don’t question the fact that law is a graduate degree (therefore making it doubly expensive). We study law at undergraduate level and still make very decent lawyers…

And law profs are the biggest pieces of shit on earth — creeps that get their jollies out of yelling at a new 1Ls every year about the same fucking case they’ve assigned every year for 20+ years. (Who hasn’t seen a Contracts professor try to grill some poor 23-year old over what was the cargo on the ship in In re Peerless.) And the punch line is that none of that crap is on their exams…

You’ve probably already done so, but if not, you should read some Seligman (esteemed psychologist from Penn)….. He goes into great detail in one of his books about why lawyers have more mental illness than the general population… Several reasons, but one is that law is the ONLY profession on earth that actually rewards pessimism. I believe another is touched on in your post — the complete fetish towards pretense…. At least I think.. haven’t read that stuff in a while….

Fortunately, we went our separate ways as a group, remained friends, they continued to focus on non-issues, and I got better grades because, apparently, the professors couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, either.

I’m not saying law school is the answer for everyone, everywhere, but Jesus, man, calm down.

I strongly disagree with the “first rule.” Yes, there were plenty of kids I had no interest in being around at my law school, but I also came out of those three years with 6-7 great friends. Similarly, shunning your fellow students who are going through the same things seems counterproductive. Going it alone is a bad idea. Yeah, sometimes one asshole is going to bring up annoying topics, but just ignore him/her.

I don’t know why that client is working so hard though. I loved law school for the most part. You chill with a relaxed schedule for the first two months of each semester and then hunker down for the last month of each. It was a more intense version of college, but preferable to working a 9-5 or 9-9.

While I was pretty bored throughout property class, I think it was important to at least gain a basic understanding of many different areas of law before I decided to focus on my specific interests during the later years.

And, for the panicking law students out there, here’s a (I think) relatively amusing account of my almost disastrous second semester of law school, whereby I have a total breakdown, refuse to go to class or do the reading, and manage to pull things together for exams anyway: http://thegirlsguidetolawschool.com/04/the-story-of-my-almost-disastrous-second-semester-of-law-school/.

Will’s totally right, it doesn’t have to be that hard! You can do very little work and get okay grades, if you work strategically.