Asked And Answered: Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
Should you go to law school? Or how about your law school graduation?
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Welcome to Asked and Answered, my relatively new advice column here at Original Jurisdiction. Have a question you’d like me to tackle? Please send it to me at davidlat@substack.com, subject line “Asked and Answered: [your topic].”
In the inaugural installment of A&A, I offered advice on whether you should clerk. Today’s topics come a little earlier in the career chronology. Here’s the first question:
Dear A&A,
A nice guy who works in the aftercare program at my daughter’s school is considering law school, in large part because he needs/wants money. He also seems to be influenced by shows like Law & Order. He asked for my advice.
I honestly think being a lawyer nowadays sucks lemons, and the law might not be a good fit for this happy, athletic young man. What should I tell him? Should he go to law school?
—Happy To Have Escaped The Law
I’m going to give this reader two answers. First, conventional wisdom:
Hell no. He should not go to law school—and incur six figures of nondischargeable debt—unless (1) he really wants to be a lawyer, and (2) his opinion on being a lawyer is an informed one, i.e., he actually has a good idea of what practicing law entails. And watching Law & Order doesn’t cut it; working as a paralegal for a few years—and actually enjoying it—would be a better indicator.
For a more detailed articulation of this position, see this Above the Law post by Steven Chung, If You Are Thinking About Going To Law School, Ask Yourself, 'Do I Really Want To Be A Lawyer?'
Second, my advice:
If the law school in question is just some random law school, and he’s paying “sticker price”—i.e., no scholarship—then probably not. Given the cost of law school, it’s not clear that a degree from any old law school is worth the six-figure price tag and three years of his life. (But see research arguing that law school is actually a good investment.)
What if he gets into a so-called top-14 or “T14” law school? Going to law school might not be a terrible idea, at least if his main motivation is monetary. If he goes to a top law school and does decently—or even not-so-decently, if it’s a top-5 school—it won’t be hard for him to get a Biglaw job. He can do that for a few years and pay off any loans. If he stays in Biglaw after that, great; but even if he leaves after a few years, his chances of earning a six-figure income will remain high. Graduating from a T14 law school is one of the most reliable routes to an upper-middle-class lifestyle (and easier and faster than graduating from medical school).
Some folks might object: “What about his career satisfaction? Picking a career shouldn’t be all about the benjamins. Doesn’t he want to do something he’s passionate about?”1
In America, we’re very career-focused. We expect to derive a lot of the meaning of our lives from our work. But why can’t we be more like, say, Europe—where people “work to live, not live to work”? Why can’t we think of a job as just a job—something that lets us pay the bills so we can do other things in life, outside of work, that give our lives meaning?
I think this young man has the grit and resilience to stick it out in Biglaw for at least a few years, whether or not he’s “passionate” about it. Remember that he currently works with kids. He’s used to working hard, in a tough job, for not much money—so he can certainly do the same for $225,000 and up.
And experience dealing with babies and entitled children is great preparation for dealing with Biglaw associates and partners.
Here’s the second question for today:
Dear A&A,
Should I go to my law school graduation?
I don’t really care too much about celebrations. Graduating law school itself is not an accomplishment to me (perhaps doing well in law school and doing well on the LSAT were accomplishments). I have a few good friends in law school, but I am not the most social person. It would be nice for my mom, but other than her, I don’t have much family that it would be important to.
I would say I am generally disappointed with the institution of law school. I am not really a conservative in any real sense, but I am opposed to the intolerant leftism that has taken hold of the vocal students, many professors, and the administration. I largely did not enjoy law school; I am uninterested in litigation, and I found reading cases, the Socratic method, and legal argumentation to be a frustrating waste.
My undergraduate graduation was canceled because of Covid, though I'm not sure I would have gone anyway. I doubt I will enjoy the actual ceremony, and they charge us something like $100 to rent the robes (not a serious factor, but it is ridiculous). Thoughts?
Seeking clarity,
Lost Soon-To-Be Graduate
Once again, let’s start with conventional wisdom:
You should go to your graduation. It’s a major milestone. It’s a life ritual. If you don’t go, you might regret not going later.
Graduations can be awful, but they’re not for you. They’re for your family—the people who supported you, both financially and emotionally, during your educational journey.
When you were a kid, your parents sat through countless sh**ty musical performances, dance recitals, or soccer games. So you can sit in the sun with some friends for a few hours.
Suck it up. And while you’re at it, get off my lawn!
And here’s my take:
Ask your mom—in person or over FaceTime—how much your graduation matters to her. Evaluate her response to the best of your ability: if she says it doesn’t matter to her, try to assess, from her tone of voice and facial expressions, whether it really doesn’t matter to her. If you conclude that it truly doesn’t matter to her, skip graduation, put the $100 you’ll save toward a celebratory dinner with her, and don’t give it another thought.
As I’ve learned over the years, we do too many things for the sake of appearances or out of a sense of obligation, even if they provide no real benefit to us—or even if they inflict a detriment.
Early congratulations on your graduation!
So, readers, how would you respond to these queries? I welcome your responses in the comments—and I bet my correspondents would as well.
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For more on the “P-word,” I refer you to my podcast interview of celebrated Supreme Court litigator Lisa Blatt, who had this to say:
“I'm not a big fan of ‘passion.’ Do you really want a passionate surgeon? No…. I just want someone who’s good. Do you want a passionate architect? No. Do you want a passionate airline pilot? No. Just get me somebody who can get the job done and not mess up my face, or my house, or my plumbing. I mean, just get the job done. I do not want a passionate professional, period.”
Splitting out into a separate post my thoughts on your advice:
Re: graduation, the part that seems unaddressed in both the "conventional wisdom" and your own take is the writer's sense of alienation from the institution s/he's graduating from. Granted, it's not unusual to have some accumulated frustrations with one's school by the time it's over, it's not clear where the writer falls on the spectrum from annoyance to principled rejection, and the answers might still be "suck it up" (CW) or "talk to your mom" (DL) regardless. But you do seem to treat the writer's situation as just the usual case of aesthetic distaste/indifference to the ritual of graduation versus going through the motions for form's and family's sake.
If the writer is saying, "graduation is tedious, and especially tedious given that I don't even really *like* my school," then your advice is perfectly on-point. But if what the writer is balking at is taking part in a celebration of the school's own conception of its purpose and virtues that s/he's come to regard as a farce or a sham or even a fraud, that raises a different set of issues IMO.
Again, these are all matters of degree. But insofar as what the writer is complaining about is the dominance of the institutional culture by the loudest, most extreme voices, I think maybe the tiebreaker should go to bowing out of graduation and quietly telling friends and others why you're doing so. Often a vocal minority is able to wield disproportionate power simply because many of the people who disapprove never realize that their neighbors feel the same way. Skipping graduation isn't exactly an "I am Spartacus" moment, nor should it be, but it's a small expressive signal just like showing up in your regalia is, and it's worth thinking about how best to use it.
That's a great quote from Lisa Blatt. Totally agree. As someone who also now and again gets accused of being "passionate," I feel like that just misses the point of what lawyering is about. An attorney's job is ultimately to sustain a kind of double emotional detachment. Detachment from one's own choice of ends, so as to commit oneself fully to those chosen by the client; and detachment from the client's choice of means, so as to offer a candid, unbiased assessment of their legal implications.
I guess it's all well and good if passion works its way in there somewhere, but I'm with Lisa that on its face it sounds more like a bug than a feature.