Unsolicited Advice

It's post 2008, and despite everybody you know telling you not to enroll in law school, and mountains of epirical evidence suggesting that you should utilize your talents outside of the legal profession, you've decided to roll the dice and enroll anyway.  How do you make the best of a bad situation?

• Start working at a law firm in a non-attorney role before you enroll in law school. 

  • Work your 1L year, your 2L year, and your 3L year.  You can start as a paralegal, you can start as as a legal intern, it doesn't matter.  You need to start interacting with local attorneys, meeting other attorneys, and getting to know what the actual practice of law entails. 

  • Working as an intern with practicing lawyers throughout your time in law school provides 100 times the education you will receive in the classroom.  You will learn where to file motions, you will learn about the courts, and you will learn about what types of services clients need.  You will learn how to interact with clients, how to get clients to pay, how much you should charge clients, and what types of legal services clients will and will not pay for.

  • Witnessing the day to day grind of what it's like to practice law may accomplish what other advice never could, dissuading you from going to law school (assuming you are one of the many students who doesn't have an idea of what the actual practice of law entails).

  • It will pay you, and cut down on the mass of high interest student loans that you will accrue.

  • You will have far more success networking because you will engage in passive networking.