(part 1 located here and part 2 located here, both also FREE)
So the other day I started writing this post, the third in my series, and then this thing happened, and then I had to rename part 3 into part 4 because now part 3 has to be about this thing that happened.
Here’s what happened. I was doing a whole bunch of things at once, a practice we innovators call multitasking, and one of those tasks I was multi-ing was watching my Twitter stream. I follow between 450-500 people on Twitter at any given time. I follow all sorts of people: reporters, people who blog about politics from the left and the right, people whom I just find to be entertaining for some reason, and even a few celebrities. But mostly I follow law students and lawyers. I mean, it’s what I am and what I aim to be. This isn’t rocket science. If it was, I’d follow rocket scientists.
Anyway, there I was, multitasking like a champ, and this comes across my Twitter stream:
Anyone who tells you to take the summer off before law school instead of preparing, either made “B”s or has a very short memory.
Now y’all. There is so much wrong with this statement I hardly know where to begin.
For starters, since when is a B such a bad thing? You’ll recall (because I know you read part 2 of this series, in which I explained in so many words that B is the first letter in BFF) that the orientation gurus will tell you over and over that a C is a good grade in law school. To hear this guy talk, though, a B is the Mark of the Law School Flunkie. Wrong. There is nothing in the world wrong with a B, especially if you go to a school that curves to a C+ or even lower. And considering how many law schools are starting to either inflate their students’ grades or drop the grading system altogether in favor of a modified pass/fail system, grades are becoming more and more meaningless anyway.
Also, WTF Captain Generalization? This guy makes all kinds of assumptions about people’s grades and their memories based on the advice they give regarding what to do the summer before you start law school. Does that make any sense? Does that seem responsible? Of course it doesn’t. I mean, this guy wasn’t directing his comment at me specifically, but as someone who has most certainly advised you to take the summer off before law school, it ruffled my feathers a bit.
But really, the thing that just made my outrage-ometer soar off the charts is this: the guy who tweeted the above statement? He’s an author. Oh hey and guess what kind of book he’s selling? Oh wow, that’s weird. This guy sells a book that’s all about how to spend the summer before you start law school PREPARING FOR LAW SCHOOL.
Huh.
So wait. You’re saying there’s this guy who sells a book (and presumably makes a profit of some sort) that professes to tell you how to prepare for law school, and that same guy also says that anyone who disagrees with him either must have gotten B’s or has a short memory?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
So, being the snarky bitch that I am, I tweeted this in response:
Anyone who sells books about preparing for law school either couldn’t hack it as a lawyer or has a very short memory.
I mean, two can play at this game.
But really, this whole episode got me to thinking. Who are the people who advise you to do all this preparatory work the summer before you start law school?
Almost invariably, they are people selling you the (best) means by which you are to prepare. (I say “almost invariably” because I do know anecdotally of one current law student who recommended a specific pre-law-school prep program to an incoming 1L.) If you search for “law school” on amazon.com, you get 28,972 results (at the time of this writing). The book written by Captain Generalization above is somewhere on the first page of the search results, along with however many other bazillion books that claim to have the secret to law school success. But did you ever wonder whether all those books have the same secret? I mean, there can’t be that many different secrets to law school success, right? Weird.
No matter how you slice it, there are a bunch of people out there making a shit-ton of money preying upon the insecurities of future 1Ls. An entire industry has grown up around the concept that law school is this dark, scary, mysterious place where gunners stealthily deploy biological weapons against unsuspecting classmates and professors randomly behead students who can’t withstand the Socratic scrutiny. Now, all I can speak about with any authority is my own law school experience. And in my experience, this is simply not the case.
Now I know you guys already know this because you read part 2 of my series, in which I told you in so many words the dirty little secret: law school just isn’t as hard as some would have you believe. I’m not being glib here. It’s new, and different, and challenging for sure. And it definitely is difficult. It may even be the most difficult challenge you’ve encountered to this point in your life. But y’all. It’s not like climbing Mount Everest. You don’t have to train for months and months just to make your first attempt at it, only to reach the third base camp and get frostbite and get sent back down the mountain to try again in another year or two. Thousands of people graduate from law school every year. Most of those people do so without having spent a fortune preparing for law school before they started. Some of the people who graduate from law school will do so still not knowing that it’s “would have been” and not “would of been.” This makes my toenails curl up, but it’s the truth.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less whether you take my advice or leave it. That’s why it’s free. I have no personal stake in your success or lack thereof in law school. Odds are, you don’t go to my school, you don’t live in my city or even my state, and we’ll never even meet, so whether you do well or not has no effect on me personally. Unlike Captain Generalization, I do not profit based on whether I can scare you into taking my advice.
But for god’s sake, you’re going to law school. Use your brain. It’s time to employ your critical thinking skills. Think about what motivates people, especially people who are trying to convince you that you can’t fully succeed without buying their snake oil. If you really and truly believe in your heart of hearts that you need to spend over a thousand dollars on a law prep class and/or hundreds of dollars on law prep books, do that. But if it gives you pause to think of spending a thousand dollars preparing for the education that’s going to cost you tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, don’t worry that you’ll be behind in some way or at a disadvantage. You won’t.
Social Media