Before coming to law school, I received two pieces of advice from coworkers about how to "succeed" at Columbia Law School. I found both of these to be really troubling and upsetting. I also think that they demonstrate attitudes that are indicative of some of the problems with the current law school set up and the reasons that people feel the need/desire to pawn their degrees. I figured this would be a good place to discuss them, hear what other people think about them and hear advice that others received before coming to law school.

The first piece of advice that I got was to go into each of my first year classes on the first day with one thing in mind - the exam. All of my work should be geared to "acing" the exam. I should read prior exams/outlines before coming to class to get an idea of what the professor covered on exams (black letter law, policy, etc.) and focus only on learning these things.

This was disturbing for quite a few reasons. First of all, I have always been one of those people who enjoyed school. One of my favorite things about maturing and being able to take "advanced" classes in undergrad was that I had the opportunity to chart my own course - to write my own papers about topics that I found interesting. Spending a semester focusing on memorizing only what was important for a 3 hour exam, and ignoring everything else, seemed terrible to me. Second, this seemed like an awful way to learn. There is no way a three hour exam can cover all the material on a broad subject, like Contracts or Torts and it seems wrong to that I am paying quite a bit of money and devoting three years of my life to learn three hours worth of information per class that I likely won't even remember in a few years. A friend of mine described the first year of law school as like having your brain taken apart and rewired, and this is what I was looking forward to. The idea of spending a semester focusing on an exam seemed like it would prevent this from happening.

The other piece of advice that I received was similar in many respects - my other coworker told me that the hardest part of law school was learning to ignore the things that interested me and instead focusing on the things the professors wanted us to learn for exams. Again, this seemed to go against all of my instincts and everything that I had previously stood for. At the same time, apparently this was the way to be "successful" and get good grades, and as the career counselor told us during the first meeting in October, good grades open doors that will otherwise be shut.

So, these were the two pieces of advice that I got. If this is the advice we are being given, it is easy to see why so few people here end up in jobs that they truly enjoy and that allow them to make a difference. If, every time I come across something interesting, I must ignore it and move on, the chances of me discovering what I want to do are pretty slim. But at the same time, I know that I'm definitely motivated by the fear of not "doing well" and getting good grades and not having any opportunities when I leave - something the career counselors seem to be implying will happen. I think that the only thing worse than being stuck in a job that I hate would be having a lot of law school debt and no job with which to pay it off.

I don't think that grade reform is necessarily the best way to change this situation. We need to change the attitude that people have coming into law school. I understand that there are basic facts and principles that we need to learn, hence the standardized first year curriculum, but I think that Columbia could provide a better environment for people to make informed career choices and to become better lawyers if it found a way to encourage students to truly explore interests instead of suggesting that students should ignore them. Figuring out both a way to do this and to overcome prevailing attitudes about law school (such as those of the people whose advice I've rejected) is the hard part.

Anyway, as stated above, I'd love to hear advice other people got and how they've responded to it, as well as ways to improve law school as a environment where we can figure out what interests us and how to turn it into a career. I think that if the current environment doesn’t change, people will continue to pawn their licenses, and will fight harder than ever before to do so.

-- DavidGoldin - 04 Feb 2010