Law of School is Funny

Law school is a funny place. Along with medical school, we are considered a trade school, but that classification always seems like an awkward fit. When I think of trade schools, I think of those schools that teach you professional skills like plumbing, auto mechanics, and pet grooming. Although we are training to practice the trade of law, a relatively small percentage of what we learn is actually the "practice" of law. I am not saying that a good founding in constitutional principles is not important to the practice of law-it is essential-but, rather, that most law school classes teach general legal knowledge. They are predominantly focused on intellectual concerns, not practical. On the other-hand, law school differs from other graduate school programs. In what feels like a past life now, I was once a graduate student in German literature. I used to joke with the other graduate students that we were in "trade school," and the joke was only funny because the only trade we were really learning was how to be a nutty professor of some obscure topic (mine would have been turn of the century German philosophical conceptions of transcendence through anti-transcendental expressions). Law school probably has broader application, but to give the "trade school" classification some credit-we are learning the intellectual basis for the practice of a particular trade.

So, law school is sort of a trade school and also a bit of a graduate school, but with assigned seats and lockers, it sometimes has an element of junior high. This mix of educational identities has a strange effect on the atmosphere of law school, which is what I really mean when I saw that law school is a funny place. It is not unusual to see students on any given day in suits; actually it is quite common place because many students also work while at school. Yet, it is also not unusual to see students in sweat pants as if they got lost leaving the dorms looking for freshman English class. There are a fair number of students here who did not stop at "go and collect two hundred dollars" after undergrad and for the most part see law school as an extension of their undergrad life. On the other-hand, there is a considerable number of students, especially at night, who have full time jobs, mortgages, two kids, and are already taking cholesterol medication. Add a $100,000+ price tag and a general atmosphere of competition, and more work than anyone could reasonably accomplish in a 16-week race for the finish line, and it is no wonder people are so grateful to get out of law school. As much as a do truly enjoy learning about the law I, like almost everyone I know, pretty much see this time as a necessary hazing ritual; and it is only necessary because they won't let you sit for the bar without it.

That does not mean I am not enjoying my classes. I am particularly enjoying IP and Constitutional law, but sometimes I look around and think, how did all of these people end up here together?