The Pre-Law School Advice Recap (Sort of)

Cerulean Blue (aka lawgeekgurl) has a post entitled "So, you want to be a lawyer?" She cites to The Slightly Newer 5 Hour Law School which offers this:

5 Minute Law School Summary: Born ----->genetic defect ------>desire to be a lawyer -----> take LSAT -----> accepted into law school ------> three years of torment ------>rest of life in torment ------> Die

and this:

The first year of law school is the hardest. The whole point of the first year is to frighten you to death (very similar to the house of horrors at an amusement park but a lot more expensive). There is nothing like being called on by your criminal law professor. You are required to stand up in front of 180 complete strangers who would like nothing more than to see you crash and burn so they don't look as stupid when they get called on. The professor will then play a game with you called I, the professor, am always right and you, the student, are always wrong. This is like "three card monty" played on the streets of Times Square. The person dealing out the three cards lets the chump betting win a couple times and then you lose from there on out. The main difference is the chump only loses his money, the law student loses his soul.

This is a frighteningly accurate portrayal of first year classes. Frighteningly accurate. Seriously. Replace that "180" with "74" and I was there. Occasionally I have nightmares from my Civ. Pro. (Civil Procedure for the uninitiated) or Torts classes. The nightmares aren't about anything that didn't take place. They're more like repressed memories that surface while I sleep to torment me all over again. Like that day I was called on in Civ.Pro. and I had fallen asleep for one of my 5-minute cat naps. Yeah, 8:45am classes don't agree with me (though, surprisingly, 8am work does).

But I digress. Lawgeekgurl's post is pretty informative and links to other informative sites. I know a lot of other blogs and blawgs have done "What is law school?" and "How You Can Prepare For Law School" and "How to Rent Your Soul in Increments of 1/10th of an Hour" so I'm not going to rehash all of that. I'll just link to lawgeekgurl's post which I think is pretty good. Also, that 5 Hour site above is pretty amusing. Here's another quotation from there:

What other profession has one of its own members hired to fight off another member of the profession? This would be similar to hiring a plumber to fix your sink and the plumber's union hiring another plumber to keep your sink broken.

and another:

I did forget to mention one other option. You could become a criminal and be a lawyer at the same time. We call this job Congressman.

and another:

If you want to make a lawyer look stupid (and who doesn't) ask them to clearly explain the "Rule against Perpetuities."

That last one is true, btw. This one is just funny:

The class [Legal Writing & Research] was similar to the scene in Lawrence of Arabia in which Lawrence sits with his troops on top of a hill looking down on the retreating Turkish troops and screams "NO PRISONERS, NO PRISONERS" to his men, just before charging down to wipe them out.

And this one is pretty accurate:

Law school is filled with competitions. It is like being at a shark feeding frenzy, except there is no food to feed on and the sharks are feeding on each other

After all of these amusing quotations, I have to say that The Slightly Newer 5 Hour Law School site is actually very informative. I wish I'd read it back when I was a budding 1L and had all sorts of questions. Now I'm a budding 3L and that site won't answer my questions any more. (Questions like "Where will I work after law school?" and "When am I going to sit for the Patent Bar again?" and "Shall I eat out for dinner tonight?")