Hey guys, welcome back. So I made a post on Instagram recently that
said the point of law school is not to learn the law. The point of law school
is to get a job. And I got some reactions from that and it was so funny to me because
rarely do I get this kind of strong reaction to something that I posed.
And some people were trying to fight me on this, and I don't really get into a lot of. Fights,
uh, maybe I should post more controversial stuff more often,
but it was really interesting because obviously I had struck a nerve and I
have some theories as to why this is that we will dive into here in a little bit.
But it's interesting, isn't it, that even just saying that the point of a professional degree is
to help you get a job and not just any job, right? The job in the industry that you. To work in,
could be controversial or sort of evoke emotions and things like that. So I think
that there are a few layers to this, and we're gonna sort of talk through what those are.
But the first one that I think is important to [00:01:00] acknowledge is the fact that
law school is designed as a gate. Keeping system, which means that you can't just graduate college
and walk up to a law firm and say, hi, I would like to apply to be a lawyer here.
Right? There are intentional barriers that are put in your path to actually become a lawyer.
So things, of course, like taking the lsat, going through three to four years of, uh,
laundry program, and then taking and passing the bar. And so you. Assume that someone who
goes through this entire process, jumps through all these hoops, go breaks through
all these barriers, would only do that if they wanted to be a lawyer, right?
Because it's so expensive and so time consuming and so grueling that why else would you put
yourself through that? Um, just for the experience or just to say you did it or just to check a box
if. actually want to become a lawyer. And I think what's interesting, and the second
layer to this is that most of us didn't go to [00:02:00] law school to get a job as a lawyer.
Our decision was actually motivated by other things, which is why I think
that post made people feel of defensive and really triggered people emotionally
because we made the decision differently. Now I definitely know that. Subset of law
students who absolutely go to law school with the mindset of getting a job as a lawyer.
And these people have definitely made this decision thoughtfully and intentionally and
maturely. By the way, I'm not putting myself in that category at all. And more often than not,
they're a few years or more out of college. They've worked,
maybe they've even had a completely separate career. They might even
have kids that they're providing for, and so it's absolutely part of their.
As to getting this degree, whether they're going to get a job after law school, and if so,
what is the earning potential and is it more than what they're making now? But I
think for a lot of us, especially those of us who went straight through from undergrad to
law [00:03:00] school, the K to jds as were called, didn't really have that in mind.
And I think there are actually three major motivations for why a lot of us go to law
school that actually don't relate to getting a job as a lawyer when we. So people always
talk about your why, quote unquote, right? Why did you go to law school? And from what
I've seen and experienced, there are three pretty major reasons why a lot of us go
to law school that have nothing to do with getting a job as a lawyer when we graduate.
And the first one is the idea. Of being a lawyer, right? So this kind of falls
under the category of just the excitement and the intrigue and the prestige that comes with
this idea of being a lawyer, right? So a lot of us probably have images of walking into the
courtroom and cross-examining a witness or objecting or presenting evidence and
just kind of living out the fantasies of some of our favorite [00:04:00] lawyers.
in amazing movies like Legally Blonde and my cousin Vinny, and a Few Good Men. And
I think that's really coupled with this idea of prestige and praise and respect that comes with,
or is associated with being a lawyer and the legal industry,
right? This idea that there are these. Select group of people who are smart
and who are the warriors for justice and that not everyone can do what they do.
And um, just kind of this natural, uh,
Um, leadership almost that happens in communities and in political groups and things like that when
people just hear you're a lawyer. So I think just that idea of being a lawyer is a really
big one that gets us going enough to go through all of those steps to actually get this degree.
The second big reason that a lot of us go to law school is because of the promise of more school,
right? And so the idea of being a [00:05:00] student for three more
years is really attractive to a lot of us. And I actually heard one woman describe it
as she went to law school, not to be a lawyer, but to be a law student, right?
So this idea of learning the law, this idea of debating in classrooms with your peers
and your professors, um, and then also. Our comfort zone for a lot of us who went
straight through from college to law school. That is what we've known for the past 21,
22 years, and for most people who continue on. To law school.
It's because we've been really successful at it. We've been really great students. We've gotten
a lot of positive reinforcement. We've gotten a lot of praise. Maybe we've won a lot of awards,
and so school is really sort of our genius zone and maybe
we don't really feel that comfortable or confident or clear about what's.
Skillsets we have to offer in the marketplace or in the real world. But we sure as hell know that
we have skills in the [00:06:00] academic world, um, and that we're good at it. And so I think
just this idea of continuing on with school is a really big one for a lot of us too. And the third
big reason that I see for a lot of us heading into law school is this promise of a clear path, right?
So when we are in college or even a couple of years out, we might not actually know what it
is that we wanna do for most of us that. The case, right? And if we're talking about going straight
to law school from undergrad, we're talking about starting to study for the LSAT our junior year.
And most, if not all of us don't know what we're going to do, uh, with our lives when we graduate.
And I think there's this inherent pressure from society, from our. Our family or our parents,
or even internally from ourselves, that we should know what we wanna do and we should
know the next step and we should have a plan and we should have it figured out.
And so law school basically caters to that in that it kind of prepackages a
clear path for us [00:07:00] and kind of just hands it over and says, here you go.
Here are the steps. This is what you need to do. And. There aren't really
a lot of gaps or questions, and there's a very clear outcome. And so I think for a lot of us,
the idea of graduating college and just kind of bumping around from job
to job, uh, and and quote unquote figuring it out is probably our worst nightmare.
And so law school solves that problem by giving us. Uh, a clear path to continue on,
which is what we've been operating under the same structure that we've been
operating under, uh, all through, all through school since we were four or five years old.
Um, and so and so, yeah, that's, uh, that's a really big motivating factor too.
So with these three big reasons that a lot of us go to law school,
which I think is really at the heart of why people felt so strongly about
this post that I made, let me know if any of these resonate with you guys.
Um, I am definitely, definitely speaking from personal experience with [00:08:00] all
of these. This, these were absolutely the reasons that I decided to go to law school.
Um, I had very little exposure to actual lawyers and what lawyers did day to day. Um,
So these sort of intangibles were really what got me started on this journey and on this path and,
and what made me continue to keep taking these steps. So let me know in the comments if one,
two, or three, or all three or, or or option D other applies to you in terms of.
What motivated you to go to law school,
um, or your why for law school? So circling back to this post that I made,
I've got a couple of comments from people who said things like, well, I would definitely want
any lawyer representing me to know the law, or someone who said, there are a lot of good things
that you learn from law school classes, or law school teaches you how to think like a lawyer.
So I wanted to address that because.
For any of us who have been on [00:09:00] the other side of law school, it is no secret that
law school doesn't actually teach you or prepare you to be a lawyer. You cannot graduate from law
school and then walk into a law firm and know anything about what you're doing. And this.
Has to be intentional. It has to be by design, because it's been called out for
years and it's been repeating itself for over a hundred years. Law school's been taught the
same way. So I know that this is by design. I'm not totally sure why I have my theories.
Um, but it's essentially not practical applications.
So in law school, you're not going to be taught things like how to draft a complaint,
how to answer written discovery, how to create a trial strategy, how to pitch to a. Uh,
how to develop, uh, a scheduling order. And so these pe those are all litigation things by the
way. So , you also are not gonna learn, uh, any of the how-tos to be a transactional attorney,
although that's probably a whole nother conversation about how law
school is very [00:10:00] litigation based and completely not transactional law based,
even though transactional law is as big, if not bigger of um, an umbrella.
Type of practice area in the law. Anyway, my point here is that law school does not
have practical application. And so these things that you're learning in class are
sort of like this base foundation, I suppose, and maybe they're are some hidden benefits or,
or intangible benefits, but it's. Pretty wild that for as much money as we're paying
and for as long as we're doing this, that the focus is on legal theory and
legal foundations and not actually the day-to-day skillset of being a lawyer.
And so when I think back to practicing law and the number of times I looked back at
my notes, Uh, over the, the course of those three years in law school,
I know exactly what the answer is, and the answer is zero, zero times. Did I ever go
back and look at anything that I learned in law school to help me in the practice of law?
To give you guys [00:11:00] the straight up transparency of how law is usually
practiced. It's by Google. We Google so much stuff about. How to practice law and about
what different legal standards are and rules and statutes and things like that. In fact,
it is the most efficient way to begin digging into a lot of aspects of the law is just to Google it.
Um, anyway. That's beside the point. But I think the point here is that, uh, in this degree,
because we are not taught how to practice law, I would very vehemently argue, uh, that
learning the law is actually not the ROI or the return on investment of
law school. It's kind of fun sometimes. Most of the. It's pretty devastatingly difficult.
Um, and it's maybe a nice to have, but it's definitely not what you're getting
from the degree. And, and so I think that [00:12:00] that really sort of underpins,
um, the, the, the basis of the statement in the post, right? That, that learning the law is not
the point. Getting a job is the point. Um, and I think that's why I made some people upset.
Now, I will say, and happily concede that the statement that getting a law degree. What did
I say? That the point of a law degree is to get a job is overly simplistic in the sense that
anytime you go through a life experience, there are these beautiful intangibles, right? Anytime
you challenge yourself or push yourself outside of your comfort zone, that's where growth happens.
And so law school is so full of growth there, our. So many things that you're faced with and you
know, I've just heard from so many people saying that I'm a completely different person after law
school than I was before law school. And some of that is good and some of that is not so great.
Um, but the great stuff are things like falling on your face a million times and continuing
to get back up, or pushing [00:13:00] yourself mentally and emotionally in ways that you never.
You could handle or could possibly do, um, of course meeting some amazing
people who can be lifelong friends. And so, yeah, there's some really,
really great. Pieces to law school that are not just outcome driven. Right. Um, that being said,
to kind of close this conversation and kind of, I meandering, get to the point that I think I'm
making with this whole, uh, this whole post and this, this whole video is that.
For most of us putting in three to four years, putting in $180,000,
um, giving up opportunity costs for other things that we could be doing, time, we could
be spending, uh, other life experiences. We, we could be having the, um, the sort of mental,
emotional and, and resource cost of law school. Uh, [00:14:00] As heavy as it is.
And as a result, we are looking for a return on investment. And that return on investment
is a job that we're really excited about, um, ideally in a type of law that we're interested
in or figure out that we're interested in later on. Um, ideally with an earning
potential that's higher than we otherwise would have had if we hadn't have gone to law school.
Um, and, and just building a. That we are really, really pumped to build. And so I,
at the end of the day, that was really the, the point of the post that I was getting at is that
if we can start to even very slowly in a small way, think of law school
as a little bit more income driven, income driven, outcome driven, um, then I think a lot.
Think about going in, then we can almost start to relate to it differently and
start to see the value in things like beginning to [00:15:00] reach out to
people in the legal community or begin to think through, well, what. Is a day
in the life of a lawyer really like, or, um, what types of law are there out there?
Which ones might I wanna practice or, um, see the value in beginning to build relationships and,
and, and really recognizing that this is not a journey that begins and ends with law school,
right? That this is a journey that. Only begins with law school. Uh, and
then we continue it from there and, and build a career and build a life that we really want.
Um, and I think that that can really help impact a lot of our decisions about whether
to go to law school at all. If so, where, uh, geographically and, um, and what law school,
uh, what are the employment outcomes? What are the bar passage rates? How
much is this gonna cost? What is the average starting salary?
Right? So some more of those, um, sort of tangible. Pieces that I think would
really save a lot of heartache and a lot of [00:16:00] heartbreak, uh, that tend
to happen on the backend, um, when, when we don't think about this degree as, as helping
us achieve something, uh, more tangible like a job, um, like an income, like, um, a new life.
So anyway, that, that got a little. Intentionally, and I'm so curious to,
to hear what you guys have to say. Um, how did that hit? Are these things you already were
thinking about? And I'm just totally off base here. Um, or is there anything that you would
like to add? So I look forward to reading your comments and I will see you guys in the next one.