Читать книгу How to Be a Lawyer - Jason Mendelson - Страница 34

We believe the practice of law, whether full time as an attorney or part time as an entrepreneur, CEO, or politician, is a trade like any other. Therefore, law school properly done is professional training, not an intellectual odyssey or journey of self-discovery. While those things can happen, they're side benefits, not the purpose.

Somehow this can get confused in law school. Perhaps this happened long ago when the practice of law was more elitist and many law professors viewed themselves as philosophers rather than professional guides and mentors. Perhaps this is due to the Socratic method or the unintended consequences of unaccountable tenure, but this confusion has inflated costs and created a glut of unemployable lawyers. Being strategic and tactical in choosing your electives will help you avoid becoming one of these unfortunate souls.

When choosing electives, keep three things in mind. First, make sure you choose and take each class with the four core lawyering concepts as your filter; second, make sure you take classes that help you solve problems; and third, take a negotiations (i.e., alternative dispute resolution) class regardless of your legal interests.

With that in mind here is our elective choosing algorithm:

1 Conduct proper due diligence to protect and maximize your most valuable asset.The key to choosing proper electives is due diligence. It's shocking how many smart law students place so little value on the most valuable asset any of us have: time. Be jealous of your time, and only spend it with the very best your school has to offer.Diligence should begin as soon as you have chosen your school. Scour social media and professional networks for recent alumni of your chosen school. Begin networking with those in your city or state, inviting them to a coffee or to provide career advice via Zoom. You should ask which professors and adjuncts they liked, who they didn't, and what are the top three classes they recommend you take. In line with this book, ask more generally for advice on how to be successful in your school.Diligence continues when you arrive on campus. Networking is key to any successful law school career and should be one of your top priorities from the start. Join organizations that have second and third years at members, hopefully working collaboratively in a setting like a legal clinic or journal. Ask every second or third year you meet who they liked, who they didn't, and why.See if your law school has student rating data on professors or adjuncts. And if not, ask why not, as you are the customer. Regardless, look for online networks that rate professors, which should be reviewed skeptically if they allow anonymous ratings or comments. But review all available resources and make informed decisions.

2 Choose courses by teacher/professor first, subject second.As the law is all very interconnected and interrelated, and the skill set applicable across all subject areas, we believe you should select electives based on the quality of the teacher, not the type of content. Spending your time with the very best your school has to offer is key to maximizing your opportunity set. Put another way, great teachers teach you a lot more than just the subject material. They'll teach you how to think, talk, debate, laugh, learn, and perhaps feel what it is like to be in the moment as an interested attorney, not a bored law student.Real Estate Transactions by an adjunct and Administrative Law by a tenured professor are two courses Alex chose with this method, and those experiences continue to pay dividends today, despite very little work with the direct content of each. Jason took a course called Blood Feuds about Icelandic law. These experiences of learning from master teachers were worth way more than any particular subject matter.

3 Prioritize top adjuncts.As two very competitive people, we don't view tenure as a positive for the business of law schools. However, we're stuck with it, so make the best of it. Certainly, during your first year mostly you will have the standards with tenured or tenure-track professors, and plenty of opportunities to take classes with those you enjoy the most in year two or three. It's the adjuncts where there are considerable arbitrage opportunities.By finding the best adjuncts at your school, you can leverage your school's reputation for your benefit. That's because it's prestigious for practicing attorneys to teach a course in your law school, which enhances their brand. It's a level of competition and market selection that is more absent from the internal politics of tenure track positions and professorships. Our advice for choosing top adjuncts extends to choosing a law school that hires adjuncts from the real world in subject areas that you find interesting. Finally, because being an adjunct is hard work and time consuming (as Jason has experienced firsthand), the ranks are consistently refreshed, helping the content to be more relevant and timelier.

4 Don't specialize too early.None of us know what we don't know. While a truism, keep this in mind while in law school. A lot of times, students come with some preconceived notion as to what type of lawyer they want to be. They choose a specialty early (say second year or before) based on limited anecdotal evidence rather than data, and eliminate whole areas based on nothing more than conjecture. For example, tax law might sound boring at first blush. However, once you realize that tax law is really about human behavior, incentives, unintended consequences, and power, it becomes a lot more relevant and interesting. Of course, you need a good professor to teach it this way.Instead, strive to be a great lawyer, which among other things means versatility and not being siloed. All areas of the law overlap, and to be successful, you need to understand those overlaps. Our era of hyper-specialization is driven by efficiency in allocation of resources, not by maximizing your individual potential to be a great lawyer. Realize the considerable pressure to specialize early on isn't helping your particular brand and fight it.You will meet students who have a clear path right away. Perhaps they are the offspring of a corporate lawyer or litigator who knows from day one they want to follow in a parent's footsteps. That's great, but we believe that even those who know what their specialty is would benefit from greater breadth. You learn how to practice law by practicing law, not by being in law school. Rather, law school is your opportunity to enhance what will be the substance of your brand, and you should use it to broaden rather than narrow your reach.

5 Look for opportunities outside the building: clinic, externships, other colleges.We both had extraordinary experiences outside of the classroom. While at Northwestern, Alex worked in the Legal Clinic, assisted on death penalty cases to overturn wrongful convictions, and represented juvenile clients in juvenile detention within Cook County Jail. Those experiences provided more insights into procedure than any course in the area. Working at the SEC Division of Enforcement helped Alex gain a fundamental understanding of administrative law, government power, and a deep sense of fiduciary duty. Externships will supercharge your understanding of certain positions and lead to job offers, all while placing you in an uncomfortable yet safe supervised position, thereby maximizing learning. In fact, Alex still relies on contacts created while at the SEC.Jason got out of the law school to take business school classes in accounting and venture capital. He didn't even know what venture capital was and took the course because he was a former software engineer who wanted to learn about startups. Four years later Jason was hired at a venture capital firm. Later, he was promoted to head up all operations including finance. Going back to our specialization paragraph, this breadth of choice opened Jason up to his future career.