A little over two years ago, I wrote the following draft as a review of a semester-long law school internship. At the internship, I drafted decisions for judges in the Superior Court. Upon finding this review draft, I re-discovered kernels of wisdom that apply to being an attorney (and to life) in more ways than I could have imagined at the time I wrote it.
I present it here, in its original form of six lessons, with Number Seven as a postmortem addendum to law school and life as a lawyer.
Seven Things Your 1L Professors Never
Told You (Or Maybe They Did, and You Didn’t Want to Believe Them)
First Day Of Law School
Even after two years to get used to the idea, it still
sounds intimidating: my first day of law
school. I remember it vividly. I dressed in an outfit I had coordinated a
week earlier, down to the correct shade of earrings. I had a perfectly organized laptop bag on one
shoulder as I walked to class, admiring and taking in the details of my new
campus. From bright green and perfectly
manicured lawns, the white, old-Catholic mission-style buildings overlook a
panoramic view of the ocean and downtown.
I walked to class savoring this perfect little scene, determined to win
at all aspects of my newfound legal career.
My first day, I had a number of thoughts and concerns
about my decision to attend law school.
I was filled with hopes and plans, reveling at how many firsts I was
about to experience. This day was the
first of many firsts: I was the first in
the family to graduate high school or college or go to law school; this was my
first time back in my hometown in four years; the first private school I’d ever
attended; the first time I was on track for a real job and real career; and the
first time I would meet my future colleagues and competitors. Every detail had to be planned, and the plan
had to be executed flawlessly. After
all, so many people have stressed the importance of first impressions,
especially first impressions in law school.
I viewed this day as a make-it-or-break-it moment, a test of the fates
as to whether or not I had made the right decision.
But for all of the planning, right down to the earrings,
my first day of law school was not a flawless execution. I could not buy my textbooks because my loan
had not come through yet; I got lost on campus, resulting in getting the last
choice locker location and showing up to each class drenched in sweat; and the
first people I met struck me as odd, eccentric, and not at all like I expected
law students to be. My hair fell out of
place, the strap on my perfect bag broke, and not a single page of the assigned
readings was discussed in any of my first classes.
Throughout the entire first day, I fought back a wave of
overwhelming anxiety; each flaw in my plan constituted a mini panic attack, and
when I went home that night I chalked up my first day as an utter failure. My nerves were fried over broken bag straps
and ill-placed lockers. I fought back an
urge to cry on my drive home, later bemoaning to my family how I could not
imagine a worse first day. As I tucked
myself in at the exact bedtime I had pre-planned in an hour-by-hour schedule
made in Microsoft Excel and printed on my bathroom mirror, I vowed to myself, tomorrow will go as planned. Tomorrow will go as planned. I will make it happen.
First Day At A New Job
It should sound intimidating, but I can’t recall an ounce
of fear playing into my first day as a judicial intern. After all, this was serious business; my
first real job outside of law school.
No, this would not be making copies and watching other attorneys work,
like my first summer job. No, this would
be my first time behind the scenes at a real court house, writing briefs for
real judges, for real criminal cases, and for real attorneys. Yet, the fresh intern who walked in on that
first day had changed so radically from the newly-minted law student who
stressed over broken bag straps and lockers.
The first year of law school had taught me one lesson above all others;
things will go wrong, and they will probably go wrong often.
Stress management is just about the only practical lesson
taught during the first year of law school.
The law school system is designed to take a group of highly ambitious
and successful people from all walks of life accustomed to being on top of the
heap and make sure ninety percent of them are not in the fabled top ten percent
of their class. So goes the first
practical lesson of law school for most (that is, ninety percent of us; I’m
sure those top ten learn it some way or another): you will make mistakes, despite your best
plans and efforts, and those mistakes will cost you something. That missed issue is the difference between
the B+ and the A-. That one Bluebook
rule is the difference between making it on Law Review or not. Your best effort is not a guarantee at the
top of the heap any more. So what do you
do now, with your broken bag straps and your wavering confidence?
You learn to manage the stress of your best not always
being good enough.
I walked into this internship with a very different
attitude than the one I came to law school with. As the Lead Attorney managing the program told us at our internship
orientation, “You will make mistakes, but you must learn from them. You grow or you go.” The idea of accepting that I will make
mistakes, of letting go of the idea of perfection, used to scare me more than I
care to admit. Yet, as I discovered
throughout the course of this internship, learning to let go of the idea has
improved my performance significantly.
At my last job, most attorneys would remember me as an awkward,
anxiety-ridden young intern who cowered away from
conflicts. The impression at this
internship could not be more different; I was easy-going, relatable,
well-liked, and produced a constant stream of work that received glowing
praises from my mentor and the judges.
I walked into this internship with a wealth of academic
knowledge hoping to learn as much as I can about putting that knowledge to work
in legal practice. Below is a guidebook
of those practical lessons gleaned throughout the course of this internship.
Practical Lessons
1. Keep
it Simple, Stupid.
The acronym is “K.I.S.S.”
Michael Scott, the doofy and blundering boss on the T.V. show The
Office, made this acronym one of his rarely correct insights into life and
business. The concept behind it is, of
course, simple; strive for the simplest possible way to say something. Of course!
Why wouldn’t you? Yet, law
students take this lesson for granted; it seems obvious, too obvious, to think
about any further than this paragraph.
The reasoning behind this idea is essential to being an
effective advocate, either in person or in writing. Why? Why
do judges and lawyers savor simplicity in legal argument when they are lucky
enough to find it?
Think, for a moment, of the worst-written opinion you
have ever read. For me, it was a case
out of Contracts, written some time long, long ago, before electricity or paved
roads or any appreciation for simplicity.
I raged over the convoluted pages, wondering aloud WHY on Earth would anyone write something so poorly?!? Why be so wordy, so repetitive? I stopped and marveled in child-like wonder
at a paragraph that was really just a single sentence; a mess of clause after
clause, an evil calculus of outdated words at war with one another. I took a break from figuring out the case and
headed to the kitchen for something to drink, pondering why anyone would write
opinions like these. Was it simply to
torture future generations of law students, or some spiteful attempt to hold
the English language hostage with random Latin phrases for more than a few
painful pages?
The more I pictured the writer and his audience, the more
it began to make sense. This was not a
case where some poor court reporter was simply transcribing the judge’s words
by hand with some quill and ink; no, this was a real written opinion. This was some guy in the sixteen hundreds,
some real flesh-and-blood guy, sitting in a building without central heating or
air conditioning, probably wearing a massive white wig and too many layers of
hand-sewn clothing. This was some guy
who had to prove that he was an educated lawyer by making his writing as
complicated and hard to figure out as possible.
The writing audience needed to see that he could use Latin; the reader
was not running between meetings on a Smartphone.
DON’T BE THAT WIG-WEARING GUY. No one is impressed by the writings Mr.
Long-Winded, Must-Prove-How-Educated-I-Am.
2. Be a
People Person.
As much as law school emphasizes a skill set that can be
honed by late hours spent alone in the library, law school offers no course on
another set of skills equally important;
how to interact with people.
Some attorneys wrote briefs that are not just bad ---
they were shockingly bad. The kind of
bad that made me wonder how they ever got through law school, let alone passed
the bar, let alone got a job. How can
such bad writers progress this far in the legal profession?
One particularly bad brief made me see how a bad writer
can still be a great advocate. As much
as the defense counsel's brief failed to make any point at all amid the
myriad spelling and grammar mistakes, and even with my recommendation to deny
his motion, the defense attorney got his motion granted. He did so by showing up in court armed with
good arguments and the litigation skills to present them forcefully to the
judge.
Through his ability to talk...to people. And that's not the only example. Being able t talk to other attorneys, to read
into what to say and when, gets you farther in your case. Everyone has their own biases, their own
world opinions; being able to read people and appeal to their nature is an
essential skill to advocating. Those
attorneys who could do so, who knew just what the judges needed to hear to make
a decision in their favor, who knew just what the District Attorney was after
so they could forcefully rebut them, those attorneys won in a court where not
many defense lawyers do.
3. Writing
a Good Brief is Like Playing Piano.
This semester, I decided to take up playing piano for the
first time in my life. My mentor and I
had many conversations in passing about how fun it is to play an instrument;
this is how I found out that he is a major Bluegrass fan and a seasoned guitar
player. I had never played an
instrument, nor had anyone ever taught me.
Yet, the experience taught me that something unnervingly
complex can be broken down into simple, easily accomplished units. The most beautiful song is really just one
pattern played by the left hand and another by the right; there is order in
what looks like a chaos of black and white keys, a pattern which is easy on its
own but can create seemingly endless combinations.
Even the most complex legal issue can be broken down into
simple units. Being able to do this for
a reader allows them to see each step in the reasoning, much like it allows a
piano player to see each step in a song and play it. Using sub-headings within an issue helps to
make each unit distinct, like a key on a piano.
Each unit has to make sense in that order, much like keys played in the
right order. Bad briefs are like
poorly-played melodies; the keys are out of order, or missed altogether; bad
briefs are missing logical links in the chain, or the links are out of order
and make no sense.
Above all, brief writing and piano playing both require a
good deal of patience and practice. The
more I practiced brief writing, every single day, the more fluid the process
became and the better my briefs became.
Taking the kind of methodical, step-by-step approach I took to learning
piano helped me write thorough work. And
that thoroughness showed through to the attorneys and judges who read it.
4. “Nice”
Lawyers Are NOT Pushovers. But They
Aren’t Jerks, Either.
My horror stories from last summer are the stuff of legal
intern legends. On one particular day in
Child Support's court offices, there was only one attorney on staff. And she detested me for no particular
reason. In fact, she detested
everyone. As soon as anyone was out of
earshot, she was immediately ripping them apart with the kind of disdain that
Cruella De Ville would envy. It was a
busy day, so she had me take a few parents' cases on by myself. One parent in particular had a complex case;
calculating her child support seemed impossible. She had multiple state benefits in play, and
I honestly had no idea how changing the child support order would affect each
of them. So I decided to ask the Cruella
attorney for help; after all, I did not want to give these parents bad
advice.
Well, Cruella refused to help me whatsoever. In front of an entire office full of people,
she screamed that she had no time to help some clueless law clerk. I stood there frozen, paralyzed with fear and
completely at a loss for what to do.
There was no one to ask, and I could not answer the questions from these
parents, who already sat waiting for me in my cubicle. I turned around without saying a word to
Cruella, and went back to my cube with no idea what to do. I simply told the parents I could not help
them with all of their issues and sent them back into the waiting room where
they would have to wait the rest of the day for Cruella to get to them.
In retrospect, I should have stood my ground with
Cruella. I should have reminded her that
her boss told her that she was the supervising attorney that day, and that her
boss told every attorney in that office to help the clerks when they needed
it. I should have told her that these
parents had already waited half the day.
In short, I should have stood up for myself. In short, I was so nervous that I was acting like a pushover.
When I came into this internship, I made a conscious
effort to NOT to let anxiety and inexperience get the better of me. Just because someone is a master doesn't mean they can treat people like their time is worth less. I would not
get strung out to dry again by anyone unhelpful, or let them treat me like I
was just another clueless clerk. At the same time, I
was not about to sabotage myself by being overly aggressive; after all, I am
only a volunteer and not yet an attorney. I don't know nearly as much as anyone here.
I think my air of confidence was apparent to the
court. Instead of disdain, I received
respect from the entire staff because I commanded it. I let go of the nervousness and decided to
let the suit fit; I may not have passed the Bar Exam yet, but having the
attitude that I am competent and helpful
showed. Although no one at this office
was a Cruella, I spoke up when I thought something was amiss or when I needed
help. I was polite, calm, but
effective. I had struck a balance
between the former pushover attitude of inexperience without going to the kind of extremes that a
Cruella would.
5. “Bad
Lawyering” Happens. A Lot.
This internship has exposed me to briefs written by
attorneys from all kinds of backgrounds.
One habit I developed when looking at a case was to run a search for
each attorney through the State Bar's website.
This would tell me if they had any sanctions against them, where they
went to law school, how long they have been licensed. I did this to get a fuller picture of the
writer behind the brief, and to help judge the credibility of the brief itself.
I did this because the truth is that there are plenty of
bad lawyers out there, licensed and ready to be negligent or reckless or
worse. Many of the briefs I read through
would contain harmless errors, like mis-cited authority or spelling
mistakes. Others would dance the border
between harmless mistakes and negligence.
In one case, a defense attorney completely ignored the language in a fax
arraignment form that waived a speedy trial before filing a motion for a
dismissal for violating speedy trial rights.
Because he failed to read the form before executing the arraignment, he
lost what would have otherwise been a valid claim to a dismissal of the charges
for his client.
The best defense I found to all the bad lawyering going
on is a healthy dose of skepticism at the credibility of, well, everything
attorneys do. As a member of the court,
I learned to double-check the accuracy of everything attorneys submitted, right
down to page citations. I learned to
never take for granted that everyone --- law clerks, experienced attorneys, or
even judges --- can be mistaken.
6.
You Need an Honest Answer: How
are You Feeling Today?
In a way, we come into law school like children who have
been coddled by their parents. Only
here, the parents are really the academic world, coddling us with good grades
and teacher praise and merit scholarships.
Law school refuses to caudle; instead, law school is like the parent
that teaches to “self-soothe.” Yes, law
school is that parent; the one that
leaves the child in the room to cry itself into exhaustion, ignoring its
desperate pleas entirely while sipping a glass of Merlot and reading a book. It leaves us alone when we cry about missed
opportunities, grades we think we don't deserve, and the job we should have
gotten.
Now that the coddling is over, the cold-shouldered lesson
law school has to teach us about self-dependence can be appreciated when it
comes time to step into the real world.
The wisdom of self-soothing came into play for me at this
internship. I was left alone to sink or
swim much of the time, taking responsibility for my own time and my own
projects. One thing law school has
taught me well is to self-motivate, to set my own schedule and follow it. Yet, at the same time, the lack of coddling
and all-A's in law school has prepared me for the real legal world in an
emotional sense. I don't expect a parade
of praise with every good job I do; I expect the harshness of failure and its
consequences, which makes me mindful of preventing as many mistakes as I can
and allows me to learn from the ones I do make.
7. Trust That it Will All Work Out for the Better.
There will be many opportunities that test your boundaries and limitations. There will be many times when you question your sanity. There will be even more times when others question your sanity. But at the end of the day, you have to be able to look back at your track record for these situations and know, to your very core and center, that it has always ultimately worked out in your favor. Going through the pain somehow always made both you and your life better.
The older you get, the more difficult it is to risk trying something new, to risk letting the boundaries and limitations expand. Never let go of that child-like ability to dive head-first into something that others call "too risky" or "crazy," because their crazy just might be your cup of tea.
And don't let broken bag straps and lockers get you down when the big picture looks just fine.
