Taking the Suckiness Out of Law School

My brother is staring down his first day of law school. I've given him all of my old outlines, and, if he wants them, he can have all of my old bar studying materials (I never did sell them back because sooner or later "they" will tell me it was all a mistake and I'll have to take it again). Other than that, I find myself oddly helpless.

What is there to say, really? "Good luck"? "If it sucks, that's normal"? "I will understand if it turns out not to have been the right choice for you"? (Some days that last one hits awfully close to home.) Just because something is true doesn't make it the right thing to say.

My brother has always enjoyed school and learning in general, and he particularly enjoyed it at higher education levels. I think he gets excited about it – he actually wants to know about things like, say civil procedure, as opposed to someone like me who viewed most classes as purely a means to an end. My hope is that he'll find law school satisfying, and that his more laidback nature will prevent the type of daily anxiety attacks that plagued my first semester. Maybe he'll be one of those people who really loves law school. Weirdos.

I do think there's about a fifty percent chance of him being a gunner. Sigh.

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So, what would you tell a person about to embark on that neverending carousel of delights that is law school?

I guess I will just say that it's normal and right if it feels like nothing makes sense. A lot of the time you won't quite get the full picture until shortly before finals (at least, one hopes you will get it by then ;), and as awful as that feels that first Thanksgiving, I wish I had fully understood just how common that was.

I did everything wrong that first semester – everything people advised us not to do – and I waited way too long to study for finals and I didn't outline during the semester and I remember this one day near the beginning I sat there trying to read for class and it was getting dark outside and then the electricity went out and I was drinking a can of cream soda and it felt like the whole world was so dreary and black and to this day the thought of that thick cloying soda coating my tongue makes me feel ill. I felt out of control and stupid and slightly insane, like the mental equivalent of reeling drunkenness, and I stayed up all night before finals too.

And gosh, I did well in law school. If I could figure out why I would write the definitive book on it and make tons of money and that would be awesome and ironic, in that being good at law school would be the thing that freed me from actually practicing law. Alas, I can't figure it out. Maybe it's that I had great outlines, mostly thanks to other people, but as long as I could bring those suckers in to the final, I knew I could find the law that I needed (especially since I extensively indexed them). And I was really really good at blabbing on and on forever, though I am sure you would NEVER have expected that. In law school they call that "applying the law to the facts," and they love it. I call it B.S.ing, but whatever.

So apparently that is the key to law school. And all of the reading for class and knowing all the answers when called on (which I did NOT – I was a blathering idiot, among the worst there were) and panic and fear and bragging and posturing and one-upmanship are ultimately irrelevant.

Or not. Everybody I talk to seems to have a different take.