Take the Bar and Beat Me

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Introduction

Excerpts from Alice in Wonderland

Practicing Law: Should You Get In? Should You Get Out? Should You Beg Your Friends to Avoid It?

 

PART ONE: LAW SCHOOL

 

§1.  The Decision to Do It

A.  Applying

1.  The Psychology of Applying

2.  Choosing a School

a.  The Way You'd Expect to Choose a School

b.  The Way You Really Choose a School

c.  This Logic Can Lead to Funny Results

B.  Wanting It Badly

1.  Diversity

2.  Money

3.  Excitement

4.  Opportunity to Make a Difference

5.  What Makes Others Go to Law School

C.  In Brief: Applying to Law School

 

§ 2.  Your Success in Getting There

A.  The GPA and the LSAT

B.  A Note on the LSAT and Being Smart

C.  How Little the Admissions Committee Really Knows About You

D.  So Where Does That Leave You?

E. Getting In: A Summary

 

§ 3.  The Study of the Law: Myth and Reality

A.  The First Year: The Moment of Truth

1.  Why It's Important

2.  The Struggle to Excel

3.  What the Pressure Does to You

B. The Upperclass Years

C. The Purpose of Those Three Years of Study

1. To Help You Choose Your Legal Specialty?

2. To Help Employers Determine Who's Worth Hiring?

3. To Prepare You for the Bar Exam?

4. To Teach You What You Need to Know to Practice Law?

a. Courses in Law Practice and Academic Skills

b. Mainstream Academic Courses

(1) What You'll Need in the Long Run?

(2) What You'll Need in Your First Job?

 

§ 4. The Law You Study: End of the Fantasy

A. Order in the Court

B. The Other Half of the Story

1. This Is Substance?

a. A Shortage of Logic

b. Avoiding Knowledge

c. Games Professors Play

2. This Is Procedure?

C. The Pit: Legal Ethics

1. The Problem

2. How Other Attorneys Handle It

a. Option 1: Sheer Crooks

b. Option 2: Conform and Compromise

 

PART TWO: ENTERING THE LAWYER'S WORLD

 

§ 5. Bar Admission: The Arrival of Knowledge

A. The Bar Exam

1. The Exam Itself

2. Morale, Crisis In, Explained

3. Behind the Curtain

B. The Bar Exam Revisited

1. Getting Geared Up

2. Extreme Effort

3. Side Effects

C. The Other Requirements for Admission

 

§ 6. Getting into a Firm

A. Interviewing

B. The Summer Experience

C. Clinching It

 

§ 7. Upward Mobility

 

§ 8. Climbing

A. Be Perfect

B. Be the Right Kind of Crazy

C. Get Positioned

D. Bill a Lot of Hours

 

§ 9. Coping

A. The Work: Pushing Paper

B. The People

1. Clients

2. Fellow Attorneys

3. Paralegals

4. Secretaries

5. Chinese Waiters

 

PART THREE: DISLIKING THE SIDE EFFECTS

 

§ 10. Wondering What You Are

A. Defining the Legal "Profession"

B. Having Defined It, We Consider Its Special Needs

1. The Way It Was

2. The Way It Is

 

§ 11. The Original Plan; the Revised Plan

A. The Plan?  On to a Professional Career!
    The Reality?  They Drop Like Flies!

B. The Plan?  Security, for Those Who Make It.
    The Reality?  Nausea, When They Make It & Hate It.

1. The Numbers Tell the Story

2. Being There

C. The Plan?  Superior Training.
    The Reality?  Too Much Intensity.

D. The Plan?  Legal Self-Sufficiency.
    The Reality?  Hidden Costs.

 

§ 12. Trying to Remember Human Attitudes

A. Self-Evident Rights

1. The Right to Screw Up

2. The Right to Live According to an Unwritten Code

3. The Right to Receive Humane Legal Assistance

4. The Right to Be Meek

5. Other Rights

B. Conclusions

1. A Study in Anarchy

2. The Law for Me Now

 

Afterword