Wednesday, May 16, 2007 9:06 AM
I noticed that Jeremy Blachman, who gained recognition via the Anonymous Lawyer weblog and Anonymous Lawyer book, has started a posting to new effort, Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2007.
Yesterday, he offered up some Law School Advice:
I just got an e-mail from someone starting law school in the fall. Maybe this exchange will be useful to someone, so I figured I'd post. Mostly I just figure I wrote a long-enough response that I may as well repurpose it as blog content.
What follows are the questions the incoming law student asked, and Mr. Blachman's answers to those questions. The answers are candid and worth reading.
One example that jumped out at me was his closing paragraphs:
To be happier, stop worrying about it and realize you're smart enough, you'll do fine, it's not that hard. You got into [top law school], you already won. No one outside of your first legal employer will ever look at your grades, and even if they do, everyone gets good grades.
Good luck
--jeremy
I just want to add this to this post, not from my e-mail reply: I realize this is all a little glib, and a lot of it doesn't apply if you're not at [top law school]. That sucks, and isn't fair, and I don't think it should be that way, but I also think it's probably reality. People I know at less top law schools had more trouble finding jobs and had a wider range of grades. They don't know any less law, they probably know more, and they're probably better lawyers. That isn't fair, the system should be different, etc etc etc.
These thoughts, whether you agree with them or not, are one of the things that I really like about the blawgosphere. It provides a needed forum for expressing candid, if anecdotal, assessments of some of the potentially underlying realities of a law school education (and job prospects resulting from that education).
On the subject of grades, thinking back years ago to my own law school education, I recall a debate within my school related to a wide disparity in the grading scales, not only between my school and others in the region, but even within the school itself, depending on which Torts or Property professor you had the luck (or misfortune) of getting. No one said law school (or life) is fair, but it is worthwhile to acknowledge these realities and at least discuss them.
As a final note, Mr. Blachman wrote Jeremy's Weblog while still at Harvard Law, so law students may want to browse through that as well. Or check out any of the other law student blawgs our there. Here is a starting point.
