One Last Post About School

This blog has been more or less dormant since I passed the bar, and I haven't quite decided whether I should shutter it altogether. This I know for sure: I can't call it a law school blog anymore. But before I pack it in or change the blog's name or whatever I'm going to do, I want to ask myself the one question that sums it all up: If I knew then what I know now, would I have applied to law school at all?

I suppose so, but it's hardly a slam dunk.

Financially, law school was not a good bet.
To make law school pay (at least in the third-tier, small-market law school world I experienced), you have to be either an academic savant, a networking savant, or a lawyer's kid. I would categorize myself as an academic savant and a networking dullard, and that combination almost sank me. Those eight months of unemployment after graduation were a terrible, terrible time for me, and it's going to take a long time to forget them. Now I earn maybe twenty percent more than I did before I went to school. My long-term earning potential is good, sure, but it's going to take me a long time to make up for that lost three years.

In terms of job satisfaction, so far, so good.
I went to law school in the first place because I was burned out on the clerical and accounting jobs I've done my whole life. Practicing law is a lot more fun, but I've only been at it for a month. In five years, will I be more burned out than ever? Statistics say yes--law is just about the drinkingest, drug-abusingest, most depressed profession there is. Maybe I'll be the exception.

So law school turned out to be an okay option for the bored accountant I was four years ago, but if I really had a do-over, I'd go back and warn my eighteen-year-old self to lay off that cushy history major and take some physics or chemistry or computer science classes. I suspect I'd be more employable with most any science undergraduate degree than I am with a law degree. What's more, I'd be more employable as a lawyer if I had some kind of science background; the field is saturated with history and poli-sci majors. Stay in school, kids!

Employed, For Now

Today was my first day as a practicing attorney. A small firm hired me to fill in while one of the associates takes maternity leave. That will last a few months, and then they'll decide if the workload (and my performance) justifies taking me on permanently.

I've been chasing every job in sight for eight months, but I got this one because one of my law school classmates heard about it through the grapevine and gave my name to the hiring attorney. Do not underestimate the value of having a good reputation among your peers.

I'm Still Here

I haven't abandoned the blog. There is simply nothing to report. There have been eight job applications, two interviews, and no offers since my last post.

Professional Practicum

I passed the MPRE, passed the bar exam, took the oath, paid the license fee, but I still had to take care of one more piece of business last week. Every attorney licensed in Arkansas is required to attend a Professional Practicum put on by the Arkansas Bar Association. The state supreme court evidently takes the requirement seriously, because I know at least one attorney in town who missed the thing and had her license suspended over it.

The practicum is an all-day seminar that aims to promote professionalism and civility among lawyers. That is to say, it consists mostly of a series of speakers admonishing new attorneys to play nice with one another. Apparently the Arkansas bar has a history of cooperation and collegiality, but as the number of lawyers increases there is a fear that we'll get more attorneys of the type exemplified by this famous YouTube video:

 The practicum is the Arkansas bar's bid to nip that trend in the bud.

To me, it was mostly an opportunity to mingle with old classmates. I like visiting with these people, but I'm getting tired of having to tell them that I'm unemployed. The pool of jobless attorneys for me to commiserate with is shrinking all the time (though I can't help but wonder how many of the people identifying themselves as "solo practitioners" are de facto unemployed). It's only a matter of time before my friends start avoiding eye contact at social events so they don't have to talk to me about it.

More on the Bar Exam

In the weeks since bar results were released, I've interacted with my classmates enough to pick up some gossip about who passed and who didn't. The list seems pretty arbitrary.  Many slackers passed; many good students failed. Based on these results, I do not think the bar exam does much to separate the good candidates from the poor.

You might wonder how my bar exam scores panned out. I didn't botch the essays so badly as I thought. All my essays passed, though the scores were thoroughly mediocre. This tends to confirm a theory I've heard more than once: the essay questions are intended to test one's ability to write, not so much one's knowledge of the law. Probably half of what I said about the law in my essays was made up on the spot.

My multiple choice scores were fairly strong, which made for an overall score well within the passing range. My total score was just above the midway point between barely passing and top paper. A  popular aphorism goes, "If you passed the bar by more than one point, you studied too hard," but I have no regrets about my hours of preparation. I prefer an aphorism that BarBri puts on some of its t-shirts: "Do it once. Do it right. Never do it again."

Those Who Can't, Watch

During this long sojourn in the Valley of Unemployment, I have passed some of my time by hanging around the county courthouse and attending whatever trials or hearings I can find. It's always interesting, and I recommend it to anyone who has a weekday free. I have observed a handful of criminal proceedings, but the real drama is in family court. Watching parents fight over child support or--worse--try to prove one another unfit is heartbreaking. Family law would be tough to stomach day in and day out, but I could see myself working in criminal law.

Certificates

The Arkansas attorney's license is big: 11"x17". Between this, my diploma, and the certificates I picked up for various honors and extracurricular activities, if I open my own law office I might be bankrupted by framing expenses alone.