Reader Request: If only I knew then...

A reader asked me to comment on any advice I might have for 1st year law students, aside from the usual stereotypical advice seen everywhere else (be a good
person, make friends, get good grades, blah blah blah). I'm not sure what I think is non-stereotypical, but looking back at law school I will say this, cliche or not...

1. The absolutely best thing I did for myself as a law student was to gain practical, hands-on experience. Of all the academic fields, law is probably the worst in preparing its graduates for the practical realities of their future professional lives (compare us to, for example, medicine, engineering, teaching, or MBA school). As a law student I (1) did a moderate amount of pro bono work (nothing heroic but enough to get my feet wet in learning how to interview and to some degree counsel individual clients); (2) clerked for a criminal defense lawyer; (3) interned for a government agency; and (4) interned for a federal judge. Each of these experiences, or the combination of them, paid off for me in many different ways as my career got started. They gave me writing samples, expansion of my professional network within the community, employer references (picture for a moment a potential employer of yours calling a judge who really likes you to find out about you), and the list goes on.

2. I have mixed feelings about this, but in general I would suggest that you pick a specific area of focus when it comes to picking classes. I've written about this before and I wouldn't really change anything from what I wrote then:

"When I was a law student, I followed no advice and applied no real logic whatsoever to my course selection. My problem was that I wanted to study everything, and there were just too many classes I told myself I HAD to take or I would always regret it. Although I loved law school, I wouldn't advise anyone to use this strategy. It led to my graduating without really having a particular speciality or academic focus, and I do think that hurts any graduate's attractiveness to potential employers.

On the other hand, if you know you want to go into litigation and nothing else, why the hell not? Litigators do specialize in specific areas of law, of course. But litigation is a speciality by itself in many ways. A lawyer may be litigating tort and civil rights cases for the first 15 years of his career, but if he's established a stellar reputation as a trial lawyer (I mean a real trial lawyer), he could very well get picked up by a firm to litigate patent infringement cases in front of juries. I would, however, advise anyone taking such a scatterbrained approach to course selection to supplement their education with internships, externships and other trial advocacy experiences."

Like I said, I studied what I damn well wanted to study without any regard to strategy. I was simply too intellectually curious about the law to resist. My courses included White Collar Crime, Environmental Law, Employment Law, a seminar on section 1983 civil rights cases, a seminar on the death penalty, a seminar on the U.S. Supreme Court taught by the most amazing Supreme Court scholar on earth (except for Chief Justice Rehnquist, who I believe still teaches a Supreme Court course every summer at the University of Arizona, though I've heard it's kind of boring), Immigration Law, etc., etc. I was all over the board. Do I regret it? No. Did it make my initial job search when I graduated just a wee bit more challenging? Probably. Would I do it again if I could start all over? Yup. Would I advise anyone else doing the same? Generally no, but it's up to you.