I honestly couldn’t tell you what has been going on in the Levison Towers lately. Nothing seems unusual in the hustle and bustle outside my cubicle door. The law clerks have almost all returned to their respective law schools, ready to start studying anew with little hope of employment after graduation.
The college interns who are just entering law school are the most verklempt, as they have to trudge through three more years of study before they can even consider their bleak prospects. I feel their anxiety, although for a different albeit still school related reason- my oldest child leaves for college this week.
Humor me if this is a bit personal, Gentle Reader. My firstborn came into this world during my first year as a lawyer. Although he has not been an easy child (perhaps part of the curse my mother hung on me, that I would have difficult kids just like she did) he and I have been close since his birth.
He has been my hunting buddy. We listen to the same music, and laugh at the same jokes. Those who think I am too lax or too hard on him fail to realize that it is difficult to punish oneself.
My wife has been gigging me all year that I would “cry like a girl” (her words, not mine) when he went off to college. Fortunately, the great Universe eased my burden a bit by making his senior year in high school more rebellious and difficult than the previous seventeen years combined. And so it is that we both look forward to the first day of school with equal anticipation.
It is a well worn proverb that youth is wasted on the young. We make some of the most important and long reaching decisions of our lives well before we are qualified, but are nonetheless bound by the consequences.
It is with that in mind, Gentle Reader, that I offer a few words to my son, under the thin guise of advice to first year law students.
This is the best time of your life! Soak it up. Law School is your last chance to be surrounded by those who still love the law, unbridled by the need to get and keep clients, and win. Yes, school is competitive, but the wins and losses don’t affect anyone’s life but yours. Your burdens are light.
As long as you are in there, you ain’t out here. The job market stinks. Business stinks. But it doesn’t touch you yet, as you are safely ensconced in the ivory towers of legal theory. Rapunzel, keep your hair in a bun. Focus on learning the law and how to serve your clients without the burden of paying the bills from actually knowing the law and serving clients.
Someone will actually need you when you get out of school, to do the kinds of things you are learning to do. Buried under the weight of due dates for papers or tests is the promise that you will help people.
It is great to feel needed, and trust me, someday a real client will sleep better because of the advice that you give them. This should push you to do your best in school. And it isn’t like you have anything else better to do anyway.
Law schools are getting it, and have reduced class size. Law school deans who enjoy the tuition each added student brings at minimal incremental cost finally figured out that they could continue collecting golden eggs, or eat foie gras as they added more and more students onto an already bulging glut of lawyers. Fewer students today may mean more opportunity for those students tomorrow.
Although not nearly on the current scale, I remember some hesitancy in the job market back when I left law school. That was nearly two decades ago, and even I have found something to do with my law degree since that day.
You will too, law students. The law moves slowly, and law schools even more so. That being said, there is some hope that new law students will actually get to be newly employed lawyers when they graduate.
Those of us already practicing think longingly about our time in law school. I still remember arguing in the Commons area about a point of law in a case decided well before we were born, and looking around at the other staring students when the discussion had gotten heated.
We were all chuckling at references to the Mann act in movies, and rolling our collective eyes at legal television shows’ inaccuracies. I have no desire to go back to school, but I am not sure I appreciated how good it was when I was there.
As for my son, I hope he grabs in college with both hands while keeping his eyes on the goals he has set.
Had I known at his age what I know now, I would still probably have chosen to practice law. Probably. In the meantime, I have to choose what color to paint my new TV room, formerly known as his bedroom.
©2011 under analysis llc. under analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. Have fun in college son--I really am making a tv room upstairs. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to the Levison Group via email at comments@levisongroup.com.