Surviving the Third Year
It is a well-known quip: in the first year of law school they scare you to death, in the second they work you to death, and in the third they bore you to death. Based on my own experience and what I've heard from friends at law schools around the country, this is pretty close to 100% accurate.
But it doesn’t have to be – at least, you don’t have to spend your 3L year bored. (Whether or not you need to sweat your way through con-law cold calls and fall asleep every night on your evidence book, I'll leave to others to debate.)
The remedy for the third-year slump is simple – and bound to help you in your career as well. Bored of law school? Attend another kind of school instead.
Most, if not all, law schools give you some leeway with how you fulfill the credits you need to earn to obtain your law degree. The ABA only requires five semesters in residence. Since law school traditionally takes six semesters, that leaves, in most cases, an entire semester’s worth of credits to play around with. If your law school is part of a larger university, you could have hundreds of courses available to you as non-law electives.
Non-law electives are not simply for those questioning the cosmic order that led them to legal education in the first place (although they can be a good salve for this group as well). They can in fact be career-boosters for those counting the days ’til they can enter the world brandishing their new-found skills and powers.
Non-law electives can be professionally beneficial in two ways: what you learn and who you meet.
What you learn.
We lawyers are supposed to be experts on one thing: the law. But this can lead to challenging situations when you need to have a good understanding of what your client is talking about before you can apply any legal principles at all. Great lawyers often know tremendous amounts about their clients’ industry; usually their knowledge is hard-earned, gained from years of specializing. But you can gain industry-specific knowledge before even leaving school by taking well-chosen, non-law classes.
It’s almost too obvious to say that you need to have a working knowledge of the industry in which you’re practicing – but law school does not automatically provide you with this knowledge. Most lawyers either come to law school with some specialized knowledge already (e.g., they were engineering undergrads) or they gain this knowledge as they begin their practice, apprenticeship-style. But why not take advantage of the time you’re spending at school and use your 3L year to do some real, live learning?
Interested in entertainment law? Find out if the music school on campus has a class on the music industry. Sports law? Business schools often offer classes on the sports industry, and if your school has a degree program in recreation management there are bound to be useful classes there. IP or patents? See what the engineering school has to offer.
Fancy yourself a corporate lawyer, or hope to be involved in major deals or litigation? Read through the business school course catalog. Want to work on immigration issues? Now’s a good time to learn Spanish or Mandarin. Hope to combat human rights violations in Africa? Find a history class on the region in which you want to work.
Who you meet.
Law students are generally pretty isolated on campus. They take all their classes together, and the atmosphere is usually frat-like, with little socializing outside of your school, if not your year or your section.
But there is another world out there! And these people on your campus who attend schools other than your own – they will one day be your clients!
Taking classes at other schools on campus is a wonderful way to meet those on the other side of the lawyer/non-lawyer divide. Use your time in the non-law classroom to learn not just what the professor is professing, but also to pay attention to how your non-lawyer peers are taught, and how they think. This knowledge will be invaluable later on when you are attempting to understand what a client wants, or to explain to a client why your strategy is based on boundless and infinite wisdom.
Take the time to engage your new-found peers outside of the classroom as well. I guarantee they will be interested to meet you, even if years of lawyer jokes mean they aren’t sure whether they want to be your friend. Just as we lawyers need clients, non-lawyers need lawyers. By taking a class on their turf, you will open the door for meaningful relationships with your new peers, personal or professional.
Develop a good relationship with the business school entrepreneur or the mechanical engineer now, and in a few years when they need a lawyer, they just may call you.
So, go forth, leave the now-drearily familiar halls of your law school for a few hours a week and check out courses at another school on campus. If fright and work haven't killed you yet, you’ll be guaranteed to survive law school.
By Laura Weidman, a member of the Stanford University Law School grassroots organization, Building a Better Legal Profession