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FearAndAnxiety 18 - 04 Feb 2010 - Main.GloverWright
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| | When Eben talks about the fear and anxiety created by law school, grades, and dwindling firm jobs, does this resonate with you? How about fear that you won't find something that you are passionate about, that fulfills you, and that allows you to support yourself and your family?
I wished that Eben had spoken more to that fear and anxiety today in class, and more specifically, what to do about it. | | | I did work inside one of the types of firms that Ron posted for 2 years (as a legal assistant). My average workweek was ~77 hours, and this includes only billable time, not time spent inside the building. The view from inside is "sexy" and I think this is how the firms are so successful at getting people to stay. It was plush; we got all the free food we could eat; we were constantly told how spectacular we were. In effect, we were told that we were "enjoying life" because we had the opportunity to spend a Saturday night in the office, working on a due diligence project for a merger that likely wouldn't happen, while wearing expensive shirts and having our overpriced apartments cleaned by someone else. Looking back at my experience, the firm was successful in that I actually believed that I was enjoying life during my experience. I think that one of the big problems with the way the school operates is that it does nothing to suggest to students or demonstrate to students that there are other ways to "enjoy life", and that one of these is through a job that is intellectually satisfying and allows you to work on a cause you really believe about.
-- DavidGoldin - 04 Feb 2010 | |
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I've got to admit that I'm with Cecilia on this one. Forgive the platitudes, but we're at one of the most well respected law schools in America, at one of the more well-respected universities in the world -- one of the few universities, indeed, that has truly global recognition. We've all done different things in life, and apparently we've made it this far without managing to screw up too terribly. If we were going to totally fail, we probably already would have. As it is, we're still extraordinarily lucky to be where we are, students in a culture designed to reward the people who have somehow found their way to the upper echelon of the legal academy that we inhabit today. We have quite a bit of inertia, and I think that it will take more than a recession to bring us totally to a halt -- through no particular merits of our own. So we shouldn't take our current trajectory lightly, but we should at least allow it to temper our anxiety, which should be focused not on whether we will have jobs but instead on what those jobs might be.
That said, Eben, debt financing of law school is truly horrible, and I wonder what you think might someday be done to mitigate its effects on legal education and on the profession.
-- GloverWright - 04 Feb 2010
The above reads a lot more naively than I'd like, but in the interest of discussion I'll let it stand. My main point, though, is that unlike the majority of law students in America right now, we're in a pretty strong position, and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact. Moreover, we're studying in a place that can enable us to work anywhere in the the country -- and indeed the world -- that we would like to go, including a lot of places where grades might not matter so much. And relative to most people in this country, the deck is still stacked pretty much in our favor.
And one more thing, probably the most important: as Eben as suggested, there will always be work for people who are are very good at what they do. The trick lies in finding what that particular thing is, and generally speaking I don't think that finding it is something that can be forced. It may take time, but it occurs naturally. And I don't think that anxiety about finding it is particularly helpful -- in fact it's probably the opposite.
-- GloverWright - 04 Feb 2010 | | | |
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