Reflection

-- By KaiKar - 31 May 2017

I applied to law school to better myself in possibly the most literal, simplistic sense of the phrase. I didn’t believe this process was going to change me; at the end of three years I would become Kaitlyn Karpenko plus one Columbia Law degree. It did not occur to me I could ‘change’ as a result of school. Law school would be another position at another job, but this time working for myself instead of a company. I understood I would learn something called The Law, but at very little cost to the person I was, my values, and beliefs. While this isn’t strictly untrue in that my core morals and sense of the world hasn’t shifted dramatically, law school cost more mental energy than any other job, task, or education has before. The negative effects on my mental health, on my personal relationships, and on my ability to enjoy being alive in a fantastic city were the prices I paid for one third of a legal education. I have taken the first few weeks after finals to try to shake off those negative effects and think about what they mean.

Ultimately, I am disappointed. This amount of effort should result in some sort of personal growth, some sort of revelation. I do no think I am resistant to it, I think I simply have a perspective on what lawyering can be like. I have worked in a firm and I know what attorneys do. I know the variety of things attorneys do. Becoming an attorney does not require this process. The toll this system of ‘learning’ and ‘lecture’ takes is not justifiable in the amount of law you memorize, especially when law is subject to change, varies by jurisdiction, and is heavily issue specific. Law school feels more like a hazing process than an educational one, a shared experience to bind future lawyers together socially (perhaps the ultimate form of Veblen’s critique of esoteric knowledge). Learning how to research, present, and respond to issues are the most important skills law school can teach, and they are relegated to a one-credit pass-fail course. The only good thing about LPW is the feedback we receive - markedly absent from all other coursework required for graduation, and an essential feature in any system hoping to teach anyone anything. Moving forward, I am getting out of the classroom as much as possible, at least those giving exams. I have an externship and student editor positions lined up. I am on several club boards. I am on a journal. I want to crack law books more for research and less for memorization. I want to learn to use the law, and learn the law through use.

I am coming back in the fall, to be blunt, to cash in on a product I have already paid one third for: my license to practice law. Law school is not a sunk cost. I cannot afford to walk away from it if I wanted to. I would lose LRAP eligibility, loan forgiveness options, employability, and I would be the dreaded ‘dropout,’ which for better or worse is a title I do not identify with. I have no safety net even if I wanted to leave. I can handle two more years to see the payout of what I have already invested. I also legitimately want to return. I want to practice law, and I found it frustrating that I could not sign the motions I helped draft for my attorneys at my old firms. I also have made friends here, built networks, got involved in (too many) extracurriculars (despite promises to myself to the contrary before school started).

I suppose I did learn something, though: I am bad at working for myself. Pretending I had a client made writing a memo much easier than reading hundreds of cases in black letter law classes. I learned that I am nervous about the future (though this feels more like a reinforcement than a real epiphany). I don't want to be pigeon holed into my previous experiences but there seems to be limited opportunity to explore different areas of practice. In some ways I am considering biglaw if only because of the mentorship and experience possible that is woefully absent from school itself. Truthfully, this is an empty threat - the areas I'm interested in are not generally serviced by biglaw, and I know myself well enough that I could not survive long in that environment. Public interest can be just as much pawning of your labor as biglaw, with perhaps less professional escalator opportunities available, but as mentioned before, I am okay with that. I like working for others, and there are places worth lending your law degree to. Sometimes more good can be made in a machine than trying to forge ahead on your own.

I have always identified as a realist, and often mistaken for a cynic, but I am hopeful for what my future holds. I am glad I chose Columbia; most of my complaints are about the structure of law school as opposed to the institution facilitating the degree. Columbia offers opportunities, specifically LRAP, that were not as robust at the other schools I was considering. Particularly in this uncertain era of higher education, I could have made a worse pick.

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