How to Be a Lawyer. Jason Mendelson. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Jason Mendelson
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Юриспруденция, право
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119835820
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of Law and its leadership team for a great legal education combined with amazing opportunities for practical experience.

      We've met a lot of lawyers and clients during our professional journeys. Some great, some decent, some terrible, but all important in educating us along our winding paths. You all taught us (whether you knew it or not!) in ways we could have never learned on our own. Thank you. Yes, even to some of you jerks out there.

      This book was written by 28 people who went to law school. We are of different ages, sexes, races, and went to law schools that rank in the hundreds to the top five. We have had jobs ranging from general counsels of billion-dollar companies to hanging out our own shingles right after law school. Collectively, we practice in almost every area of the law.

      Despite our diversity, we share the strong opinion that most law schools fail to prepare students for the real world of actual lawyering. Law schools are great at graduating students and terrible at graduating lawyers. We were all frustrated in our progression from students to practitioners and relived those frustrations when we hired, worked with, mentored, and interacted with others coming out of law school.

      Jason Mendelson, one of the lead authors of this book, has been a lawyer, software engineer, startup co-founder, venture capitalist, and worked with and hired hundreds of lawyers in all shapes and sizes. He has had good experiences, bad experiences, and, like many in the legal profession, a long memory. Maybe most importantly, Jason taught as an adjunct professor for a decade at the University of Colorado Law School. In that decade he spent as much time mentoring law students on how to best transition to the real world as he did imparting legal and business knowledge. Ironically (or maybe not so), most of the professional academics in the law school did little to nothing to aid in student transition. Even worse, some openly were not fans of Jason's pragmatic approach.

      To be clear—this book is not intended to be a book about law school bashing. Law schools aren't bad. Rather, they are archaic institutions still believing that a student goes to law school, takes the classic curriculum, and a job magically appears at the end of the scholastic journey. Or maybe if your circumstances are a bit more challenging, you can use the school's career placement center's assistance. Perhaps this was truer 30 years ago, but these days only a small handful of law students win this lottery.

      Given the changing nature of job discovery for law students, it is even more important they “hit the ground running” when they do find that right opportunity. Yes, there will be a plethora of statutes, regulations, tactics, strategies, client management, and other important concepts to learn, but stepping into a new career completely blind is a recipe to, at best, frustrate your employer and clients and to, at worst, be shown the door quickly.

      In our research, we found no class, book, webinar, website, or other source of material that specifically or effectively explains how to be successful with a law school degree. And yet, the problem of transition from classroom to practice is huge. This book aims to fix this problem.

      We wrote this book with three audiences in mind. Obviously, the largest target audience is people currently in law school. We recommend reading this book as early in your law school career as possible and refreshing your recollection as you narrow down what your intended career path may look like. We also wrote this book, however, with the pre-law student in mind as well. The practice of law has changed greatly over the past few decades. The type of person who succeeds has changed, as well. No longer are grades, knowledge, and tactics enough to get by. We'll say this many times in the book: great lawyers must be people persons. Being a lawyer is service business. To all of you thinking about law school out there: this book will give you great insight into what the practice of law is really about. Lastly, there will be folks who've graduated and stumble upon this book, as well. We've made this book relevant to you, too.

      We worked to write this book as simply and efficiently as possible, as well. We are all still scarred from the amount of text we unnecessarily read while in law school. We empathize firsthand and don't want to add to that burden. If we don't have something important to say, we won't make you read it.

      The first part of this book lays out our theories of the case. The second part is the pragmatic section where we'll go out on a limb and give you concrete advice in what to do and what not to do. The last part of the book will wrap up and apply what we've discussed to the real world. Along the way we hope to make you more thoughtful and a bit uncomfortable. We believe that what we've put on these pages can start you on the path to becoming a great (and hopefully happy) lawyer.

      There is very little in common between law school and lawyering. Law schools are great at teaching case law and theory, but generally poor in how to apply either to real-world situations, as almost all law school situations involve a courtroom. Courtroom situations are by far the least common situation for most lawyers. Also, law schools teach nothing about how to work with clients outside of a narrowly tailored ethics class, which, while vital, is only a small part of the picture. Mock trials are just that: mock. And for those of us who made the switch from mock to real, we realized very quickly that life outside the four walls of law school is a completely different beast.

      Why aren't people skills, psychology, and negotiations mandatory subjects? This isn't computer science. Remember this: lawyers are called “counselors” for a reason. Any good attorney is as much an armchair support system as they are a statute-application machine. Lawyering is a people business. It's about listening, empathizing, synthesizing information, and problem solving. None of these things are taught in law schools to the extent needed once you are a bar-carrying legal eagle.