meridian_rose

I agree with that article. I'm in my third year, and I have to have a fourth because of class requirements for graduating I don't have because of a combination of changing my specialty and the university fucking me over, but I feel like I'm marking time. I learn more in my clinic work and at my job about the actual practice of law. My classes are just me learning a body of case law for a state I don't plan on practicing in, and it's hard to be engaged in them.

I'm of the camp that we should have first year with the necessary subjects, second year with the subjects specialized for the area you want to practice in, and then third year should be an apprenticeship to an older attorney. I mean, Bex can tell you, I don't really know any other older attorney's well enough to feel comfortable asking them certain things, so every so often Bex gets a long message from me like HOLD ME T_T.

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That sounds like a very reasonable study plan. But what do students know? :P

What is your new speciality in, if you don't mind me asking?

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I started out with a specialty in computer/internet/satellite/space law, which we call Air, Space, and Sensing Law. Then last year, I changed my specialty to criminal prosecution and children in the legal system.

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ASSL :D Sounds like a really active area to work in right now. But perhaps not as challenging or 'worthy' however you want to define worthiness. So you'll be in the courtroom, defending your clients? And probably looking for ways to protect women's rights :D

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Well, ASSL is really active and lucrative right now - but it was very, very boring. Very try, a lot of debate over the semantics of treaty interpretation, a lot of legal theory and philosophy, and a lot of learning to be a rocket scientist just to be able to understand what the law governs. For me, it was a chore.

Then I took a criminal class as an elective, and it was interesting, and engaging, and I'm naturally very good at it. I flip flopped about it for a while, because part of the draw of ASSL was that you're more likely to get to go home at 5 every night, but in the end I thought work that is interesting to me is overall better than struggling through a lifetime of boredom.

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Law School not only taught me almost nothing about the actual practice of law, it was probably the worst 3 years of my life, and most of what I did learn was worthless in the real world.

This is long - may not fit into one comment:

In the 4 years leading up to law school, I went to a very small, Quaker, liberal arts college where students were encouraged to interact with professors. Equality between students and professors and administration was highly stressed. One of my dearest friends after I graduated was a professor(he died 2 years ago). He and his family provided me with almost a second home since I was 500 miles away from family, and only saw my parents 2-3 times during the academic year.

From that sequestered, intellectually nurturning environment I went straight into 3 years of hell - arrogant egotistical professors who loved nothing more than humiliating their students in class in the presence of peers (They call it the Socratic method - supposed to get the student accustomed to defending their position and making logical, rational arguments).

If you hadn't had a change to read the gazillion pages of case law the night before, or you were just nervous and couldn't remember if all even if you had read it, you were scathingly critiqued. For many profs it was just an excuse to abuse power. Most of them can't teach you squat about practicing law, because they have never practiced law. Many of them have never left the academic environment and live in a cocoon.

Then there were the students! Thank God I was able to find 4-5 kindred souls the first few weeks of my first year or I wouldn't have made it - people who wanted to get involved in social justice, and not mow down everbody in their path on the way to a six-figure partner position in a corporate law firm. The ruthless stab-in-the -back competitiveness in law school can be the stuff of legend.

The first 2 years were terrible - intellectually deadening and unbelievably stressful.

The third year, I actually started learning something because I was able to participate in student legal services, where I dealt with clients face to face under the supervision of a practicing attorney. Also we did a lot of fun and educational role-playing of various situations that practicing attorneys often encounter.

In my 3rd year, I also was given the freedom to pursue the area of law I was most interested in, and given free rein to do a year long independent study in that field, writing a gigantic paper at the end of the year.

But when did I really start learning how to be a lawyer? The first week at my first job. I was sent out of town to cover a family law hearing by myself - no supervision, only a file I had read through and through, and a brief conversation with my client, who had been handed off to me by one of the other attorneys in my new office. A baptism by fire - and I survived. That was the day I started learning the practice of law, and it's been an ongoing process ever since.

I'm in a small, little-respected, area of the law - after all, children and poor people don't vote, and any cases involving children are confidential so don't get reported by the media. It's what I have wanted to do since my third year of law school, it's challenging, it's never boring, it exhausts me and sometimes, yes, it burns me out, but I wouldn't do anything else.

Now I've written an essay and I apologize. Don't know if this will go into one comment. @_@

Edited Date: 2011-11-23 07:02 pm (UTC)

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That sounds terrible. I had a wonderful time at university and nurturing intellect was top of the agenda in my classes - question everything, check multiple sources, don't reinvent the wheel; these were the cornerstones of everything I learnt [Information Studies]. Much like your college years.

I looked with some longing at the option to add on a law degree - one year less study, because having a degree means you've got those key skills of 'how to study', 'how to research' under your belt already. And sometimes I wish I had done so, though I wouldn't have been able to get the grant for it that I did with my first degree. Because I'd be more employable now.

On the other hand I don't think the legal environment would be a good fit for me. I know there's lots of areas of law - family law, copyright law, and so on and it's not all courtroom high-drama - but I always got the impression it's a highly competitive environment. I've consumed a lot of legal drama media over the years. I'll mention two that resonate with me here.

'Judging Amy' was a drama about a female judge struggling to balance her family and her career. She dealt solely with family/children and in one episode gave a lecture to a group of law students, giving them a wake up call about how tough the day to day job really was - and particularly in her less-than-glamorous and ill-funded sector. You'd probably find some moments of real camaraderie with the Amy character.

In 'Book of Shadows', witch Phyllis Curott describes her experiences in the late sixties/early seventies, I think; she was a lawyer for a record firm when women were rare in the legal field. She tells frankly of the casual sexual harassment and soul destroying nature of the environment and she finally quit for her physical, emotional and spiritual self - the book parallels Persephone's descent into the Underworld as Curott loses herself while gaining spiritual insight. She found a way to practice law by joining an old friend who deal with real estate - something where everyone could win. I don't know how bad the sexism still is - still probably worse in the music industry than elsewhere - but I bet there's still a lot of it about.

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.

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It's still like that in my neck of the woods. I can't wear pants in certain court rooms, or the judge won't listen when I speak. All female attorneys must wear skirt suits - not a dress and a jacket, not a suit with pants, it must be a skirt suit.

I've also been told that I can't work in the guardian ad litem clinic if I get pregnant, which strikes me as a bit sexist, though their reasoning for that is that pregnant women are statistically more likely to be assaulted and you come up against known abusers as a guardian ad litem.

At work, the senior partner has started always sending me when we need something from a police officer, because I'm small and cute and they cooperate with me more because I'm a "little lady." Now, that's useful, sure, but it's still sexist that they see me as less of a threat or whatever.

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That's ridiculous. There was a recent episode of 'The Good Wife' which is set in more liberal Chicago and a judge who had it in for main character Alicia told her not to show up in a pant suit again. I'm surprised Alicia didn't quote chapter and verse about the discrimination of that, since it seems a clear case of sexism, although it seems you have to pick your battles. That this really happens and it's allowed is ridiculous to me. Sometimes I forget how fortunate I am to live in the UK because I think we've gone a lot further in anti-discrimination policy than the US.

Well pregnant women shouldn't be allowed out of their houses anyway /sarcasm.

And I don't see that very casual day-to-day attitude of seeing women as less threatening going away anytime soon. We seem to be going backwards with women's rights at the moment, so if anything I think we'll see a backlash first D:

God, that was depressing. But at least you'll be in a position to try to change the system from within.

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Conditions seem to be quite a bit different here.

Over the years I've worked with many lawyers who have gone through several pregnancies, all the while working actively as GAL's up to a few days before delivery, and are back in court a few weeks later. Several of our active GAL's are pregnant right now, and wouldn't even consider not continuing their job during their pregnancy, and the Court would have no authority to remove them or not appoint them to cases. That would be a clear case of discrimination.

I've never seen the studies that have proven that pregnant women are statistically more likely to get assaulted - maybe by a domestically violent partner in a relationship, but not by a client, or opposing party in a trial. That reasoning seems rather bizare to me.

Our dress codes are pretty relaxed. If you're in a felony jury trial, you'd better be in a suit, but otherwise there are no hard and fast rules. That has changed over the past 15 years though. When I started, you'd better suit up for Court.

Dealing with the police is a whole other subject. Although our female public defenders are tough as nails, and more and more of our detectives are women.

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It's probably the backward state I live in. -_-

The pregnancy thing was explained to me as a school liability thing, that they would switch me to a different clinic like income tax or something if I got pregnant, because the school didn't want to be liable if I was assaulted in the course completing my work for the clinic. I didn't really buy it, but as it was a moot point didn't spend time arguing with them.

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Yes - I was thinking about ithat after you posted, and I can see how the school would be fearful of liability issues if something would happen while you were participating in one of their programs.

It would be quite different once you're in your own practice or in a firm.

I'm so excited that you are interested in so many facets of the law that I am. Someday, when you aren't so swamped, I would love to just talk to you about that. Children in the Law was the name of the 3rd year course that changed my life.

Edited Date: 2011-11-24 01:34 pm (UTC)

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Yes yes yes. We will do this!

One day I'll even teach you how to use Skype. I'm determined. XD

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Yes, I'm thinking it's more like Pris says, not that you are more likely to be assaulted if pregnant but more likely to sue. Money is more important than people, and you know how a fetus is more important than a woman in the eyes of the law these days, especially in Pris's state of the attempt to bring about personhood for fertilized eggs.

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I watched a few episodes of "Judging Amy" but never really got into it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, though. I've never heard of "Book of Shadow". I do like to read legal thrillers.

Re: Sexism. Yes, it's still there, but getting better. In our jurisdiction almost 1/2 of our judges are women, and most of the judges in my specific area of the law are women. At least 1/2 of the attorneys I practice with are women, too. Probably because women seem to gravitate more to this area of the law, although we have several men who have chosen to practice in this field and are very dedicated.

Back to TV - I love the "Law and Order" franchise, but a lot of that's procedural, and also inaccurate (most cop/lawyer/investigative shows are), but I still like it - probably because I'm a prosecutor. :D

As for courtroom drama - we have plenty of it in spades. We handle hearings where children have been removed from their homes for abuse/neglect, I handle cases where parent's permanent legal rights are cut off so that children can be adopted. There is always drama, and almost all of my contested trials go up to the State Court of Appeals, so I have to make sure that I make a complete record that will stand up and hopefully not be reversed and re-tried.

We've had parents and teen-age delinquents go bat-shit in the courtroom. I've been threatened, my colleagues have been threatened, but the judges get threatened the most. We have two deputies constantly on duty in our division alone, and a third available when juveniles are in detention. The judges have a call button under their bench so that a deputy can be summoned into the courtroom within seconds if things get out of control.

It's documented that cases involving child custody and termination of parental rights have a greater potential to erupt into violence in the courtroom than even a criminal trial. I imagine because emotions are more raw and because those cases go through the system much faster. A criminal case can take months to get to trial, sometimes up to a year.

Sorry for the spiel. Luckily for you, I have to break now - I have to be in court in 15 minutes. @_@

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I only caught sections of 'Amy' because I was interested in some of the guests, and then I got interested in the plot, and I ended up watching the re-runs of most of the early seasons. I see some LO and LO:CI although I don't watch any SVU - I can deal with homicide cases better than the idea of sexual cases.

There's an irony that wherever women flourish, that's the arena most ridiculed/unimportant and it turns into a chicken vs egg situation - are women driven to work where they know they can make a difference or are they pushed towards these areas? And then does that area become seen as less important because of the female predominance or was it always that way, hence the pushing?

Book of Shadows is actually the true account - with fictionalisation to hide identities - of Curott's initiation into a coven. Her legal life, with its focus on material things and success at the expense of others, is in direct contrast to the spiritual lessons she learns during her year of training in wicca and witchcraft where cooperation and trusting your instincts are valued highly. So not a legal thriller, though it touches on topics like domestic abuse and sexual assault as well as sexism and the patriarchal nature of society and the mainstream religions.

Book of Shadows is what many witches and wiccans call their personal journal of spells and rituals or just notes on their spiritual practice :D

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LO:CI is my absolute favorite of the Law and Order franchise. I not only love the quirkiness of Bobby Goren, but I love the way he and Eames work together, her snarkiness and how she grounds him in reality.

I think Juvenile Law is gaining ground as a specialty that is starting to be taken seriously, and it's about time. I can't think of anything more serious. The field can be frustrating, and the failures sometimes seem to outweigh the successes, but early intervention is critical if lives are going to be changed. For years, the justice system didn't seem to make the connection, but now I think it's starting to click.

I never got the impression that women were being steered in the Family law/Juvenile law direction. In fact, when I started out, my colleagues, male and female, thought I was crazy. I just think that women may be more interested initially because of societal expectations, and that women more readily make the connection that childhood experience often shapes what a person becomes as an adult.

One of the rewards I have had in this line of work is to see male attorneys start out practicing in this field because they are fresh out of law school, and this is where the Court Appointments are. They see Juvenile las as a starting point and nothing more. Yet, a good many have, even after they have built up their thriving practices, become so dedicated that they still devote a large part of their practice to families and children.

It's just an area of the law where you aren't going to get your name in the papers, or on TV, or be written about because of confidentiality. But it's rewarding and important, and I am proud of the women and men who have chosen to devote their lives to it because they are unsung heroes in my opinion.

I'm sorry - I really didn't mean to go on and on about this.

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It's great that you're passionate about what you do :D

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At the risk of hijacking this thread more than I already have (sorry - seems to be a bad habit), the best way I can put it, Lisa, is that my feelings about what I do perhaps parallel your passion and identification of yourself as a writer and creative person. My work, for better or worse, is the basis of my self-identity. That may not be very healthy, since, unlike writing, I won't be able to do it for my entire life.

Like your bouts of feeling that you may have lost your muse, I have gone through, and will again,periods of burn out, when I feel hollowed out - as if I can't continue doing this work any more. Then a case will energize me again, reminding me of why this was the path I chose. There have also been many times when I've questioned my abilities.

Also, unlike writing, whatever good I do in my work is always a team effort. I may be the attorney prosecuting the case, but I couldn't do it without the dedication and help of the social workers, the child protective service interviewers, the guardian ad litems for the children, and the emotional and legal support of my co- workers, who are the best people I could ever have working with me.

And with that - I promise I'll shut up now. :D

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One summer I should intern in your office and be creepy and live with you. ^_^ /random creeper comment

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I don't know anything about law school, really, but I have heard that it's gotten incredibly expensive. And of course I've seen Legally Blonde, in which a lot of the professors are cruel and sexist...

Also, I totally agree that Darth Vader was a good planner ;)

And Feet of Clay is one of the Terry Pratchett books I haven't been able to find :( Vimes is one of my favorite characters, too.

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Oh, Feet of Clay is the one with the golems and someone poisons Vetinari which Vimes takes as a personal insult. It's really good - though of course I say that about practically every Terry Pratchett book :D

My favourite bit is probably troll Constable Detritus's interrogation technique. Just an almost throwaway few lines, but it always makes me smile. But I won't spoil it here :D

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All the Terry Pratchett books are really good, but I have a special soft spot for the Vimes ones. And someone poisons Vetinari! I remember the golems from Making Money, although I haven't been able to find Going Postal...

Detritus :D So many great characters, really :D

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Re: The expense of law school - it's worse than that I'm afraid. There's also a movement not to give us licenses if we build up too much student debt, which pretty much means poor students have to go to less expensive (and usually less highly ranked) schools, and rich students get to go to their expensive Ivy Leagues.

There's an article on it in one of my law journals, if I can just remember which one. It might be the ABA Journal.

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'There's also a movement not to give us licenses if we build up too much student debt,' Too poor to be a lawyer? If this were satire, people would say it could never happen. Holy crap, only the already rich get to stay rich and get richer, huh? Seems a far cry from the much vaunted American Dream of success off your own back due to hard work and good ethics.

The hiking of fees in the UK is having a similar effect now, where students are going to Europe to study because it's cheaper, or only the richer kids are getting degrees. We're setting ourselves up for serious issues in ten-twenty years with a major knowledge gap. Just another area where we're going backwards instead of forwards.

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That sounds like it should be illegal, or at least against the Ivy League rules - don't they have a whole policy about not discriminating against people based on financial need? Or is that just for undergraduate school, not law school?

I agree with Lisa, this is going to cause trouble, besides being unfair.

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It's not the policy of the schools, but the American Bar Association and the state bar associations that make decisions about licensing attorneys. Here, I found the article - this should explain it better that I did: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/business/02lawyer.html

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I'm horrified. This man is the perfect example of overcoming adversity, his best hope of repaying loans that have been hiked through outrageous practices is to become a lawyer, and yet he's been turned down. Not for any criminal activity but because he's had bad luck and been persistent in his studies and thus acquired debt. 'character' my ass. Half the lawyers and judges would be out on their asses if this was applied with any degree of consistency. Thanks for the link, it was interesting if anger-inducing reading.

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