No One Likes To Bitch More Than Law Students

Listen, I have blogged about law school for a long time. And I learned very early on that law school blogging comes with a caveat - No one likes to bitch more than law students.

This includes lawyers. Sure, we complain about our jobs a little bit - the hours, the stress, the fact that this career has probably ruined some part of our life along the way - but we have nothing on the law students. 

When you are a law student, all you have left is your ability to bitch. You don't really have control over your education - honestly what is the difference between taking a class on commercial transactions and taking a class on commercial law? - and you certainly feel like you have very little control over your sleep, study, and social calendar. Everyone takes the same holiday days, everyone goes to the same social events, and everyone falls into a secluded hibernation pre-finals. 

This is met, of course, by the obvious question: 
"Why the hell are you in law school if you hate it so much?" 
For three years I was the human equivalent of the shrug emoji. I was there because that is where life had led me, and I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but law school was so disengaged from the actual practice of law that I didn't even know if I would be happy doing that. And I was already financially committed and emotionally beaten down about it - why quit now? 

I remember a lot of people breathing this enormous sigh of relief when they entered the practice of law. Finally, finally, they were doing something that felt like it made the law degree worth it. It was as though this collective hive mind mentality we have went "this - this is what I was working towards!" 

And honestly, we are so starved for something to be good at, something to have meaning, and something to engage another human being in a meaningful way that most of us just chalk that up to being happy. We survived law school, and this is the reward on the other side of the tunnel. 

But I think what a lot of people don't stop to consider is whether law school and the practice of law is the only thing that could make you happy. There is such a dramatic exodus from the profession between year one and year five of practice because people start to realize that this career is not what gives their life the purpose they were seeking; that this career does not meet their emotional or familial needs; and that this career is not what they imagined when they were a happy kid signing up for the LSAT. 

And perhaps that's one of the beauties of law school - it took us from those happy kids and turned us into people resolved to be lawyers, even though we had no idea what the day to day of that could look like. 
We bitched for three years for a reason - we weren't really happy. We just couldn't imagine doing anything else. 


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