another how-to

Here's something I drunkenly submitted to my law school's weekly newspaper in 2005. The editors politely declined to run it:

A lot of people around here are fond of comparing law school to high school. And they're right to do so. But the sad thing is, as Ferris Bueller aptly pointed out, high school is childish and stupid. So let’s all follow these simple steps towards eliminating our embarrassing predicament.

STEP ONE: Stop trying to sleep with everyone you know. Cripes, man. There’s an unlimited number of undergrads out there, all of whom are younger, prettier, and dumber than we are. Remember: the only people who aren’t impressed that you’re a law student are other law students.

STEP TWO: Stop hanging out at the law school all day. No one makes you hang out at school when you’re not in class. You’re not waiting on a bus. There’s no reason to spend $19 on a lettuce wrap at Bob Scott Commons when you own a car.

STEP THREE: Don’t get a locker. What’s the point? Ever since Sir Isaac Newton invented the backpack, people have enjoyed a more convenient way to store their books. Honor him.

STEP FOUR: Learn to hold your liquor. Wow. The youngest of you is, what, twenty-two? That means you’ve been drinking for at least five years. So act like you’ve been there before. A little bit of self-respect will go a long way in the outside world. The first time your promotion hinges on taking six boozebags from Lehman Brothers out for drinks, you’ll thank me.

STEP FIVE: Stop wearing so much Abercrombie and Fitch. When Jody Kraus is making fun of you, it’s time to reevaluate.

STEP SIX: Don’t pose for a yearbook photo. Actually, we’re doing pretty damn well on this one. Keep up the good work.

STEP SEVEN: Don’t join a journal. I can’t emphasize this one enough. If law school is like high school, then stretch the analogy out a little further: in high school, everyone is concerned about doing as much pointless bullshit as possible because they think it will help them get into the best colleges. In law school, someone tricked you into thinking you have to do a bunch of pointless bullshit if you want to get hired by a good law firm. Spearheading your neighborhood’s recycling efforts didn’t get you into Harvard, and spending your entire second year cite-checking some blowhard from Vanderbilt isn’t going to impress any interviewers. Take it from someone too stupid to get elected to even the most frivolous journal: you’re going to get a job no matter what.

STEP EIGHT: Don’t watch The OC. There’s a reason people compare it to Beverly Hills 90210: they both suck.

STEP NINE: Stop pretending you’re going to marry your current love interest. I swear, if I have to hear “I have a boyfriend” (or--worse yet--“you have a girlfriend”) one more time, I’m going to start listening to Pearl Jam again. Let’s not sugarcoat things: as future lawyers, we all have at least two unhappy marriages in our future. The sooner we own up to this, the sooner we can get on with our miserable lives.

STEP TEN: Smoke cigarettes. Hunton & Williams encourages it. And I promise Principal Jeffries won’t give you detention.

It's amazing how dated this already seems. Everyone gets a job? And what the hell are Lehman Brothers? What planet was this guy living on??

How to Be a Lawyer, Part Three: Getting the Damn Thing Over With

(Part One)

(Part Two)

STEP NINE, I THINK: Summer internships are so easy a caveman could do it. Them. In fact there's only one thing you need to know: the word "right". Because you come from a prestigious law school (assuming you followed my advice), your supervisors will expect you to know something about the law. Fortunately for you, a properly inflected "right" coupled with a terse nod of the head will convince every partner you understand what they're talking about.

"All this is is a pretty simple amendment to the credit facilities. You probably saw there's a first and second lien, but they're both pretty straightforward."
"Right."
"Anyway the hard part is gonna be obtaining the two-thirds consent needed to adjust the debt coverage ratios in order for the company to avoid a default."
"Right."
"Because obviously the lenders are gonna make them pay through the nose for this."
"Right."

I swear to God, somehow this works. I don't think I said anything besides "right", "thanks", and "Glenlivet" for the first three weeks of my internship.

Nine weeks later, the law firm will offer you a job.

STEP TEN: One smart thing to do after you get a job is to set about alienating every person you've ever been close to. This is a little harder than it sounds, but now that you're gainfully employed, law school isn't exactly taxing; you should have plenty of time to focus. One way to start is to hardly pay attention when your best friend starts dating someone who will eventually become his fianceé. If you're dating someone yourself, now is a good time to start disregarding his/her feelings and doing whatever you please all day long. By all means: ramp up the drinking. And it's not a bad idea to remind everyone you know that you'll soon make more money in one year than all of their lowly ancestors' lifetime earnings put together. It's pretty fun once you get into it.

STEP ELEVEN: By now, you're so close to being a blowhard corporate lawyer you can taste it. All you've got to do is pass the Bar. Unfortunately, the Bar presents an interesting challenge to a slacker like yourself: try as you might, there's pretty much no way to pass this thing without actually studying for it all summer. So if you want to bumble your way through this, you're going to have to be creative. Here are a few quick and easy tips:

(a) When your law school's records department says they mailed all your relevant information to the NY Bar Association, it's a good idea to believe them and not-- under any circumstances-- check with the Bar to make sure they received everything.

(b) Start a blog.

(c) When you run into a classmate sitting by himself at the bar at your local Outback steakhouse and you tell him nervously that you haven't booked a hotel in Albany yet and he laughs and says you're probably already fucked but he'll make some calls on your behalf RIGHT NOW, RIGHT FUCKIN NOW AT THE BAR AT OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE while you sit down and eat your stupid vegetarian pasta primavera alfredo bullshit, it's not a bad idea to believe him. Go ahead and nurture this incredibly insane delusion until a week before the Bar, without ever once bothering to ask him if he actually booked you a room or if he was just blowing smoke.

(d) When it's exactly one week before the Bar and you all of a sudden realize in a panic that you haven't received a seating assignment for the exam because the Bar never got your law school information, and finally come around to the idea that your drunken acquaintance at Outback probably didn't actually book you a hotel room because it occurs to you he doesn't even know your last name, and then also try booting up your computer to search for a last-minute hotel and find your computer is deader than a god damned doornail and all of a sudden it hits you flush that you can't access your notes and outlines for the Bar exam and hell apparently you're not even signed up for the fucking Bar anyway and even if you were you still don't have a place to stay; when this happens and you can honestly say you've treated the most important test of your entire life with the same crippling-fear-disguised-as-nonchalance that's confounded everyone you ever used to be close to since that time in kindergarten when your teacher had to tell your parents to stop letting you do your homework in fucking crayon, and when you look this realization square in the eye (so to speak) and tell it honestly "yes, this is the way i've chosen to live my life", now's when you know you're ready to pick up and move to a huge city 400 miles away from anyone who ever loved you and start working a 70 hour a week job that you can make a pretty strong case you're ghastlily unqualified for.

By comparison, the Bar exam is a trip to the zoo.

STEP TWELVE: Congratulations. You're a corporate lawyer. Everything you've ever dreamed of is now yours for the taking.

But just in case you wake up alone one morning in your sparsely-appointed efficiency and realize you've never had especially vivid or creative dreams, or if one day you're sitting in an airport playing BrickBreaker on your BlackBerry and decide all at once that putzing your way through college and law school is one thing but faking your way through the next 50 years is a whole other kettle of fish, just in case this ever happens to you, probably the best thing to do right then is to close your eyes and take one deep breath.

After that, you're on your own.

How To Be A Lawyer, Part Two: Navigating Law School And Interviewing

STEP SIX: If you want to survive law school, you've got to treat it like a job. So go ahead and cut out early on your first day to see Radiohead in Maryland. Someone will cover for you.

STEP SEVEN: Law school can be pretty hard. You'll need a network of smart friends willing to share their notes, give you their outlines, and explain all the shit you're too dumb to figure out by yourself. The good news is, this isn't med school: as long as you bring something to the table, most people are willing to help you out.

STILL SEVEN: What do you bring to the table? It sure as hell isn't keen analytical insight, a yeomanlike work ethic, or oral hygiene. I recommend a steadfast commitment to always being the drunkest guy in the room. If you're always the drunkest guy in the room, then everyone else will feel free to let their hair down and drink as much as they want, knowing they'll never do anything as embarrassing as the guy wearing a black pom-pom on his head like a Jheri-curl. Your fellow law students will appreciate the social freedom your antics guarantee, and they'll reward you with six semesters of law review-caliber outlines. Trust me.

STEP EIGHT: Before you know it, it's time to start looking for a job. The secret to a successful interview is to remember that law is the absolute dead-on boringest subject known to man, and no one in their right mind would ever ever ever ever ever choose to talk about it of their own free will. Find something more interesting to discuss and you'll have a job in no time. For example, if your favorite baseball team recently staged an historic comeback from a three-games-to-none deficit against its arch rival to win the pennant then swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win its first world championship in 86 years, you could talk about that.

But honestly, even Harry Potter is more interesting than the résumé blather your interviewer has been listening to all day. Don't fuck this up.
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Be on the lookout for Part Three, sometime between tomorrow and mid-July.

How To Be A Lawyer, Part One: How to Get into Law School

Last week I traveled to Albany to be sworn in as a member of the NY Bar. Sitting in the bureaucratic light of the Empire State Plaza Convention Center, I reflected on my experiences over the last 5 years and realized I could put together one hell of a how-to pamphlet. Here's part one:

STEP ONE: Major in philosophy. I can't emphasize this one enough. Majoring in this worthless piece of shit subject ensures exactly one thing: if you ever want to own a TV, have sex with a girl, or eat a meal, you HAVE to go to law school. Nothing motivates like desperation.

STEP TWO: Eventually it comes time to take the LSAT. The key thing here is to become heavily dependent on anti-depressants during college, then slowly wean yourself off them when your undergrad health insurance expires. By the time you take the LSAT in October, you'll be used to the cold sweats and stratospheric heart rate, while your fellow test-takers will be dealing with them for the first time.

STEP THREE: The morning of the LSAT, it will occur to you that you need a #2 pencil to take the test. It will also occur to you that you haven't owned a fucking pencil since you took the SAT five years ago. But don't worry. On your way to the test, casually pull into a convenience store and swipe a handful of golf pencils from the lotto desk. Nothing motivates you to get things right the first time like not having an eraser.

STEP FOUR: Now that you've taken the LSAT, it's time to get serious about applying to law schools. Choosing the right one can be an arduous task, but only if you're a dipshit. The important thing to remember is that the US News & World Report rankings are infallible. Let them be your only guide.

STEP FIVE: Once you decide on your schools, it's imperative to forget their respective application deadlines. That way, when you're forced to fill out the applications and write all your essays in 3 days, they won't come across as "too polished" or "proofread for spelling errors". Law schools are like women: the harder you try, the less they like you.

ALSO PART OF STEP FIVE: Don't be shy about asking a professor you haven't spoken to in years to write you a recommendation over his winter vacation and mail it to you the very same day. If they didn't like doing this shit, they shouldn't have gone into academia in the first place.
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Stay tuned for Part II: Surviving Law School and Getting a Job