Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the legal learning podcast. I’m your host Jolene. And with the legal learning center, I help prospective law students save time, money, and stress on their legal journey. I am so excited to announce that the pre-law survival guide a book to help prospective law students save time, money, and stress on their legal journey is now available on Amazon. You can buy it in paperback or on Kindle and soon on audiobook as well. So what’s in this book. Well, it’s a little bit of everything. It’s all the different tips and strategies that really helps students prepare for law school. Prepare for their one L year. Get through that one L year. Just a little bit of everything. It’s just in time for that last minute Christmas gift or using those Amazon gift cards. If you do pick up a copy, I would greatly appreciate a social media share a tag.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I’d love to see who’s getting it, how it’s helping you guys and just help spread the word. The information in the book is helpful to anyone who is a year or two out from law school, whether you’re in college or in gap years. And for one L students, there’s honestly information that would help two L and three L students as well. There’s less information for them, but still worth it, especially at the Kindle price. If I had to choose which version I would say there are some books that I recommend on a Kindle and some that I recommend physically, I, this is a book I would recommend a physical copy primarily because there are tips and strategies that you could be coming back to for years. And I find it’s easier to flip to those things or flip to the different sections in a physical book.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
So while the Kindle book will definitely help, if you skip to the exact chapters, if there’s a strategy you’re trying to remember for next year. For me personally, I find that it’s easiest to do that in a physical book up to you guys, but that’s my 2 cents. All right. So today’s episode is, should I go to law school? This was a question submitted by a listener and I actually recorded an entire episode and just trashed it. It’s such a hard question to answer generically. I work with students one on one with this, but when I do that, I send them a long questionnaire to really get their background information and find out what’s influencing them. Cuz sometimes the reason they shouldn’t go lost school or should put it off for a little bit is because they’re actually being influenced by too many outside factors or they’ve got too much going on.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So being unable to give you that advice, I was trying to do that in the last episode that I recorded. So today I’m just gonna keep it super simple. So number one, if you didn’t listen to last week’s episode, I recommend you go back and listen to that. Even though Elena do recommends different testing and so forth for people who want to leave law or make transitions within law, it’s really the same advice. If you wanna go into law, she talks about things like your strength finders test that tells you what you’re good at naturally. And if you find that the character traits that you’re naturally good at, don’t really align with law. Maybe you should us explore some other areas of interest or do more research on areas of law that it might align better with your strengths. Number two, I recommend that you reach out to as many attorneys as possible in the areas of law that you’re interested in.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
So for example, if you’re interested criminal law reach out to a lot of prosecutors and defenders to find out what they do, how many hours per week they work, what the certain salaries might be. What the salary projections might be, the ups and downs, the pros and cons, all that kind of stuff to really figure out what they do. What’s depressing about their job, because there are things that are depressing. For example, when I went into worker’s comp, it was really stress relieving to know that the side eye was on the insurance or employer side, the code was written against us. So we had a tendency to lose. So when you went into trial, your buy already expected you to lose. So if you won, you were amazing. And if you lost, you were just like everyone else. It may going to trial a lot less stressful.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So that was relieving. But what got depressing was losing so much and especially on cases where you really felt like you should have won, like yeah, you know, maybe you couldn’t connect all the dots, but that person was clearly a liar. You really would rather take the money they’re getting and give it to someone who’s honestly injured. So that could get really frustrating and depressing. After a while, when you have loss after loss on the flip side, a lot of people think, well, I don’t wanna work for an insurance company. I don’t wanna represent the employer. I wanna represent the person. But what I found was that I could help the worker a lot more than their own attorney because their attorney’s job on every single case is this person’s injured, helped them out. It’s the same story, pretty much every time. But on my side, I could go to the insurance company and I could say, I think this person’s a liar.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
And I could say, I think this person’s honestly injured and we need to get them some treatment. And I could help that person so much more. I can get that ball rolling so much faster for them. So talk to people on both sides of the fence of whatever area lie you’re considering. If there are two sides of the fence, for example, in family law, there’s not necessarily two sides, but there are attorneys who tend to represent only women or things like that. So talk to all the different nuances that you can find, make sure you research what you should be doing to get into that field. You might be surprised. So if you talk to someone in certain areas of law, for example, family law, most of them don’t care where you went to school. They just care that you, you know, graduated <laugh> so Don worry too much about rank.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
If that’s not what you should be worried about, get the scholarship. So you don’t have to worry about debt or whatever. It just depends. Right? If you wanna work for a certain firm that only takes people from the top, you know, couple of schools then rank is important, but you need to do that research. And don’t just Google it. Cuz Google is never an authority site. You need to go to the source, but don’t just go to one or two attorneys because that person might be jaded. Their experience may not be the same as another person’s. So you need to actually talk to something like 10 people in every area of law that you’re interested in, ask them what schools do they recruit from at their firm or in general, in that area of law, where do they look for new employees? You know, do they tend to be solo practitioners?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Just what should you be doing during law school? Because if law review is unimportant, don’t do it. If court’s unimportant, don’t do it. What should you be doing? Would it be more important that you volunteer five hours a week at some clinic find that out? Would it be better if you took a couple of gap years and then went to law school, would that actually change your trajectory? So that’s what you need to do. Conduct informational interviews with some thing like 10 attorneys in each area of law, you’re interested in that will also help you. Once you’re in law school to know what internships you want. So you don’t spend your one L summer discovering you don’t like an area of law. I mean, that may still happen, but it’s less likely if you’ve already been exposed to what an area of law is like now a lot of people say, well, I don’t have lawyer connections.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That’s what LinkedIn is all about. If you reach out on LinkedIn and you say, Hey I’m a prospective law student. I see you practice in this area of law. I’m interested in that area of law. Would you mind spending 20 minutes while I ask you a few questions about the profession? Most of them will say yes. Some will ignore you. Some will say no, that’s okay. Move on. Who cares? There’s lots of helpful people out there. And the helpful people are usually the ones with better information. Anyways, honestly, if, while you’re exploring LinkedIn, you happen to find a new area of law. You’ve never heard of feel free to reach out to that person and ask them, Hey, what is this? Can we talk? I’ve done that a few times. Even though I have no interest in joining their area of law, I was just curious.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So I found somebody on LinkedIn who does fashion law, which I imagine is copyright type stuff, but I don’t really know. I’ve never heard of this. And so I messaged them, Hey, can we chat? I’m curious what you do now. They didn’t bother to respond. So I still don’t know what they do. That’s okay, whatever. I’ll find somebody else some other day. But I found somebody who does food law. And I was like, what is that? And it was very fascinating. This person spoke with me. They told me they basically work in nine to five. It’s not very stressful. It’s all transactional. It’s just like truth and advertising type stuff and helping with contracts and pretty simple stuff. As far as I can tell, I mean, it sounded great, very stress free. So there’s all different types of law jobs out there. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people and just ask them some questions.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Now that was tip number two, tip number three is I recommend gap years. One to save money for law school two, it just builds your resume. Honestly, there are some employers who really prefer people who have taken gap years, and then it also gives you a chance to explore other things you’re interested in and really spend that time researching those areas of law, building a network, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a little bit to the side. It’s not as quite direct a tip, but it is something that really can help you grow. So for example, if you’re in certain types of nonprofits, go work for those nonprofits. Don’t feel like you have to work for a law firm. You can, but if the law firm is IP and you’re interested in nonprofits, don’t do the IP law work for nonprofit. If you’re interested in politics and government and all that kind of stuff, see what you can do to get involved in government and politics don’t work for a law firm.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
So if you’re interested in working for a law firm, you don’t really know what type of law you wanna do and you don’t really care. Honestly, that’s fine. Then go work for a firm. I worked for a couple different firms during my gap years. I really don’t feel that I gained any valuable information whatsoever. The first law firm I work for, it was a personal injury firm. He refused to hire a full-time secretary. So what he did is he hired undergrad students from UCLA on multiple part-time basis. So most of them were working something like 10 hours a week and they were all working on little projects. It was a horrible job. I had already graduated from college. I convinced him to hire me anyway, but he had me doing the most silly things like trying to find an old folks’ home for his mom and calling a client who file. He lost to ask her about the facts of her case without letting her know that we lost her file. I really just could not work for this person bad experience. So I left after only three days, I then worked for an IP firm that’s intellectual property. I want nothing to do with the, that I protected foreign patents. So if you have a patent in the us and you wanna protect it in Japan or wherever the you, I would file your application for you.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
I did see what it was like to work for a firm, but that firm doesn’t speak for all firms. And in fact was very different from my law experience. So as a legal secretary, my job title was kind of paralegal. It was a horrible experience as well. I mean, I kind of learned a lot in a way, but they were constantly filing the labor code. I came to know the labor code fairly well because of the weird things they would tell me I couldn’t do. And so I go look it up and sure enough, then they say, oh, just kidding. So really again, not representative of a lot of other firms out there, but I also really didn’t get to see what the attorneys did. Even though technically I was supporting them. I was just doing this form patent stuff. They were doing the acts patent trademark copyright stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And I never saw that. I, I know one attorney just worked more on biology. So he would like read these really long DNA strains and make sure that the information was correct or whatever. I don’t know how he did that. I never learned what the attorneys actually did. So it just really wasn’t all that helpful. Once I went into law school and had internships and part-time jobs, and once I graduated, my experience was vastly different. So I can honestly say working for a firm didn’t help me at all. I feel like honestly, I got a better idea of what everyone role was when I worked for a nonprofit over my two L summer. So I worked with the attorneys, but I also worked with the staff and I kind of was half staff, half almost attorney. And I just felt like if I had done that before I went to law school, I would’ve really understood what a nonprofit attorney did.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
So definitely look into alternatives, look into side jobs. If you’re not finding a law firm in your area of interest that is hiring. All right. As I mentioned, this list could go on and on. If I was to have your specific information, but I’m gonna leave it here. Hopefully this gives you a, a push helps guide you. But I do wanna mention that a lot of us do feel pressure from our families and it may not be direct pressure. They may not say you should go to law school, but it’s that whole, you’re the first female to go to college. You’re the first female to go to law school. You’re the first to go to higher education in the family or everyone else in the family has gone to higher education. You should too, right? Those little subliminal messages, they send you of those little pushes and glances that we feel that can influence us.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And I did an episode, the pressures we create with R E V Vargas. And you can listen to that episode as well. That was maybe a month or so ago. And that really just talked to the pressures we put on ourselves. So be aware of that as you look at law schools and as you look at the law school process, and if you’re not sure law, school’s right for you, there’s two things I recommend one gap years. Again, you don’t have to go at the speed of light law school will be there. The non-traditional path of taking gap years is now considered more the traditional path now. So don’t be afraid to take those gap years. And two, you can always reach out to me. I always do a 30 minute consult for free. So if you just have some quick questions, you wanna bounce a few ideas around.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I’m more than happy to help you with that. You can just go to legal learning center.com and get on my scheduling link. And if you, you need more time with me, if it looks like you really need more help, we can talk about that. We can go beyond the free half hour, but honestly, a lot of people get into a better place with just that 30 minutes. So I’m more than happy to help at any time. Just reach out. You guys should have all my social media I’m on every platform. I is always happy to help you guys. But in the meantime, be sure to go to Amazon, check out the pre-law survival guide there for you on Kindle and in paperback.
