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Welcome to the latest installment of The Struggle, a series where we examine the mental health and social issues that students and recent graduates encounter during the oftentimes grueling law school and associate experience. We are posting these stories because sometimes what law students and recent graduates need is to know that they’re not alone in their pain. Sometimes what law students and recent graduates need is to know that they’ve got a friend who is willing to share not just in their triumphs, but also in their struggles. These are real messages from real readers.
If these issues resonate with you, please reach out to us. Your stories need to be heard. You can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog. We will share your stories anonymously. You may be able to help a law student or recent law school graduate who needs to know that someone else has been there before and survived.
When I realized that I was going to law school, I was ecstatic, as I was realizing a dream that I honestly thought was well out of my reach, as personal problems and circumstances made me doubt that it could be done. Once orientation was done, and I found myself surrounded by a group of energized, young, and motivated attorneys to be, I was even happier with my choice.
Then school began, and we realized that young, energized, and motivating aura we had exerted was only the result of our naivete. Law school in many ways is a test of emotional endurance that quickly shows you that this will be a transformative experience, it will be a before and after. You see, a lot of new law students are used to being the top dogs of their respective high schools and undergrads, the “smart kids.”
These people had placed a value on their ability to excel at academics, often by their own admission with as little work as possible, and had grown accustomed to relying on their natural ability and knowledge to help them along. Law school quickly and brutally breaks that frail reality, and often it happens when your professor applies the Socratic Method, and you are forced not simply regurgitate information you had read, but to explain the why, and the how, while being ruthlessly torn apart as your professor begins to attack your answers.
But many people as they went through this only think, it’s natural to be nervous when talking to a professor in front of your peers. And then your first written assignment is due, and the grade shows up, and the second monster of law school appears: legal writing and IRAC. This method punishes individual freeflow thinking and forces a person who had often bragged that he “could argue like a lawyer” simply because they can connect logical points, to instead use established law and arguments and apply them. At this point, once you get humiliated in front of the class, and you get that C on your paper that took hours to do as you had to make sure you had the correct rules and analysis, that the love affair with the law becomes a jaded affair.
You see, law school is about failure. Each student sees the ghost of failure as the norm — as people begin to leave, as your professors constantly remind you that the bar exam is impossible without months of preparation, as you see that even one mistake on one of your finals could ruin your GPA, etc.
Law students only measure their defeats, rather than the countless victories they can achieve — a good grade, a successful defense of your explanation of a case that you were called upon to present, the fire-forged friendships you made as you struggled together studying endlessly — and focus on the arbitrary measurements we place importance on, like the grades of others, their ranks, and the person with the fancy internship. This comes to define their psyche as they simply want to survive each final, and move on, and they come to forget why they wanted to practice law in the first place. We come in with the intention of helping people, or to serve our country as a public servant, but those motivations die out as the ideas of a naive idealist, rather than the cold efficient machine we think we have to become to succeed.
But in the end, you as a person in life must find how to motivate yourself, and to push through as a law student who embraces each failure, not as a defeat, but simply a thing to improve upon, who embraces that you can work hard, and have some fun at the same time with the people you work with, and who remembers that young 1L who viewed the law as method of helping people, a person who will be able to come out on top, regardless of their rank, or perceived superiority of others.
Most law schools have counseling and psychological services resources that students and graduates can turn to if they are in crisis or would like counseling, even after hours. If these services are not available at your school, and if you or someone you know is depressed and in need of help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) or a lawyer assistance program in your state (don’t be fooled by the name; these programs also provide services to law students). Remember that you are loved, so please reach out if you need assistance, before it’s too late.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.