Next semester I’ll be doing a full-time judicial externship for a federal judge in Seattle. That means that I’m on the verge of finishing what is technically my last semester as a traditional law student. In light of this, I thought it would be appropriate to write some concluding thoughts here about the past two and a half years of law school life.

Sometime during the latter half of my senior year in college, I felt like I was beginning to see “the big picture.” I’m not quite sure how to describe in words what the big picture meant to me, other than to say that in some miniscule way, I started thinking about long term goals and aspirations, and I realized that even the smallest decisions we make in the present can have an overwhelming effect on our lives in the future. Still, at that point in my life, the big picture was really nothing more than a thought that occasionally popped up that I could easily dismiss. And I did just that.

Law school placed the big picture front and center. And whether I liked it or not, the process (and believe me, it is a process) of learning law, and how to think about the law, has forced me to make many different realizations about the type of person I am. Although some of these realizations have been difficult to face, the importance of these realizations is undeniable, and I’m grateful and thankful that law school gave me the chance to explore and improve myself.

Early on, I was tricked into thinking that I would learn the law in law school. After all, much of the first year of law school really does seem like a huge lesson in the law! There’s all these torts floating around seemingly screwing up people’s lives left and right, promissory estoppel lurking around that corner over there, permissive counterclaims that may or may not arise from the same transaction or occurrence of an underlying lawsuit, and look out, here comes adverse possession and the rule against perpetuities! Hell, they even do a pretty good job of making the second year seem like a lesson in the law as well, what with all that substantive due process stuff you cover in Constitutional law. In my later (what I’d like to call wiser) years, I’ve realized that the law school curriculum is essentially one huge incorporation by reference. That is, there’s really no such thing as teaching “the law.” There is, however, such a thing as teaching someone how to teach themselves the law. That is what law school is about. The answers are out there, and you have to learn them yourself, but the important thing to know is that you are capable of learning it yourself. Believe me, no matter how much you drill the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure into your head, you will have to take a bar review course.

I’ve been pushed to my limits in more ways than I can possibly count, both academically, personally, and in due time, professionally. The practical challenges of law school have been formidable, yet rewarding. From that first day I was called on in torts to talk about the elements of self-defense, to my final comment in remedies regarding the Washington Supreme Court’s decision to redefine the landscape of discovery in Washington, I always strove to be as accurate, and thorough as possible. In the end, I can take from these past two and a half years an unending supply of fuel for my desire to be a good, hard-working, reliable person, whom others can trust with confidence.

And yet, law school has been more than a two and a half year crash course on writing briefs, statutory interpretation, and the separation of powers in a constitutional republic. It has been a lesson on how to face the challenges we all encounter in life.

And I believe it has been a resounding success.

No tags

No comments yet.

<< Technology

Eh? >>