Nobody is an expert like a novice
Feb. 27th, 2002 06:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkI like to read and participate in the internet
job boards for lawyers and law school. When I
decided to go to law school, I knew so little.
If I can help folks with those decisions even a tiny bit, then I'm pleased. Today, though, I was struck by a few posts on a message board.
One student was weighing whether to go to U of Iowa in one post, then posting some place else
an entry calling "stupid" someone who disagreed with the poster's opinion of that law school's *west coast* reputation. The more I practice law, the more I see how limited my horizons are.
I hope that my posts on that message board
reflect how my own background and experiences limit my perspective. But nobody knows as much about anything, I find, as someone who's never done any of the thing in question...
job boards for lawyers and law school. When I
decided to go to law school, I knew so little.
If I can help folks with those decisions even a tiny bit, then I'm pleased. Today, though, I was struck by a few posts on a message board.
One student was weighing whether to go to U of Iowa in one post, then posting some place else
an entry calling "stupid" someone who disagreed with the poster's opinion of that law school's *west coast* reputation. The more I practice law, the more I see how limited my horizons are.
I hope that my posts on that message board
reflect how my own background and experiences limit my perspective. But nobody knows as much about anything, I find, as someone who's never done any of the thing in question...
no subject
I am the father of a daughter who has recently been accepted at Yale, Harvard, and two other Top 25 schools (no word from Stanford yet). I have thus become an avid reader of "all things law", including the Vault.com message boards. I have come to highly value all of your posts there, for they are consistently balanced, respectful and wise.
I've recently recognized a poster to be my daughter - piaffe (she loves dressage!). I've not answered her posts, nor have I told her I've seen her, for I enjoy reading her posts and seeing the answers without parental bias.
So, with this introduction, let me thank you for patiently advising my daughter. In your journal entry above, you said " ... if I can help folks with those decisions even a tiny bit, then I'm pleased". With your experience in law, and particularly in her interest area of litigation, I'm sure that you're helping her in ways that I can't.
For this, I'm pleased too!
Thanks!
Al
amiksch@hotmail.com
P.S. - her Mom and I are rooting for Yale!
Thank you very much
Very nice of you to post. I believe that this is the first time I've spoken with a parent of a law applicant, though
the applicants themselves will once in a while track down my e mail and speak with me. I like that vault board,
though my own horizons are, as I mentioned, fairly limited.
Of course, I'm an entirely different league of lawyer than a Harvard or Yale lawyer, but at least I've known a few. I'm always cautious about strongly favoring any of the HYS schools over one another, for though my own ranking would be Y H/S Ch Col/NYU MI (and thus favor Y), I feel that once you're in the top 3 or 5 or 7 or so, you've earned the right to go to whichever of the schools catches your fancy. To me, BIGLAW and Littlelaw and public interest and government litigation are all easily reachable if one excels at any of these schools. I think the reason I would argue for Yale is in case your daughter got her fill of litigation and opted for academia. A Yale JD and a Harvard LLM would be a near ideal training. But these "driven" top students have enough "should" and "ought" in their lives, and should be entitled to a little "want". It's just so hard for an undergrad, because the hearsay from profs and the "I never practiced (or am still in school) but know everything about your career" books are not yet good resources. I hope eventually that I can get people to visit me here, as that will let me do more than I can do without posting even more than the too often I post at vault.com.
If I can ever be of further help to you or your daughter on this stuff, please don't hesitate to let me know. Commercial litigation is something I know, and I've been lucky enough to do a few of the large cases as well as the routine. I'm very touched you'd take the time to stop by.
Isn't that handle "Piaffe" charming? My French is not good enough to know if it is a Piaf reference or if it means something. I finished college in 81, when we all were very literary and slightly post-political but entirely
impractical. Folks like the kids on vault who are often
practical, literary, and a bit political always impress me.
Have a nice rest of the weekend.