Thanks for writing this! I strongly agree with the point that people should only go to law school if they have a pretty good idea of what they want to get out of it, and should not go to avoid making decisions about career paths (though people often don’t realize they’re doing this).
Also strongly agree with differentiating between the very top law schools and the schools just below them. I might go even farther than that. I went to NYU Law, which at the time was tied with Columbia for 4th in the U.S. News rankings. I didn’t apply to Harvard or Stanford because for personal reasons I wanted to be in NYC (I probably should have been more flexible on this). I didn’t get into Yale, which I could have commuted to. I did get into Columbia, but for a variety of reasons (I went to Barnard undergrad, so it seemed likely that NYU would broaden my network more; the Columbia admissions process was incredibly bureaucratic and that had been my experience with dealing with Columbia’s administration as an undergrad as well) I decided to go to NYU.
I regret this a little bit because while NYU is well respected in the legal world, it does not have the same name-recognition as Columbia to non-lawyers, and the vast majority of people I interact with professionally are non-lawyers. When people have little else to go off of (and sometimes even when they have plenty else to go off of), name recognition can do a lot of heavy lifting. Silly though it may be, it can really affect how seriously your legal advice gets taken.
One point of dissent: Even with the caveats you included, I am not sure that reading an unedited legal opinion would be particularly informative—my impression is that most textbooks heavily edit the opinions so that they’re focused on the issue relevant to the subject matter of the textbook. Most opinions are going to have multiple issues to get through (and will generally start with the boring stuff, like whether and why the court has jurisdiction to hear the case and whether/why the plaintiff has standing), and might be way more of a slog than the reading in law school would be. I think a more useful test would be to read a few sections of a law school textbook from a subject that is mostly taught through case law (so not something heavily regulatory). Torts, contracts, criminal law, constitutional law all fit the bill.
Molly, thanks so much for this feedback. You’re right to suggest that folks should try reading an edited opinion from a casebook, rather than a full-length original. Thank you! We’ve updated the post to link to an edited version of the Erie opinion that one professor used in a recent civil procedure class, and we’ve added a similar link to a criminal law case, McBoyle v. United States. The linked versions allow readers to expand the elided sections, so folks who would prefer to see the original text can still do so.
Thanks, too, for highlighting name recognition among non-lawyers as an important—if frustrating and arbitrary—consideration. As a note to folks considering this factor in the future: because it’s tricky and context-dependent to decide out how to weigh this factor against others, we’d be happy to try to connect you with someone in the community who can help you think it through; please reach out!
I’ll push back a bit on your point of dissent. I started reading Supreme Court opinions in middle school and haven’t stopped since. While that may have been useful for me when I eventually attended law school, I think it’s also a great way to wrap your head around how the law functions. It also gives a glimpse into how the judiciary actually operates versus what people read in the news. I start to twitch every June because I know the press is going to butcher whatever comes out of the Court. It seems even worse with Circuit Courts of Appeals decisions. From a general public policy perspective, being able to differentiate between what a judge actually wrote versus what a journalist cut and paste from a partisan group’s press release is essential, in my opinion, for anyone to be a conscientious person in the US and elsewhere (and that cuts in every direction as far as political leanings go).
Back to the practical side, the habit is also an opportunity to get insights into particular fields of legal practice that may interest someone considering law school (or annihilate any interest therein). Finally, depending on the area of law under review, appellate decisions can also make it clear to prospective law students and lawyers how procedure inundates every facet of legal practice.
Oh, I definitely agree there are good reasons to read unedited opinions—if nothing else, they’re great reads a lot of the time! But I think you’ll get a good number of false negatives if you use that as a test for whether you’ll enjoy the reading in law school. Anyone who enjoys reading unedited opinions will probably enjoy the reading in law school. But not everyone who doesn’t enjoy them won’t.
Thanks for writing this! I strongly agree with the point that people should only go to law school if they have a pretty good idea of what they want to get out of it, and should not go to avoid making decisions about career paths (though people often don’t realize they’re doing this).
Also strongly agree with differentiating between the very top law schools and the schools just below them. I might go even farther than that. I went to NYU Law, which at the time was tied with Columbia for 4th in the U.S. News rankings. I didn’t apply to Harvard or Stanford because for personal reasons I wanted to be in NYC (I probably should have been more flexible on this). I didn’t get into Yale, which I could have commuted to. I did get into Columbia, but for a variety of reasons (I went to Barnard undergrad, so it seemed likely that NYU would broaden my network more; the Columbia admissions process was incredibly bureaucratic and that had been my experience with dealing with Columbia’s administration as an undergrad as well) I decided to go to NYU.
I regret this a little bit because while NYU is well respected in the legal world, it does not have the same name-recognition as Columbia to non-lawyers, and the vast majority of people I interact with professionally are non-lawyers. When people have little else to go off of (and sometimes even when they have plenty else to go off of), name recognition can do a lot of heavy lifting. Silly though it may be, it can really affect how seriously your legal advice gets taken.
One point of dissent: Even with the caveats you included, I am not sure that reading an unedited legal opinion would be particularly informative—my impression is that most textbooks heavily edit the opinions so that they’re focused on the issue relevant to the subject matter of the textbook. Most opinions are going to have multiple issues to get through (and will generally start with the boring stuff, like whether and why the court has jurisdiction to hear the case and whether/why the plaintiff has standing), and might be way more of a slog than the reading in law school would be. I think a more useful test would be to read a few sections of a law school textbook from a subject that is mostly taught through case law (so not something heavily regulatory). Torts, contracts, criminal law, constitutional law all fit the bill.
Molly, thanks so much for this feedback. You’re right to suggest that folks should try reading an edited opinion from a casebook, rather than a full-length original. Thank you! We’ve updated the post to link to an edited version of the Erie opinion that one professor used in a recent civil procedure class, and we’ve added a similar link to a criminal law case, McBoyle v. United States. The linked versions allow readers to expand the elided sections, so folks who would prefer to see the original text can still do so.
Thanks, too, for highlighting name recognition among non-lawyers as an important—if frustrating and arbitrary—consideration. As a note to folks considering this factor in the future: because it’s tricky and context-dependent to decide out how to weigh this factor against others, we’d be happy to try to connect you with someone in the community who can help you think it through; please reach out!
I’ll push back a bit on your point of dissent. I started reading Supreme Court opinions in middle school and haven’t stopped since. While that may have been useful for me when I eventually attended law school, I think it’s also a great way to wrap your head around how the law functions. It also gives a glimpse into how the judiciary actually operates versus what people read in the news. I start to twitch every June because I know the press is going to butcher whatever comes out of the Court. It seems even worse with Circuit Courts of Appeals decisions. From a general public policy perspective, being able to differentiate between what a judge actually wrote versus what a journalist cut and paste from a partisan group’s press release is essential, in my opinion, for anyone to be a conscientious person in the US and elsewhere (and that cuts in every direction as far as political leanings go).
Back to the practical side, the habit is also an opportunity to get insights into particular fields of legal practice that may interest someone considering law school (or annihilate any interest therein). Finally, depending on the area of law under review, appellate decisions can also make it clear to prospective law students and lawyers how procedure inundates every facet of legal practice.
Oh, I definitely agree there are good reasons to read unedited opinions—if nothing else, they’re great reads a lot of the time! But I think you’ll get a good number of false negatives if you use that as a test for whether you’ll enjoy the reading in law school. Anyone who enjoys reading unedited opinions will probably enjoy the reading in law school. But not everyone who doesn’t enjoy them won’t.