Is there any phrase as meaning-rich and thrilling to those saying it, and banal and uninteresting to those hearing it, than: “I’m studying law.” The phenomenon of a friend who begins their law degree and quickly becomes totally insufferable is an enduring one — Diana Reid wrote a book about it. I knew those friends, and now feel myself becoming that friend, so perhaps I can shed light on some of the trials and tribulations of being a law student.
Law school is a totalising experience. You are thrusted into a competitive pressure-cooker, and are tasked with ingesting mountains of mind-bludgeoning material (if I hear about one more gentleman on a horse…)
Such difficult times require serious belief systems to justify them. Thankfully Hollywood has provided a heady cultural script: for the girls and the gays there’s Legally Blonde (okay) and Gina Liano (iconic), for the boys and their toys there’s Suits (cringe) and Succession (iconic, crosses all reductive binaries). Then there’s LawTok, which is a certain level of neoliberal hell that I wouldn’t wish on my worst law school frenemy.
Increasingly, it has become obvious (to the rest of the world, but maybe not to law students) that the glamour and prestige surrounding law doesn’t seem to materialise in real life — the median graduate incomes for a law degree fall below other professions, the job market is oversaturated, and an “alarming amount” of practising lawyers report poor mental health.
Being a JD student can be a particularly sobering experience — being in a tight-knit cohort again feels eerily reminiscent of high school. The other day, a friend of mine mouthed to himself at a quiet moment in the Law Annex corridor “I had a job… Why am I back here?” The endless horde of highly intelligent 19-year-olds streamed on around him, moisturised, unbothered, flourishing…
The University of Melbourne (MLS) has had its sparkle tarnished lately with student complaints making it out of the subreddit and into the media. The Financial Review ran a piece about widespread maladministration at the school: mass exam software crashes, swamped subject selection and compromised assessments. The word on the street when I lived in Melbourne was something along the lines of “don’t f*cking go here”.
Those students had every reason to be upset, considering an exam re-sit means sitting through and comprehending another half-baked hypothetical cooked up by the law faculty.
Harrowing. To further test how our glamorous perceptions are mismatched with the wheels-falling-off reality, I recently attended a “networking” event with a group of advocates attending from a local firm. Most of them sounded like real estate agents, so I instead drifted over to the criminal defence lawyer who was throwing back champers and gathering a bit of a crowd.
Many were quite shocked by this Dickensian character: the alcoholic bug eyes, the belly threatening to burst from the suit shirt, the total disregard for reading the room as he launched into various ‘gallows humour’ style political problematisms. Many of the bright eyed first years simply stared agog as he spread the good word.
He advised those of us who live in share-houses: “don’t damage any of the shared property because that’ll be grounds for an AVO… if you throw the TV remote at the wall and the police ask about it, just say you bought it, it’s yours!”
At some point someone who had come over to join the conversation quickly thought better of it — retreating with an inaudible “it was nice to meet you” and silently retracting their proffered iPhone, the LinkedIn search bar blinking disappointedly on the screen.
The man didn’t notice, and moved on to how he’s terrified every time he gets into his car because all he sees on the road around him is a swirl of impending negligence litigation. He had the exact brand of chemically-imbalanced charisma that I thought would make a good defence lawyer.
I must admit I took a business card.
