The destruction of young lawyers

This weekend I’m busy getting all my initial assignments done before law school orientation starts Monday. For my contracts class the professor handed out an interesting book, The Destruction of Young Lawyers by Douglas Litowitz. This little book has been quite an introduction to what I’m about to get into. The premise: between law school, the bar exam, and the legal profession itself, today’s lawyers are “unhappy, anxious, depressed and desperate.”

The book is a real downer. It claims that law school and the Socratic method don’t really teach students the skills they need to be attorneys. Most law students graduate with massive debts that practically force them to work for big law firms. Those big law firms are really just sweatshops focused on cranking out billable hours. Oh yeah, and while society hates lawyers, lawyers hate themselves: 70 percent of lawyers surveyed wouldn’t choose law as a career if they could do it over again.

As depressing as all that is, though, I’m starting school with a smile. After all, I’m going to stay in higher ed, so I don’t plan to be an attorney slaving away in the sweatshops Litowitz describes. I’m curious to see what my new classmates and professor have to say about this book on Thursday, but I think the author may be painting with a bit too broad a brush. I know law school is not going to be a bed of roses. But I’m going to approach it with a positive attitude. And my little attitude is one of the only things that I can control.