Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Bad Reason for Attending Law School # 4

"Law School is Prestigious"

You’ve been a winner all your life. Gold stars beside your name in kindergarten, Presidential Fitness award in 5th grade, National Honors Society in High School, and then finally attendance at a prestigious university for your undergrad.

At family gatherings, grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles laud you for your achievements while ne’er-do-well cousins shoot menacing looks as they smoke in the backyard. You’re not just you, you’re (insert your name here) who goes to (insert undergrad university here).

Then suddenly you graduate and you’re back to being just you again. Even worse, you’re now (insert your name here) the temp, (insert your name here) who works at the Gap, or (insert your name here) the assistant to the industrial buyer at Procter and Gamble’s adult diaper division. After graduation, the adulation has stopped and the world has become a collection of Janet Jackson’s asking, “What have you done for me lately?”

During this crisis of confidence there is a simple solution in a society that reveres education for its own sake: go to law school. People may hate lawyers but, for some reason, they love law students. At law school the “oohs” and “ahhs” will keep on coming for another 3 years until people start expecting some real accomplishments again.

Just like a white guy who walked onto Duke’s basketball team and clapped from the bench all season, it’s great to be in a winner’s institution. But, when you graduate, you’ll just be the legal equivalent of “Steve who sells hot tubs at the boat show. Didn’t he play for Duke? I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter now, I guess.”

It seems you can rent prestige but you can never buy it. Maybe that’s why prestige’s root word is the Latin praestigiae, which means “conjurer’s trick”. In light of that, pay no attention to the Dean of Admissions behind the curtain.