When I first meet someone and they find out that I am in law school, they typically have three reactions, none of which I find to be particularly humorous or interesting, especially after three years of such boorish behavior. But anyway, I will share with you.
1. They tell me of every interaction they ever had with a lawyer.
2. They tell a very rude and untimely joke about blood suckers, ambulance chasers, and soul-selling.
You're right, I want to tell them. We suck. You should buy your next house without one of us on your side. Sign a contract, too, it'll be fine. Get divorced. (You KNOW you probably will, right?) Write your own will. Adopt a kid. Start up a business. (You know what the difference between an LLC and a corporation is, right?) I don't tell you why the world would be better off without people in your line of work, and I will thank you to give me the same basic human courtesy.
3. They tell me that they know someone else who wants to be a lawyer. They want to introduce me. Usually, it's a kid. Always, it's because so and so "is really great at arguing."
This is the scenario which concerns me most today. Little Susie wants to be a lawyer, so she needs to meet you, and boy, is she good at arguing. This happened to me a couple times over the summer, but this one time sticks in my memory more than all the others. Usually I listen to a child talk about how they want to be a lawyer and smile and nod politely. Usually they have ridiculous questions that have nothing to do with lawyering, but their parents smile and thank me for giving their child such good advice. This one, however, was different than the others. I had gone to middle of nowhere Chesapeake to pick up Andy and his roommate, Brett, who were both drunk. Brett was totally passed out.
I pulled up to a huge house, which was owned by a kind of weird couple. An attractive used-car salesman husband, with a slightly older, but very skinny stay-at-home-not-being-a-mom wife with a 10 or something year old daughter. They had a portrait on the wall over the TV that was so big it went all the way up to the top of the second floor. Vain, much? Anyway, as I drove over, Andy told me that their daughter was dying to meet me because she really wanted to be a lawyer, too. I knew it was a bad sign, but what could I do? I had to go pick up the boys. When I got there, it was even worse than I expected. They introduced me to the little girl and assured me, like all the others, that she was very, very good at arguing. "Argue," they told her. And she did. She proceeded to demand that they tell her where they hid their extra money. She needed it, she said, to go do Disney World. For almost a solid hour, she demanded to know where the money was. She seemed to really, genuinely think that her parents should give it to her. "Isn't that cute?" they asked me.
Newsflash to parents: Just because your kid is the most obnoxious piece of work I have ever met does NOT mean that she will make a good lawyer. Lawyering is not even about arguing. Most of the lawyering takes place behind the scenes. It doesn't make anybody feel like working together when you yell at them and tell them why they should give you all of their money. That is quite the opposite of what lawyers do.
Of course, I didn't tell them the truth. I didn't say, "No, you horrible, horrible, vain yuppie people, I didn't go to law school because I was good at arguing, and your child will not be successful just because she is obnoxious." I wish I could have, but that probably wouldn't have made us any friends. The child followed me around for the rest of the evening like I was an admissions counselor and that, by proving to me that she was lawyer material, she would somehow be granted (extremely) early admission. I wanted to say, "No, no, little girl, if you really do want to go to law school, you have to put in the time--you haven't even started high school, let alone college." It's great to have goals, and I don't mean to belittle them, but please, please, please get some perspective in the next fifteen or so years.
Also, it's rude to discuss money, particularly in front of company. Why don't they teach kids etiquette anymore? I couldn't believe that her parents weren't extremely embarrassed by her behavior. They encouraged her, told her she was cute. Oh dear. Hopefully this isn't the future of the legal profession.
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