One of my daily readers, who has conveniently called himself “Other Steve” to distinguish himself from “Steve”, posed a question : What can law students do to prepare themselves to be lawyers?

This is a little touchy, since being a lawyer is very different than getting a job as a lawyer.  Scoring the position, especially if it’s a Biglaw post, is an entirely different issue.  Becoming a Lawyer has nothing to do with getting a job.  In fact, what I propose is pretty much the antithesis of becoming a Biglaw associate (which similarly has nothing to do with being a lawyer).

So there you are, finishing up your first year of law school and feeling pretty good about yourself.  You’re going to make it through to year 2, law school doesn’t suck anywhere near as much as everyone told you and Aunt Gertrude tells you that you’re back in the will because you’re no longer a good-for-nothing bum.  Fair enough.

But you have this nagging sense that you’re just not going to land/like that job at Biglaw, LLP.  You have a life, and you’re not ready to give it up.  Or worse yet, you actually have to make some dough so that you can eat again tomorrow, precluding your spending too much time at the AC with Muffy and Buffy and sucking up to their corporate lawyer daddies.  What to do?

GET A JOB!  Back in the old days, a person became a lawyer by clerking.  Lawyers still need kids to help them, and that gives a law student a chance to be there, absorb what’s going on around her and see what happens for real.  Most lawyers who will take on a kid will payment a little something.  Not much.  Frankly, you’re more of a burden than a help.  But something.

Watch and listen.  Ask intelligent questions, but only after you’ve kept your mouth shut, watched and listened.  No lawyer has the time to answer questions constantly, especially questions that would be reasonably answered if you would keep your head down and pay attention.  Ask obvious questions and you’re an annoyance.  Lawyers work for a living, and they can’t babysit law students and work at the same time.

But what about law review?  Well, from my own biased standpoint, that prepares you to be a particularly excellent law clerk.  In perpetuity.  For Biglaw.  In a library. Sheopardizing caselaw.  For hour after hour after hour.  Preparing lengthy memos on obscure yet tangential points.  If that’s your gig, whether for the $190k it pays or because you get to tell your friends you work for Biglaw, go for it. 

Going to work in a one or two person shop will NOT impress Biglaw.  How do you keep them down on the farm, after they’ve see Paree?  Once you see what lawyers do, working for Biglaw loses a certain panache.  Of course, you may well make more at Biglaw in your first year than you will make 10 years out on your own.  Again, think about the trade-off.  Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.

But if you really want to be a lawyer, then get your butt out of the library and into the courtroom.  Small firms often send their clerks to run and fetch, which means you not only get to see the actual papers that lawyers use, but you get to see courthouses, courtrooms, clerks and the occasional judge as well.  The sounds, sights and smells (especially the smells) of the courtroom will become very familiar to you.  When the day comes that you step in there solo, you will feel like you’ve come home.

Granted, this will take much of the mystique out of being a lawyer.  You will no longer be a virgin when they hand you the diploma.  It becomes far more difficult to listen to law profs utter platitudes without giggling.  But if it’s a lawyer you really want to be, then knock on doors, find yourself some lawyer who needs an extra pair of body parts and offer up yours.