Megan from Sacramento, who has a law degree, opines:
I liked the people I went to law school with, and they are more socially adept than many of my friends, but going to law school did not improve my view of lawyers. I thought law was insular and self-reinforcing, and the lack of an external reference means that lawyers aren't grounded by something that could prove them wrong. I never trusted that there was a solid core to law, so I don't know what the fundamental limits are to someone for whom law is a practice and discipline.Some generalizations that make me doubt I'll date a lawyer: Lawyers are often innumerate and proud of it, which makes me embarassed for them.
They went to law school because they weren't sure who they were, stayed because it is all-engrossing, and became lawyers because it is ****ing hard not to after law school. But I don't think many of them like it, and I don't think most ever made an affirmative choice to find what they love and do it.
Many of them were whiny in law school, especially about how hard they were working. My impression was that whatever lightweight degree they did before law school had never shown them what it meant to work hard. Law school was the easiest of my graduate degrees (but then, I am very verbal and didn't care about my grades).
Lawyers themselves are often contempuous of their career and peers. It is hard to respect them more than they respect themselves.
I would date a lawyer who convinced me it was what he wanted to be doing, had an awareness that it is both a ridiculous process and has important potential for doing good, and was grounded in the physical world. I don't think those lawyers are common, though.
Here is another post by Megan.
I would place a modest bet that this person is some kind of engineer.
ALL professional schools are insular and self-reinforcing. It is true of medicine, architecture, the service academies.
Lawyers are often innumerate and proud of it, which makes me embarassed for them.
And their innocence regarding the scientific method,which is garnered from the hypotheesis-experiment paradigm they learned in high school, serves them ill in addressing problems with a technical component, such as professional malpractice.
Lawyers themselves are often contempuous of their career and peers. It is hard to respect them more than they respect themselves.
And, as with residency (at least as it was in the good old days) doing scut work for 164 hours a week under the supervision of abusive sub-humans results in a sense of entitlement, a dislike of ones profession, and tends to mold the recipients of this treatment to be like their mentors
One of the many things I hated about law school was how many people in law school thought they were brilliant and how they thought the law was some great intellectual pursuit and was something more than a glorified trade.
Going into law school with a degree in chemistry, I expected the study of law to be intellectually challenging. I was sorely disappointed. It was a lot of work, but it wasn't hard work. It was more about learning tricks of the trade than actually learning.
When I was an undergraduate I always felt that the people who did better than me were smarter than me, were working a lot harder to get their grades, and conversely, those who didn't do as well were not as smart and/or lazier than me. In law school, I never felt that way. Some people who were very bright and worked very hard struggled constantly while others who were dumb as a box of rocks, and often completely unethical, were at the top of the class.
Of course, I didn't obsess that much about my grades either and I had a job secured before the start of my second year (the Corps - no nasty civilian law for me).
She is right on about whiny law school students. Many of my classmates were coddled, debt-ridden, crybabies who still haven't figured out the law. I know it sounds harsh, but you try sitting through conversations about which company will loan an extra 5 grand for "bar preparation expenses..."
"I'm a quarter million in already. Why not make it a solid $300,000? I hear Jordans is offering no payments for a year on living rooms." Pathetic.
Oh God, I SO hope so.....
"Some generalizations that make me doubt I'll date a lawyer: Lawyers are often innumerate and proud of it, which makes me embarassed for them."
Got an A+ in undergrad calculus and an A in statistics, despite being an Arts major.
"They went to law school because they weren't sure who they were, stayed because it is all-engrossing, and became lawyers because it is ****ing hard not to after law school. But I don't think many of them like it, and I don't think most ever made an affirmative choice to find what they love and do it."
I like the law, it's a fun subject.
"Many of them were whiny in law school, especially about how hard they were working. My impression was that whatever lightweight degree they did before law school had never shown them what it meant to work hard."
Not me, never whined once, but then I worked between undergrad and law school so I know what the real world is like.
"Lawyers themselves are often contempuous of their career and peers. It is hard to respect them more than they respect themselves."
I haven't noticed this. Granted some lawyers are regarded with contempt by their peers but that's usually because they're idiots or obnoxious, not because they're lawyers.
I would date a lawyer who convinced me it was what he wanted to be doing, had an awareness that it is both a ridiculous process and has important potential for doing good, and was grounded in the physical world. I don't think those lawyers are common, though.
OK, here you're losing me. What does "grounded in the physical world" mean?
Would you date an engineer?
Better question yet, who do female lawyers date other than male lawyers. How many female lawyers are willing to marry men who make less money than them?
I agree with the post that law students are not representative of lawyers. People do grow up and get over themselves.
The better question is would a lawyer want to date her? I doubt it.
And that is the conundrum. What makes a brilliant legal mind? It certainly doesn't require logical thinking to be a good lawyer, or adherence to objective facts or the truth. Or as noted by Megan, innumeracy seems to be worn as a badge of honor among lawyers.
When I went to law school, I thought my degree in chemistry and five years working as an environmental chemist would actually help me in the only area of law I was remotely interested in practicing in--environmental law. I quickly discovered that my technical background was actually a hinderance to my goals and that practicing environmental attorneys were, on the whole, actually hostile to the technical details of environmental practice, especially when the facts ran counter to the position they were advocating.
Innumeracy is a lot more basic than such esoterica as convergence of decimal representations. It's about basic numerical reasoning -- the mathematical equivalent of being able to string words into a sentence once you've sounded them out.
In my experience (mathematician) lawyers are no more likely to be devastatingly innumerate than the typical American, but they're much more likely to be in a situation where they really shouldn't be so than pretty much every non-technical field other than politics (which is heavily staffed with lawyers to begin with).
During grad school I tried to get my law student friends to push for a "law and numbers" course to complement the legions of "law and [some touchy-feely thing like Critical Theory]" the school offered each semester. No dice.
Having been a law firm consultant for several years, both from the inside and outside of the some of the largest firms in the world, I can't say that this is a feature generally speaking of the partners with whom I've worked. Maybe it's true for the associate population or some of the junior-level partners. I don't know. And then there those lawyers who work outside of firms, about whom I know nothing.
Is this not more a product of one's philosophy of law rather than law per se? If a life in law is merely lingustic construction and deconstruction, then I can see how Megan would miss the 'solid core.' If your philosophy of law is grounded in something other than language--if language is but merely the means rather than the end--then its core is as 'substantial' as the intellect that exercises itself in its service.
One of my classmates at Harvard Law School, who is now associate general counsel for a multibillion dollar Fortune 500 company, was asked by Harvard tax law professor Warren what 10 percent of 100 is.
He said 20. (For those of you who are innumerate, the correct answer is 10. I was taught this in elementary school).
Lawyers are generally verbal rather mathematical, which means that many of them can speak eloquently and passionately about things they know little about and do not really understand. Their great verbal skill enables them to elevate form over substance and use verbal tricks to obfuscate.
They are the opposite of engineers, who have great knowledge but often have difficulty verbalizing that knowledge.
Judicial nominees should be required to show an understanding of math, statistics, and basic principles of economics before being appointed to the bench.
That would result in increased understanding of expert witness testimony and improved handling of products liability and pattern-and-practice discrimination cases.
It would also reduce judicial activism, since there is no empirical or statistical support for many dubious judicially-imposed mandates in the area of social policy (like court orders mandating that state legislatures spend billions on increased teacher salaries, even those such increases have little correlation with improved student achievement), and judges typically don't understand statistics.
Megan's over generalizations are just that. Also, they do not appear to be derived from observations of lawyers, but law students instead. There is a huge difference.
Lawyers are far from homogeneous. Each has his or her own background and interests, and none are produced by cookie cutters. Moreover, most have their own personal reasons for practicing law.
I have lots of friends who are both lawyers and non lawyers. I can't say I have seen any marked difference in the intellignece of their spouses based on their chosen profession.
As to the rest... simply lawyer bashing, which is good fun but essentially contentless.
Divagator: Partners are less likely to be disillusioned.... they won the tournament. Lawyers, as a whole, are highly likely to fulfill her generalisation, given the problems of the law firm business model and the demoralization stemming from the high leverage and low opportunity nature of law practice.
My best arguments are mathematical in nature, and I rely on verbal skills to deliver them to the audience in a compelling and intuitive way. Without a good grasp of the math or the syllogisms, even the most elloquent lawyer will appeal only to idiots. On the other hand, the most numerate lawyer will fail to make his point or move the audience unless he can translate the math into something obvious, intuitive, and even a little emotional.
Years later I met a lawyer 19 years younger from Europe and married her. Maybe the age difference helps undo the "I'm the smartest most important bitch on the planet" syndrome that law school imbues in them?
Good point. Especially true for the patent litigators I know, but then, they often come from science backgrounds and came to law later in life.
But the original poster didn't mention what I would think would be the biggest problem in marrying a practicing lawyer: the extremely high number of hours many lawyers work.
My co-workers ex-wife. Although he made more money her, and that pissed her off, mainly becuase he dropped out of college.
Though I did manage to earn an accounting degree-that involves some math. Not a lot, but some.
But still, the point? So engineers cannot talk and lawyers cannot do math? At some point, math skills, like verbal skills, are hard wired.
And a final point about engineers-who often take into account engineering, and ingnore politics or personal relationships-it takes both to make the world go round.
So a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer and going to be executed during the French Revolution. The executioner asks the doctor, "face up or face down". The doctor says face up. The blade from the guillotine stops a half inch from his neck. "Fate spared you, you are free to go," the executioner tells the doctor.
Next, the lawyer. "Face up or face down." The lawyer picks face up, and again, the blade stops a half inch from the lawyer's neck. "Fate spared you, you are free to go," the executioner tells the lawyer.
Finally, the engineer. "Face up or face down." "Face up," the engineer says. "By the way, you have a knot up there in the rope that's going to keep the guillotine from working."
"Thanks," the executioner says, fixing the rope before the blade comes down, severing the engineer's head from his body."
I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying.
At best, you've just proved that John Edwards argued his case before an innumerate judge and jury. Actually, you've really just asserted it, but regardless -- you've said nothing about Edwards's innumeracy.
How can you be both a lawyer and a non-lawyer? :)
Says the "Dog"
Of course, not all lawyers are good lawyers.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008556
There's something wrong with a system that makes a whole lot of people pay a whole lot of money for jobs that are not worth it, or that have no future.
Amen.
Medis, there's no outrageous about that. I tend to agree. Litigators are 'good' precisely because they are quick to acquire the knowledge needed to litigate a case, whether they're litigating a case concerning dental floss or asbestos or whatever.
But there obviously is a difference between the litigators' knowledge of dental hygiene products or industrial chemicals and the expert in the field. Still, I can't imagine that Megan is really complaining about lawyers' (or law students') lack of subtle knowledge of academic disciplines outside law. Surely her gripe is more philosophical in nature (at least, I would hope). Otherwise, what is one to make of someone's whining about other people's whining?
My friends in Tier 1 schools generally do complain about their classmates, however. That they're either entitled or irritatingly aggressive. So perhaps the divide comes between those Tier 2 students attending Law School as what it is -- a Skills-based Professional School -- and those Tier 1s with a chip on their shoulder.
Hey, I'm just trying to get a sense of whether lawyers think 1 = .9(bar) or not. It isn't esoterica. If someone doesn't understand how numbers work and are defined, then they can't really understand the basic level in the first place: they can only manipulate it according to rules that break the second you get out of the classroom.
I don't know if I can blame them for being insular. I remember when I went to caltech for undergrad and all the hard work meant most socializing happened while studying and made us pretty insular. However, I expect any difficulty lawyers have finding dates has a lot to do with having a social network that doesn't include non-lawyers.
Also people shouldn't take whining too seriously. Almost everyone (not me) at caltech whined pretty intensely about how much work they had to do but most of them wouldn't have been anywhere else and were nostalgic after they graduated. Whining if often just a way to relieve stress.
I agree that a lot of people who go to law school by default are making a mistake, but "the system" isn't forcing them to make this mistake (unless by "the system" one means "a combination of insecurity, immaturity, ego, greed, and their parents"). I also think that people tend to overstate the plight of "non-elite" lawyers. For example, that article notes that the mean starting salary for lawyers at a third-tier school was $60,000. But as I recall, the mean starting salary for liberal arts grads from college is around $31,000. So, this could be a perfectly worthwhile investment for a lot of college grads, even if they don't make $135-160,000 out of the gate.
The Divagator,
As an aside, I think everyone whining, including Megan, is being a bit immature, but in a way that they are likely to outgrow.
Anyway, I was more thinking of some of the other comments, but I think my comment also applies to Megan's "grounded in the physical world" notion. In other words, again without claiming this rises to the level of expertise, I do think that good lawyers tend to have a decent basic sense of how things work in the physical world, and again are quick learners about specific physical facts, principles, processes, and so on. After all, physical causation is often an element in many claims.
And to be clear, none of this is amounts to an argument that lawyers are super-special universal experts. But the stereotype of the lawyer as a glib wordsmith with no sense of how things work "in the real world" doesn't really hold up in practice--at least not if the lawyer is any good.
Going into patent law is the best way for an engineer to get a date.
Because that would certainly make studying for the bar easier to take.
(Another important question is: how often does my wife read the comments on Volokh?)
I think it would be better if they were required to show an understanding of Chaucer.
"My friends in Tier 1 schools generally do complain about their classmates, however. That they're either entitled or irritatingly aggressive. So perhaps the divide comes between those Tier 2 students attending Law School as what it is -- a Skills-based Professional School -- and those Tier 1s with a chip on their shoulder."
Yeah, that's it, basically.
Although, I think that there's a further divide, from what I've seen/heard. Students at top law schools that I know usually will complain about their classmates' excessive drives or quirks, but usually aren't angry about the school or their post-graduation situations. People at schools ranked 10-20 tend to be far and away the most bitter and angry or most entitled people. There's often an inferiority complex issue- many of them believe that they're the hottest, smartest thing that God Himself ever shat out, and are incensed that they're at USC or whatever rather than Harvard, and generally think that they're somehow better than 95% of their classmates. These people are roughly 50% of the class at each of those schools.
Many of them were top students in their high school and undergraduate careers, and usually went straight through to law school. They are under the erroneous impression that the rank of the school and their rank within it are central to their self-identity and worth as a human being.
It's particularly bad when it is someone who hasn't performed all that well- I'm talking people with GPAs in the 3.1-3.3 range (roughly people below the top third but in the top half; hard to say exactly because we don't get ranks or cutoffs). These people are the worst, because they still maintain the "I'm smart and better than this place and deserve to be at Harvard" mentality, all while blaming the school, rather than their own lukewarm performance, for their extremely limited job options (most firms that interview at UCLA ask for a 3.3 grade cutoff; only a handful ask for 3.0 or better).
They're an incredible pain to deal with, particularly when they do manage to get that big firm job and discover that their coworkers are, by and large, the same people that they think they're better than from law school.
Usually, these people end up being bitter that they'll never be a law professor, "only" clerked for the Central District of California (second most prestigious district court behind SDNY), probably won't be an appellate judge and certainly not a Supreme Court justice, and the like.
It's the bitterness of having been at or near the top of the heap as an undergraduate and then realizing that, after the secondary filtering of law school, realizing that they are only mid-major.
"It's the bitterness of having been at or near the top of the heap as an undergraduate and then realizing that, after the secondary filtering of law school, realizing that they are only mid-major."
I think the point made above that litigators learn quickly is important. I received an A in every math class I took up through college calculus and two college statistics classes not to mention various business and programming classes that required use of that knowledge. I used to know how to calculate the nth term of a binomial or how to use the Multiple-Channel Waiting Line Model with Poisson Arrivals to determine the probability that x of y channels are busy given various inputs. I say used to because I have since forgotten. In the years since I haven't needed that knowledge and thus it has faded from memory. Does that make me innumerate as an entering law student this fall? I doubt it. (Neither do a few A's make me a math wiz.)
As a software engineer I have found that many of my colleagues do not write well. However, I wouldn't accuse them of being illiterate. Perhaps they used to write excellent prose but haven't written much sine beginning their programming careers.
I think it's fair to say that many people are more oriented toward numbers and others are more oriented toward letters. Perhaps what is perceived as a lack of ability is a lack of interest or a difference in prioritization. I wonder if engineers tend to think the numbers are more important than explaining information clearly (and the reverse for non-engineers).
I'm amused to read about people bashing lawyers for lacking math skills. I've more often heard lawyers criticized for not writing well. Maybe lawyers just get bashed period. :P
I do remember when my law alma mater shot up in the rankings. The universal fear expressed was that it would ruin the school by bringing in a ton of people with chips on their shoulder that they didn't get into [insert top 3 or top 5 school here] instead of people who were happy to be there.
I used to work with a lot of attorneys who almost inspired me to get a My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student. A lot of those honor students seem to wind up in law school!
Unfortunately, science is much more than learning "black-letter" science, represented by knowing that 10% of 100 is 10. There is such a thing as "learning to think like a scientist," something that few lawyers and, lamentably, few women, will ever appreciate.
I'd say roughly about the same percentage as are willing to marry guys who are shorter than them, which is to say, quite small.
I haven't noticed this here in Tier 1, but maybe my classmates act differently in job interviews than in class. Overall, they seem mostly like pretty normal people, no exaggerated sense of entitlement or obnoxious aggression, even with ones with really good grades who are graduating into really good jobs.
See the distinction I made. I assume that the Cornell student body falls more into the "top end" camp than the "mid-major" camp, although, like at Penn and some other places, it may be more split.
This situation is quite common: many people with English, History or other liberal arts degrees don't go into teaching (grade school or high school) because the pay is too low, and they don't go into business because they can't get a well-paying job and won't accept a low-paying entry level job (maybe because of all of those student loans they have to pay back). So, they opt to stay in school (to defer student loans) by going to law school, and hope for the best. Then, if they do well, they wind up at a big law firm that--surprise!--wants them to work hard for their inflated salaries, and that provides them with little in the way of interesting or rewarding work (for some reason, writing legal memos no one reads, putting together cool binders for the partner's deposition that you can't attend, and drafting thousands of meaningless interrogatories or discovery responses is less than fully satisfying). Eventually, they wind up saying to themselves, "Hey, I am smart, how come I am doing this drudge work and why is it consuming so much of my life?" and leave. Also, big law firms typically do not give management training to their partners, and many partners are terrible managers of others, which exacerbate the situation. If they stay, it is only because of the money, or because they happen to find a mentor or partner who treats them okay and eventually gives them interesting work to do. Or, they stay because they like the status that saying "I work at Cravath/Skadden" affords them, and the "golden" handcuffs that slowly chain them (e.g, fancy cars, houses, vacations).
In contrast, my friends who wanted to be lawyers, and who work in Public Defender/District Attorney jobs, all seem to enjoy themselves. But then, they wanted to be lawyers in the first place, and didn't go into the profession largely because they couldn't think of something else to do with their careers.
I think everyone, including lawyers, can appreciate that scientists have unique ways of thinking that are crucial to success in their fields. This, of course, is true of virtually all professionals.
But I don't think anyone is claiming that lawyers actually ARE scientists. The far more modest claim being made (at least by me) is that good lawyers are often quick learners, including with respect to basic facts and principles involving the physical world.
And as you point out, scientists don't just attempt to learn such things. Rather, their job is to actually add to (or modify) the general body of understanding we know as "science". In that sense, they are discovering the facts and deriving the principles to be learned, not just learning facts and principles already discovered and derived.
The rest of us, however, are just attempting to learn and understand what scientists are producing, and usually only when relevant to our own purposes. Which makes sense, because we can't all be scientists. And while I agree that good lawyers may not have acquired the patterns of thinking required for actually BEING scientists, that would be asking quite a bit more than that lawyers be "grounded in the physical world", "numerate", "scientifically literate", or so on.
Perhaps I went to an atypical Tier 1 school, but my law school classmates were incredibly easy-going, almost to their detriment. The biggest criticism there would be that they were very Greek. I come from a family of engineers, and I have a science degree. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I'd much rather hang out or date the average lawyer than the average engineer. But, there are tools in every profession.
I think one problem of dating anyone who is established in their career is that if they've been single for a while, they may let their career define them, and that's almost always a negative personality characteristic. If your job is all you have, then you may bore others quite easily and be prone to an inflated ego.
Female lawyers will date non-lawyers, on occasion. The difficulty is usually not that the man doesn't make as much as she does - it's that generally the men don't understand the drains of law firm life on a young female associate. There will be a lot of late nights and broken dates, and she may not fill a traditional wifely role. Many male lawyers get this - many male non-lawyers don't.
I married a lawyer, but early enough that we weren't both boring narcissists.
I think one of the best possible legal education reforms would simply be for the ABA to require law students to take an "accounting for lawyers" course (even just a micro course).
Agreed, perhaps it isn’t that there is anything particularly wrong with dating lawyers but mabye there’s just something wrong with Meagan? She was afterall in a relationship with a guy for seven years who ultimately found that he didn’t want to marry her. It stands to reason that he probably knows a lot of things about her that we don’t.
And speaking of innumeracy, a number of people complained about the 8th grade math of the companion finance class.
I agree completely. I also took an applied quantitative analysis course while in law school that discussed (and forced us to apply) probability, regression, and statistical significance in a variety of different legal situations. It was quite useful. I think that it too should be required, at least of people seeking to be civil litigators.
Yup, I just might. I thought about doing the whole MBA/JD thing but probably won't go that far. What is 8th grade math anyway? Pre-algebra?
I've got an MS in physics, but I did rather poorly because I'm sloppy and they were extremely stingy with partial credit.
Accounting, BTW, has essentially no math except some addition and subtraction.
One problem with lawyers dating lawyers is that it's a tight professional community in many places (large markets excepted) and it suffers from the same kinds of problems that dating in any such setting does (e.g. side-taking at the end, rumor mill). Of course, I am one of those people who went to undergrad wanting to be a lawyer, so maybe I am not in the targeted group (I once owned a shirt that said "I love big corporations!").
1. High verbal (31 male, 42 female)
2. High math (169 male, 16 female)
3. High Verbal and high math (53 male, 9 female)
Is the ratio of males to females in the high math group due to nature, nuture, or what?
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/david_lubinski.htm
Lubinski, D., Webb, R. M., Morelock, M. J., &Benbow, C. P. (2001). Top 1 in 10,000: A 10-year follow up of the profoundly gifted. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 718-729. View in PDF (available for downloading).
Gene Cloner
I was specifically talking about accounting, not general math. And whether or not colleges should be requiring accounting classes (mine didn't), I think it would be of use to most lawyers--even criminal lawyers, in fact. I've seen various criminal cases in which accounting was relevant (eg, frauds, embezzlement, securities crime, money laundering, and so on).
2. Of course lawyers tend to be contemptuous of their peers. As a doctor client pointed out, we are the only profession that is trained to fight with each other. You keep your morale up by believing that you are better than all the rest. A force that goes into battle convinced that its opponent is smarter, faster, and stronger is a force that is already beaten.
3. As far as not being grounded in something that could prove them wrong -- any lawyer with more than one or two trials under his belt knows that anything, anything, can happen in a courtroom. You're dealing with human beings, judges and juries and clients and witnesses. You can lose an ice-cold case or win one you know was a loser. Is the judge smart, or a political hack? IS he/she a former prosecutor who knows criminal law well but hasn't the foggiest about civil procedure? Is your opponent their good buddy? Does your client annoy the jury? Does he panic on the witness stand and sound terrible?
4. It's exceptional difficult to generalize about attorneys and job satisfaction, etc. It's not like they start into one job and must stay there for life. I started out as a associate/gofer in a three attorney firm, then became partner in a stuffling four attorney firm, spent a decade in the government as a bureaucrat in a 300 attorney operation, and am now in solo practice. Each has its upside and its downside.
Californio: Did you not follow the link? There is a very prominently displayed picture on Megan's blog.
Rob Lyman: The issue, unfortunately, is not simply how often your wife reads the Volokh comments section but how often your wife's friends read the Volokh comments section. Psuedonymity has its virtues.
I must not have been among those counted ... I MARRIED one.
On another note, did anyone catch the rare typographical error in the 11th Circuit's very recent opinion in The Fox Theater, stating that Congress enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act on Jan. 25, 1993? Actually, Congress enacted the ADA on Jul. 26, 1990. I surmise the Panel might have meant to say some of the Title III architectural regulations guidelines were promulgated on Jan. 25, 1993? I was just wondering if I was the only one to catch the clerical error?
Even worse, I WORKED for a lawyer who was a metallurgical engineer. But I did not marry him.
No, I MARRIED a lawyer who is a barber and captain of a 36' sailboat. When I assist with his cases on our sailboat, I can attest I have the best haircut any lawyer's wife could dream of, but very few dates with other lawyers.
Is this the experience of someone who has actually litigated cases in a federal court? Wow. I cannot fathom how one could make such elaborate argument in the judicially efficient 2 1/2 minutes alloted to my disabled husband and I by a Tampa federal magistrate. About all we are ever allowed to do is get to the point.
An even worse problem: the extremely high number of hours many lawyers work their bar applicant wives.
I am only 1 of 2 people in my graduating class who have a joint J.D./M.B.A. I would disagree that a few business classes are a "reasonably good substitute" for a J.D./M.B.A. Nor was my joint degree overly burdensome, since my M.B.A. program waived 9 M.B.A. foundation classes (almost a whole year) based on my excellent undergraduate grades in business.
Medis, Bruce, I agree math classes are not really a substitute for the statistics, finance, etc. type of classes required in a joint J.D./M.B.A. program. I am at a real loss why more people do not take the joint degree. I can run circles around other non-M.B.A. lawyers in certain types of cases, even in summarizing the documents in the cases they handle, particularly if the cases involve financial documents or damages calculations. (Yet, I know I would not be able to resolve any one of an-EV-esque type of mathematics problem).
I do find in my experience that most judges (if they allow a person more than 2 1/2 minutes) are able to grasp complex financial concepts, particularly if explained in a simplified manner or with graphs or charts. Other lawyers, however, tend not to so readily understand. I would think this is due to the variety of cases a judge hears vs. the usually narrow practice area of many lawyers.
I do not think conservative/liberal politics of some judges is the "cause" for failure to understand statistical presentations, so much as any M.B.A. knows, to the ability of some people who prepare statistical evidence to manipulate the results in a way that escapes those without an education in such. Another reason for the value of a joint J.D./M.B.A. degree.
I would also tend to think a joint J.D./M.B.A. would be of tremendous value to criminal prosecutions of white collar cases, such as the U.S. Atty or a similar prosecutorial office.
And I dont see being literate/numerate as mutually exclusive. One of the many reasons I'm entering law school is that I am far more capable of writing and speaking than other engineers. I feel that I will be wasting my talents with language if I stay in pure engineering.
Perhaps my remarks were bloated by wine consumption and the casual nature of blog comments. What's your excuse?
I attended one of those law schools outside the top five but within the top 25. It was my first choice because of its location and several other factors. And I did well academically, so I have no "sour grapes" complaints on that account. I can testify that the people who wanted to be there, both at law school in general and at my school in particular, were very nice people. The people who wanted to be at Harvard or Yale and had to settle were the worst pains in the neck I've ever met in my life. There weren't that many of them -- nowhere near 50% -- but they formed cliques and made life miserable for a lot of people. They were like the worst and most exclusionary clique in high school, only much worse. (Most were female, I might add.) As a result of my experience, I would say that the first step in dating, or even befriending lawyers, is to avoid that kind of person.
As for the the numeracy, real world etc. arguments, I will agree with some posters here that lawyers are a lot more pleasant to deal with when they are grounded in something other than law. Law itself doesn't provide any real brake on people, or any scheme against which to evaluate situations and actions. Honor in legal practice is representing clients well using the available tools. A few tools are off-limits, but otherwise a lawyer is supposed to put his or her own preferences aside and argue as forcefully as possible.
Nobody wants to deal with a person like that in private life. Instead of that, most of us want friends and lovers who see the world in ways we consider reasonable, who follow ethical systems that match up with ours, and whose loyalties are not for sale. In real-world relationships, the tricks of legal advocacy frequently come off as manipulation or even abuse.
And so the second question for those who deal with lawyers in private life is whether a particular lawyer is grounded somewhere reasonable. This can be a religious or ethical system, a set of community standards, or even a second profession that gives its practitioners a more rigorous set of standards to live by. It all depends on the people involved. I tend to like lawyers who are trained in some empirical discipline, for example, because they seem less willing to "cook the books" by falsifying or hiding actual facts. (Falsifying data is a big no-no in the sciences... one of the few truly unforgiveable sins.) An empirical sort of person may lie, but he or she will at least know when a statement is a lie and will understand the concept of lying to start with. (He or she will also feel guilty about it.) The interaction won't be all about taking advantage, which I think it would be for some lawyers who don't have anything to ground them.
To sum up: Learn to avoid the narcissists and sociopaths! Law has more than its share of both, but they can't be allowed to define the profession.
Hot, no. Slutty, yes.
Are you hot?
Uh, no. Arguments and theories explored in these professions are based in things like chemistry, biology and physics. A medical theory developed in France has the same validity there as it does in Texas. Rare is the occasion when the same could be said of anything in law.
I asked one lawyer about punitive damages and I get case law, which cites earlier case law and so on... At the very least I would expect some reference to the GAAP, economics, a consistent bit of algebra or ANYTHING remotely quantitative. Nope, just repetition of the same bit of legalese and damage amounts with no empirical validity.
[Important Note to Helpful Readers: If we have confusing typos and especially ugly formatting errors, such as an unclosed underline or bold tag, we'd love to hear from you about them -- but please e-mail the author about this, rather than leaving a comment. We often won't read the comments for a while after the post, and if there's a glaring formatting error, we'd see it quickly when we revisit the post, even without the comment; and in any event the comment likely isn't going to be that helpful to your fellow comment readers. So please e-mail us directly about glitches like this. Thanks!]
Comment Policy: We'd like the posts to be civil, of course (no profanity, personal insults, and the like), but we're also hoping that people try to be as calm, reasoned, and substantive as possible. So please, also avoid rants, invective, substantial and repeated exaggeration, and radical departures from the topic of the thread. Sticking with substance -- and staying on-topic -- will make the comments more helpful to other readers, and more pleasant.
As editors, we reserve the right to delete posts, and even to kick out posters, though we hope that both of these will be exceptional events. (We also reserve the right to be busy with other things, and therefore (1) not remove all the posts that might merit removal, and (2) ignore demands such as "You should remove A's posts, because they're just as bad as B's!")
Here's a tip: Reread your post, and think of what people would think if you said this over dinner. If you think people would view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who vastly overdoes it on the hyperbole, rewrite your post before hitting enter.
And if you think this is the other people's fault -- you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, but fools wrongly view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who overdoes it on the hyperbole -- then you should still rewrite your post before hitting enter. After all, if you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, then surely it's especially important that you frame your arguments in a way that is persuasive and as unalienating as possible, even to fools.
Our goal is to provide an interesting and pleasant environment that can help inform readers. To do that, we'll occasionally have to exercise our editorial discretion. Think of this as an in-person discussion group, where having different voices is critical to a great conversation -- but where sometimes the leader has to deal with cranks who sour the conversation more than they enliven it.
Naturally, there's always a risk that this discretion will be used erroneously, no matter how well-intentioned the editor. But discussion groups (especially on the Internet, but also off it) generally need an editor who'll occasionally make such judgments.
And, remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.