Think of law school as if you’re buying a used car. This is a theme that will crop up throughout the book, as it fits rather well. When you buy a used car, if you’re prudent and aren’t an expert yourself, you will have the car checked out by a mechanic before handing over the cash. Or you might bring along a knowledgeable, mechanically inclined friend who can point out what is wrong with the vehicle.

You don’t go to a mechanic to be told what is great about the car, and you shouldn’t bring along a friend who will tell you how cool that car is and gee isn’t that color pretty and everything is sure to work out fine if you just follow your heart. If you listen to a friend like that, or decide to just “follow your heart,” you almost deserve the heartbreak of the lesson (and lemon) you are likely to get. You seek out a guide who is a fussy nitpicker, and who will alert you to everything that is wrong with the car, even the things that aren’t really problems, or aren’t really problems for you, but which you ought to know about. A list of defects doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t buy the car, if you still decide that it’s a good fit for your needs, the risks you’re prepared to take, and what you can afford. This book is your law school mechanic. We will take a long look under the hood and discuss everything wrong with the law school engine and the legal profession transmission…before you buy. Be an informed consumer. A list of defects doesn’t necessarily mean that you should not buy. You might indeed choose to attend law school, and if, after considering these many defects, you do so decide, it will more likely be a good move for you.

A practical difficulty arises, however, in becoming an informed consumer of a legal education. The legal profession suffers from two significant issues that cloud one’s ability to become informed: (1) misinformation about law schools and the legal profession, and (2) missing information about law schools and the legal profession. In other words, what you think you know about becoming a lawyer—about law school and about the legal profession—is probably wrong, It is certainly full of gaps. What’s worse is that, if you’re like most, you think you have a pretty good idea of what law school and the practice of law are like. But you, like everyone else who’s not yet attended law school, taken the bar, and worked in a legal organization (or not, as the case may be), are filled with incorrect assumptions that are a bit like the film The Matrix. The true reality is very, very different from the reality we think we know.

The first issue—misinformation—tends to be applicable mainly to law schools themselves, given the fallacious statistics, myths, and puffery that schools perpetuate for the overriding purpose of bringing in new classes filled with top-ranked full-tuition-paying matriculants. This is very serious, because a law school’s rank is a measure of, among other things, the statistical qualities of its students. This, not surprisingly, leaves room for much statistical play.

There is a second element of this first issue: this is the overriding insistence in misinformation by many students, including both those who have not yet attended law school as well as, unbelievably, those who are in law school. Why? A large part is the need for students to believe. They must believe in the System because it is their system, and because it is self-flattering, and because the opposite would be so harmful to their well-being and their sense of well-being and their sense of hope. This is why there is so much (way too much!) snarky behavior in law schools and in anything surrounding law schools, such as in online discussion groups nominally dedicated to sharing ideas, tips, and support. What one finds, however, is a nearly universal condemnation of anything that doesn’t fit within the preconceived borders of law-school-dom. It is a groupthink of the highest (or perhaps lowest) order. Patently incorrect misconceptions are passed down from one year to the next, even among students who are living the lie! This is, shockingly, reinforced by those students who recognize what’s happening and understandably rail against the system. The reaction is almost always to blame that person for not trying hard enough, studying well enough, interviewing widely enough, and so on. The rest close ranks around a false ideal, because that’s pretty much all they’ve got. How sad. And how utterly and foolishly and sadistically harmful to the next year’s crop of sacrificial legal lambs.

The second issue—missing information—tends to apply mainly to the legal profession itself. Few outsiders know what lawyers really do, or what the practice of law is actually like day in and day out, including the stresses at all levels of practice.

We address these two areas separately, first explaining to the reader some of the misinformation generated by law schools that lures unwitting students in each year, followed by an examination of what the practice of law is like for average lawyers who spend their days with average clients in average law offices.