Law School

How did you prepare for the LSAT?

Interestingly, I didn’t do a lot of prep. It happened, I think, that that test was just pretty well-suited to my natural strengths. So, at the time, there were three or four sections. I think it’s changed since then, but a lot of it was reading and vocabulary and writing, which I was strong in. And then there was a section called “logic games,” which is not math. It’s more of… some probability, more critical thinking and logic, which I was pretty good at. So I did not prepare as much as I probably should have, and maybe I just had a good test-taking day. But the test itself was just really well-suited to my strengths.

What advice would you give NASH students about how they can prepare, both in high school and undergrad years, for both the LSAT and law school?

I would probably take one of the [LSAT] courses. I did not take a course, but there are companies that specialize in that test prep. Given that the stakes are really high in terms of where you end up in your career, where you practice, [and] the choices that you have, the caliber of law school that you attend is really a driving factor. I do tell students that ask me about it to think about your undergraduate institution. What is important is not what you major in, but that you do really well. And you don’t have to come from a top ten undergrad to get into a top ten law school. If you do really well at a good university and do well on the test, you can get in. But I would say, it’s important to kind of go to the best law school you can, because I know that if you want to work–particularly in a firm or in a big city–they look first at candidates from top tier law schools.

I also think that unlike other disciplines, you can major in a lot of different things and end up in law school. The important part is that you build skills. It’s not content knowledge; it’s really skills. One thing I see from students that causes me to worry here is that you need to read a lot. A lot. And carefully! And a skill that you’ll need is drawing out even small distinctions or minor points. I think for students here, forcing themselves to read content thoroughly and a lot of it… While fiction is nice, I think it really is informational text and argumentative text and practice writing more than a sentence or two that builds these skills. You still have to write briefs that could be ten or twenty or thirty pages long. You have to build an argument, and it takes a lot of patience to do that. I see that students, for a lot of different reasons, don’t necessarily have those skills or work on those skills.

I think that you should take classes that interest you, the ones that are going to stimulate your thinking. The term “critical thinking” is used a lot, and it’s hard to define, but that is what a lot of what law school and practicing law is. It’s a lot of taking one fact and one piece of legal precedent and thinking about how they fit together and how you could make an argument, or what the law would say about a different situation. That does require you to be able to connect a lot of dots and not just memorize. Memorization will not take you very far in law school compared to some other disciplines.

How would you recommend building up these writing and critical thinking skills? 

I think teachers don’t ask as much of [those skills] anymore. I think that paying attention to questions where you’re asked to compare one thing to another or argue one position over another–the more of that you can do, the better. So if you ever have a choice in a social studies class or an English class between an informative essay and an argumentative [essay], choose the argumentative one. And if you ever are given options about things to read for a class, I would suggest picking the ones that are geared more towards “mystery solving.” [It’s] the intuitive “what do you think’s gonna happen next?” or “where do you think this is going?” or “what is the answer to this puzzle?” Because I think that is a lot of what practicing law is about. It’s getting pieces to fit together.

How would you describe the law school experience?

It’s very competitive. Duke was kind of known to be less competitive than some of the other ones, but it was still hypercompetitive. I assume that it’s similar now, but it was still very much done on a bell curve grading scale, so 30% of the class was going to get a 2.0, and then 3.0, and so on. You really felt almost all the time that you were in competition with each other, so you have to be ready for that for sure. There were some pretty cutthroat people. Back in the day, you actually had to use books for your research, and people would literally take the books that everyone needed out of the library and hide them so other people couldn’t get them. But, again, picking the right school for you is important. I was really into sports, so when I was at Duke, I would go to like every Duke basketball game. I did a lot–it was a big outside university, you know. I really enjoyed it, to be honest. To me, it was a good atmosphere. I think for some people, they would find it too competitive, so you should be prepared for that, for sure.

You mentioned not getting a lot of sleep. How did you stay up during law school?

Probably just good old fashioned adrenaline and fear. One of the things about law school is that if you aren’t prepared when you walk in, it could get pretty ugly. I remember I got called on on the first day in one of my classes. It was literally the first day, and of course I sat in the back thinking that I was going to hide, and the guy had his rule on his chart up there and he just called on me about a case. That was a big difference, too. It was very Socratic. They would just call on you, and you couldn’t just say “I don’t know.” The guy would just eviscerate you. You had to be prepared for that kind of fear. Fear is a pretty good stimulant, I guess.

Would you recommend doing mock trial and/or moot court?

Yeah, especially if you’re going to litigate, there’s only one way to do it, which is to do it. If that’s what you thought you wanted, then I would. And even if you were going into transactional work, it’s kind of a rite of passage to go through moot court. It’s just what you do.

And there’s a camaraderie there, too. Competitive and camaraderie, the same kind of thing. You would all commiserate together before and after, depending on how it went. I didn’t love it, but I’m glad I did it. It caused me a lot of anxiety, to be honest. I’m certainly comfortable arguing and speaking, it was just… as an analogy, I would never be on a speech and debate or forensics team. That was just not me. I like to argue, I like to discuss things, but not in that kind of super rapid-fire, super aggressive way. It’s not really me.

What classes in law school would you most recommend taking?

I still believe in the broadest experience possible, so I took the ones that interested me. I took a sports law class. I took a couple of labor law classes, just because I thought it was interesting. I would recommend, if you can, in your last year, you usually have one or two options to either take a graduate level class outside of the law school or even an undergrad class. Like I took a class in game theory as part of the political science department, and I really liked that. I think third year is your time to maybe enjoy yourself a little more and take some classes that you like. And then always do some kind of externship or internship if you can. Some schools require it. I did one in the district attorney’s office doing protection from abuse orders for women. Getting out and doing something, and actually being practical is also an important thing to do.

What classes would you recommend not taking?

Corporations. Well, you have to [take it]. It was my least favorite. I just did not enjoy corporate administrative law.

A lot of people recommend joining the Federalist Society, even if they don’t agree with their politics or ideology for networking purposes. What do you think is the right path of action there?

I didn’t. I didn’t feel like [not joining] would hurt me. I’m not sure that at the time if it had the same sort of reputation. There were definitely… less politics than one might imagine, at least where I was. I don’t know if that’s typical or not of other places. I can only speak to where I was, but yeah. I didn’t really feel like it was an overly political atmosphere. To me, [Duke] was just so academic. Everything was so academic, and you could have, certainly, lots of spirited debates about things, but it never felt political to me. Maybe ideological, but not political, if that makes sense. I think now, the two have bled together so much that it’s a little bit hard to tell them apart.

Describe one of your best and worst experiences working in law.

One of the best experiences I’ve has is that I really made a connection with one of my professors. I babysat her kids. She was a criminal law professor, just a very smart, capable woman who I really looked up to, and she really helped me. We talked about networking, [and] I didn’t network with her, but she asked me to help her write a book one summer. Like having that connection with someone who you relate to as a woman, having a female role model, was great. So that was probably one of the best things, I think, is just feeling like you had someone who you aspired to be, which hadn’t really happened to me before.

The worst thing was probably the stress, especially two times. The first year, when I was like, “I’m drowning here.” It was just so different than what I was used to. You sort of think about being used to being one of the smartest people in your class to looking around and being like, “Okay. This person went to Penn and this person went to Yale.” You know? You’re like, “Do I even belong here?” And secondly, I think that when I had realized third year that I had a decent amount of debt racked up, I had to get a job and make money. It took some of the fun out of the end of school. So I think that the beginning and the end were very stressful for two different reasons.