The Odd Questions That 1Ls Are Asked
If you’re a law student, this has probably already happened to you. If it hasn’t, it will soon. It’s inevitable. A family member or friend will ask you for legal advice. Never mind you might have been in law school for a total of one month, they’re going to ask about a lease or a contract. Or perhaps they’ll even ask about when they can return items to the store, like say, after they broke them.
In a humorous and all-too-true article in The Guardian, Hilary Davidson, a U.K.-based law student, recounts all of the odd things people will ask you during your first semester after they find out you’re a law student. First, can you look after my lease? Can my landlord really say that to me? The reality is, says Davidson, while a newbie student can talk all day about “easements and positive covenants,” first years won’t know much about leases and licenses. But, hey, fake it till you make it, right?
Next, can you look over this contract for me? As Davidson claims, all of your friends will be asking to look over their employment contracts. And unless you’ve taken contract law, you’ll have as much of an idea on what the mumbo jumbo means as they do. “Come third year, when the graduate recruitment panic kicks in, you realise you’re spending more time reading your friends’ contracts than studying contract law. Your exam results may not thank you but your friends will,” Davidson writes.
How long do I have to take this back? As soon as something breaks, Davidson writes, your friends will come calling to you asking to read the online shopping warranty. Or when it’s no longer OK to return an item.
You watch <insert title of any legal show or movie here>, right? Not only will your friends and family assume that you to watch the TV show or have seen the movie, Davidson says, they’ll expect your life to be exactly like it. They don’t want to think of about law students hunkered over their books only looking up to slurp down some Ramen. They want to hear about the courtroom battles and getting someone off death row.
If you can’t answer any of the questions above, what do you actually do all day? You mean you’re not fighting slumlords for unrightfully evicting tenants? You’re not fighting big brands and companies to return faulty items? You’re not negotiating employment contracts? Oh, you’re studying and reading hours upon hours and drinking a ton of coffee and trying to have a social life in between? Law school really isn’t as cool in real life as it is on TV.
Source: The Guardian
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