Why lawyers make a lot of money, or why I should have been a painter

I spent a whole bunch of money yesterday. For the amount of cash culled from my bank account, you know what I could have gotten?

One of these, with enough cash left over to pay for three months worth of data service:


Two of these, and a few games to boot:
A guaranteed plane ticket to this idyllic destination:


Instead, what did I spend a small fortune on? Well, folks, it's these babies:
Yep, you're looking at $741 worth of law textbooks. I always knew that my textbook expenditures at SLS would dwarf anything I spent during undergrad, but the margin was more than I imagined. Before I got my reading list for my fall semester classes, I went to the bookstore on Saturday to try and scope out the law section to get a ballpark figure for the cost of books. I was surprised to see that most were reasonably priced, and by reasonably I mean less than $70. I shook my head, and mused that every law student I've heard complain about this problem was just exaggerating.

Reading list in hand, I went back to the bookstore on Monday to get my books before everyone
else did. Most people had yet to move in so I reasoned I had a shot of picking up the used books, which are sold at a decent discount. That pipe dream lasted long enough for me to find the first book on my list: Civil Procedure, Theory and Practice. $138. That's the upper limit of much I spent on textbooks per quarter back in the day. The used books were listed for much cheaper prices, but of course, none were available. After quickly scanning the rest of the books I had to buy, I estimated that the bottom line would be somewhere from $300 to $400.

Obviously my serious deficiency with numbers explains why I'm going to law school and not getting a Ph.D in math, because when the cashier read "seven hundred and forty one dollars," I remembered what it felt like to get shafted (figuratively of course). I suppose that I may keep these books for the rest of my lawyering days, that they could be handy reference guides for years to come. That doesn't make the cost any more palatable, though.

So, next time you wonder why lawyers make so much money, here is your answer: because it costs so much to become one. If lawyers made what service workers made, there'd be no reason to go to law school. There would be no lawyers. Some of you may think that would be an improvement, but ask yourself: who are you going to turn to next time you spill a scalding hot cup of McDonald's coffee on your lap? Are you going to sit there, take it, and apply ice to your genitals? No. You're going to lawsuit up, and take the Golden Arches to court. While your lawyer is before the judge explaining how the boiling coffee has done irreparable damage to your reproductive organs, and that this impairment has caused you great emotional turmoil, don't complain about how much you're paying him to represent you. Don't complain because he had to dole out a shitload of money just so he could get up there and represent your clumsy ass in the first place.

Schedules and Salads (but not necessarily in that order)

After a year of general bumitude, there is nothing more jarring then receiving an email from Stanford Law informing me that my class schedule for the fall semester had been published. The worst part was the tone of the message--whoever wrote it made it sound as if this were a happy occurrence. It was not. I've gotten used to a lifestyle where the biggest decision of my day was what I was going to eat for lunch. Compared to hours in the library, choosing between Ted's and Tommy's seems like a happy dilemma (though I'll admit a less healthy one than I'd like).

As is usual with Stanford, anything that can be done easily, well, isn't. They provided us with two sites: one listing our course numbers and date/time, and another with the corresponding course names and professors. Why they couldn't provide all of that information on one grid is frustrating, but all too expected. So after a few minutes of putting everything together on iCal, this is what I got (click to see it full-sized):


What makes the first semester of law school different than any of the other constituent parts is that all classes are mandatory. The idea is to force everyone to take survey courses in the core subjects of the law every lawyer should be familiar with. I suppose the first semester is the crucible in which they intend to take our legally untrained minds and shape us into lawyers-in-training. As you can see, the core classes are Criminal Law, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Torts, and Legal Writing and Research. Criminal (or Crim), with its "Law and Order" appeal, sounds like it could be fun, and I could see Civil Procedure as potentially interesting. As for Torts, well, I definitely don't want to pursue it as a career, but at least the cases will be fun to read (imagine reading accounts of the stupid things people do everyday, and you have a torts case...I've read one involving a circus elephant pooping on a woman in the stands and whether or not the circus was liable for the emotional damage she suffered as a result). I also get a perverse pleasure out of assigning blame to people for their negligence. It appeals to the J in my ENFJ personality.

One of the cookie cutter, getting-to-know-you questions everyone asks one another at this embryonic stage of law school is, "What section are you in?" Like some high schools, there are certain sections of people who have the same schedule day in and day out. For whatever reason, your criminal law class determines which section you are assigned to. I have yet to meet anyone in my section, but I'm sure that'll change once more people move in. I'm in no rush--I'm sure I'll get to know those people pretty well anyway (I think it'd be impossible not to get to know one another after sharing five hours of class a day).

As for the difficulty of the schedule itself, I'm actually a bit relieved. I was convinced it would be much worse than this. I envisioned hours of lecture every day followed by even more hours reading at the law library. Shower, rinse, REMless nap, repeat. This isn't quite that bad. The good news is that there are no classes past 330 PM. Now, despite my propensity to avoid sleep, I actually prefer having classes in the morning so that I can get them over with, allowing me to veg out for the rest of the afternoon. I'm not looking forward to a 9:50 AM class (definitely the bad news) but at least the lunch break is pretty substantial, leaving more time than I had as an undergrad here. Apparently Stanford thinks that lunch should be long enough for you to either A) rush back to your dorm and eat fast enough to jet off to the next class or B) stand in line at UnionSquared for twenty minutes and scarf down your southwest chicken salad without tasting the rich yet tangy cilantro dressing.

Man, just mentioning that salad makes me hungry. Silly as it sounds, that salad was not a small part of my decision calculus between Stanford and Harvard. In college, the mere promise of that salad was enough to get me through the week. The song says everybody's working for the weekend, but not me. I was just trying to survive until Friday for the "dudes" lunch with my crew and the opportunity to enjoy that salad.

Speaking of which, Union Squared is open tomorrow. Is a southwest chicken salad in the cards? Or should I be frugal and have leftovers? Kinda funny--I'm at law school but without a meal plan, what to eat at lunch is still one of the most important decisions I make on a daily basis. Maybe this won't be as big a departure from the last fifteen months as I thought it'd be?