The 14 Point "Law School Quotient" Quiz (Continued)
    6)    I would like a career that doesn't require me to take work home.
    In our "go-go" world this request is becoming harder and harder to achieve in any profession.  In American society it’s not uncommon for families to work two and three jobs to make ends meet.  “I don’t want to take work home” has long been an unrealistic concept in professions like medicine and law.
    Lawyers who don't want to take work home with them just stay at the office!  If it is very important for you to draw a bright line between work and home, then practicing law will be a bad choice for you.
           
    7)    I want to attend law school because it will better my chances of becoming gainfully employed.
Certainly a legal degree is an asset to any resume.  Your bachelors degree is also a positive step towards becoming employed.  That question is not being debated.  But going to law school only so you can hopefully get a job, is a poor reason indeed.  The time and money commitments are far too monumental to treat law school as a job getting device. 
    Further, if you graduate from a non-name law school with only mediocre class ranking, your ability to get any legal job might be in doubt.  In his book How to Start and Build a Law Practice, author Jay G. Foonberg puts it this way, "Lawyers who start their own law practices usually fall into one or both of two categories: A.  They have to.  B. They want to."  Foonberg goes on to make the case that I have just made.  If your family is not well-connected or if you graduate with mediocre credentials from a non-name school, you may find yourself with many degrees and no job.
    Attend law school because you feel there is no other profession for you to adequately display your talents, not because you need a job.

    8)    I am easily bored with "details".   
    Make no mistake about it, law and law school are all about details!  To dissect cases, develop legal theories, etc., you must understand minute details of fact and law.  If you don't like details, you will hate law school.  It's that simple.
           
    9)    I don't take criticism well.   
    All but a very few of you will be criticized most of the way through law school.  Your attitude in the face of this criticism will largely determine what sort of academic experience you have in law school.  Criticism will come from the professors, the adjunct professors, other law students, and sometimes remote and unexpected areas like the library staff ("you should know how to look that up by now").
    The criticism is all part of paying your dues through law school.  In a sense, you will become the whipping post for a good number of people whose job it is to put you through the wringer and spit out a legally trained individual on the other end.  This metamorphosis from untrained legal novice to legally trained scholar will entail its share of pain, much of it in the form of sheer work, the other in criticism of that work.

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