LETTERS FROM LAW SCHOOL:
The Life of a Second-Year Law Student

By Lawrence Dieker Jr.

FEATURED IN "STUDENT LAWYER" MAGAZINE

"I gradually became aware that second-year and third-year students were moving through a world much different than that of a 1L," wrote Scott Turow, describing his first year at Harvard.

Facing two more years of grueling class work, mounting student loans, increasing pressure to stand out from the crowd, and the never-ending search for the perfect job, an upper-class student comes to realize that surviving the fall into the deep end is no guarantee he will learn to swim, let alone come up for air.

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About the Author

Preface

    Law students today have a pretty good idea what to expect their first year. Scott Turow’s One L, describing his first year at Harvard, has become almost mandatory reading for anyone contemplating law school. And because that level of intensity is what so many expect, that is how the first year usually plays out, complete with ulcers, outlines, and relentless work.

                                     Lawrence Dieker Jr.

Excerpt from Chapter Fourteen

December 2
(Monday)

         When I returned to the lobby, I looked through one of the firm's brochures stacked conspicuously on a coffee table. The description of the firm's environmental practice was laden with scientific terminology, much of it information about the firm's ability to conduct environmental audits, the scientific end of the environmental law spectrum.
          Claudette came out to greet me, making the usual apologies. They lead a busy life, these recruiting coordinators. We sat down in her office. My morning, she explained, would be made up of a series of twenty-minute interviews. I would be escorted from office to office by one of the associates, Bob Paxton, a graduate of Bowling Green State University and the University of Toledo Law School. After receiving his law degree in 1985, he spent several years with Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C.
          My only strategy for the morning was to talk about anything but law. That was my conclusion from the Gaines interviews. I was convinced that anyone could ask a series of questions about the firm. But the firm doesn't have to sell itself to students. For $70,000 a year, most law students would spend ten hours a day in a sensory deprivation tank. I had the ability. If they thought differently I wouldn't be sitting in their offices, taking up their time. The best a prospective clerk could do was to come across as a likable person, someone with whom the people at the firm would enjoy working. So I spent most of the first interview, with a former Big Ten football tackle, talking about the great riverboat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a trip neither of us had taken.

          I next met with Jerome Thorson, the chairman of the Recruiting Committee. He was standing on a stool behind his desk watering plants on his bookshelf when I was ushered into his office. He stood there, a lumpy man with baggy tan slacks and crumpled white shirt, slightly hunched, frozen for a moment as if he had been caught making obscene telephone calls. Bob and I waited as he gathered enough balance to step from his perch without toppling over. The situation sparked a certain intimacy. This was Jerome Thorson, chairman of the Recruiting Committee, a pushover, a flower.
         "I'm trying to water the plants more," he explained once he got down. "The plants in the office usually die from inattention."
          He was a daisy.

          Harry Canton, the environmental lawyer to whom I had written to get the interview, was out of town. I met instead with another of the firm's environmental lawyers, a less interested audience perhaps.
          "So how do you know Fay Rubenstein?" he asked me right off.
          "She works with my uncle," I told him.
          He nodded. "How did you get interested in environmental law?"
          I went into what by now was my standard response. When I was at Ohio State, I helped to start a newsletter called The Ohio Solid Waste Reporter. I had been looking for a part-time job, any part-time job, when the offer came along. I did the work, conducted the interviews, attended seminars, became interested. . . . That was my story. But I wanted to give something more. How did I become interested? Pollution should offend you . . . like sticking a cork up a mule's ass . . . inevitable loopholes. . . . I pointed to the glass of water on his desk. "I guess I was just interested in what the heck was in my drinking water," I said, finally.
          He nodded politely. "Do you think you can represent industry?" he asked.
          I smiled. He had a copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring on his bookshelf, the book that had almost single-handedly ushered in the environmental movement. "This is a field with good points on both sides of the issue," I said, holding out my palms as if they were scales of justice. "Both sides are important to sort of balance things out. Industry is responsible for our high standard of living, but environmentalists are necessary to provide some checks. That's why I think I became interested in environmental law."
          He nodded.
          Even I was bored.

          So I went from one interview to the next, deflecting questions, trying to figure out in the first five minutes what motivated these men and women, and in the process becoming more and more dissatisfied, more and more uncertain, more and more weary with each smile, each shake of the hand.
          Any goodwill I had built up disintegrated in the office of Mr. Trevor T. Osting, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and hopeless Wolverine football fan. On the top shelf behind him was a crumpled University of Michigan glazed mug. Ohio State had just lost to Michigan in the Big Ten season finale the week before, a game I hadn't seen, and too soon into the interview an awkward silence fell between us.
          "You look busy," I said, referring to the mound of papers on his desk.
          "Yeah."
          "You do corporate work?"
          He started to tell me how much he enjoyed his work, but quickly tired of the subject and turned to me. "Can I answer any of your questions?"
          I was taken by surprise. I had no questions left to ask. None. I had asked all of my questions earlier in the day. "Everyone's been real good about answering my questions," I said, thinking, thinking. "Well, I don't know if I should ask, but, well, I guess I'd find out anyway. . . . Does the firm have any skeletons in the closet?"
          Dumb question. Dumb. Why would I want to remind him that I, the nephew of a big client, would be privy to firm gossip? But just when I thought I was caught and squirming, I noticed that Mr. Trevor T. Osting seemed to be a bit uncomfortable himself.
          "I don't know," he said. "Let me think. No one's asked me that before. . . . I guess they were probably just too scared."
          "As a clerk, you learn all the gossip anyway."
          Why would I want to give him the idea that I sat around on the job swapping the latest gossip, that I would be interested in such things, that I might repeat such things? To my disappointment, he thought the question through.
          "No," he said. "I can't think of anything scandalous ever happening at this firm."
          No associates falsifying time sheets for their secretaries? No commingling of client funds? No cover-ups? No missed filing deadlines? No hanky panky behind office doors?
          Certainly not.
          Things didn't get better. I made a mistake about the number of children he had, although a large picture of his three children was right next to his desk, and when I asked him if he socialized with other associates, he said, "First of all, I'm a partner."
          "I'm sorry."
          "I've been a partner for four years."
          It wasn't the blunder of the year, but it was bad. Trevor T. Osting looked young enough to be an associate, his hair a mass of tight blond curls, and he was obviously sensitive about it. Worse, the question, in retrospect, didn't even appear to make much sense. In general, people socialize with their neighbors, people from school or from church. If he didn't socialize with other members of the firm, it wouldn't be something he would want to discuss. If he did, perhaps he was involved in a situation into which I had no business sticking my nose. Did he socialize with the members of the firm? His answer came out pretty flat: "No."
          I made a pitiful effort to bring the conversation back around to football. Fortunately, Bob Paxton appeared in the doorway.
          "Has it been twenty minutes already?" Trevor Osting asked.
          "By my watch," Bob said.
          "Seems like we just sat down."
          "It's hard to get to know someone when you spend all your time talking about football," Bob said.
          Instead of what really mattered? Did he think we'd been talking about football the whole time? Were my reviews already coming in? Nice guy, but hard to know what he's really like when all we talked about was riverboat gambling and vacation disasters. . . . Not sure he's committed to the law, let alone this firm.
          I stood up. We all stood over his desk. That desk. The mound of papers. It was all I could see. A large executive desk of thick wood that curled like paisley. Piles of papers everywhere. I must have said something because Bob said, "I bet he can find what he needs in a minute." I only wanted an explanation of what he did each day, what it was like to sit at that desk, make the decisions he made, know the things he knew. I wanted to know how he had become a success, how he had come to sit on the other side of that thick piece of wood in this tall building in this sprawling city. His thoughts were scatted across the desk. His life was in shambles. His wife had left him and taken the kids. He was sleeping with one of the women in accounts receivable. But he was a lawyer, and I had no idea, really, what it was like to be a lawyer. I also had serious doubts about ever finding out.

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Copyright 2000-2008 by Lawrence Dieker Jr.  All rights reserved.