I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to “think like a lawyer,” a mental renovation the Dean promised before my first year as a law student and a transformation which I am still not certain has occurred. I wanted to go to law school for five years before I actually applied. I waited until my youngest child was a freshman in college, then I took the LSATs. My first year as a student was difficult, partly a result of dividing the day between attending classes and sitting in a school telephone booth trying to handle a full-time job, and partly because I’m a left-brained Pisces.
The latter mean I’m intuitive, as opposed to being logical; emotional, as opposed to being analytical and that I had no idea what it meant to “think like a lawyer,” much less to make outlines and take exams like one.
Like some of the other students (we call each other “colleagues”), I had trouble separating the “facts” from the “issues.” For example: “Fran is a certified public accountant and has a law degree from a law school in California.” That’s a fact. “Greg Grub began to make sexually suggestive comments to her.” To a left-brained Pisces, that sounds like a fact too. But no, that’s an issue.
My second year of law school, I asked to attend classes at night instead of during the day. Perhaps, like the sign of Pisces, two fish swimming is opposite directions, I could be left-brained during he day and miraculously, be transformed into being right-brained at night. The first evening of classes I wore a pink sweater. To a person who thinks like a lawyer, pink is a combination of white and red; to me it was a psychological incentive to be cheerful, not intimidated, by a new environment. The professor asked: “Is there anyone new in class?” I looked around. I was the only “new” person, but I felt a commonality with my night-time colleagues. I raised my hand, breathing a sigh of relief: being cheerful wouldn’t require a semester of wearing pink, after all.
Law school gave my children the chance to give me advice. My youngest, coached me “never cry about your exams until you get your grades.” When I told my oldest daughter, also in law school, about an imaginary law firm I had invented to represent “clients” for an anonymous writing assignment, she counseled me, “Better concentrate on the legal research, not on inventing names like ‘Justin Case’ and ‘Bea Ware’ for fictitious lawyers.”
Law school teaches humility better than the Bible does. One evening I walked into class two minutes after the professor began calling the roll. This particular professor has a policy: if a student comes into class after his/her name has been called, the student is marked absent. Three absences and the professor can bar the student from taking the final exam. Class starts at 8:15pm. The room was full, and silent as a tomb, as students strained to hear their names being read. “He just called your name,” whispered one of my colleagues, as I walked up the lonely aisle, like a condemned person to my seat. I looked at the classroom clock: 8:17pm. That night was Monday, the day after the country switched to Eastern Standard Time. None of the clocks in the school agreed on the correct time. I had set my watch in accordance with the school library, which was three minutes behind the clock in the classroom.
A right-brained lawyer would have recognized the opportunity for a “timely objection” and argued detrimental reliance on the library clock; a left-brained Pisces writes about being humble.
Every night, after class, I drove another student to the railroad station for her train ride home. One Sunday, before final exams, a day-time review session was scheduled for the class we had together. I had to work and couldn’t attend. My new friend learned the New York Rules of Evidence, which differ from the Federal Rules at the review session and gave me a copy of her notes. I was grateful. All I did was drive a colleague to the railroad station; in return, she gave me valuable information which turned up on the final exam.
I thought of the saying: “you get back more than you put in.” It occurs to me that even a left-brained Pisces may eventually learn to tell the facts from the issues; however, there is more to learn in law school than “thinking like a lawyer.”
Right-brained and left-brained, we all worry about doing well on exams. Being a left-brained Pisces, my approach to finals is both cautious (study hard), and emotionally panic-stricken (bargain with God). I promised God that I would go to church for a week if I did well on my tests. “Do you think that I should start going to church immediately or wait for my grades?” I asked a colleague after my last exam. “You promised Him the same thing last semester,” my colleague reminded me, “maybe you better start now.”
Being left-brained has even made me religious.
