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r/auslaw•
SexualPapercut

Law school vs. Working

Serious Discussion

I was told that regardless of your performance in Law School, this will NOT translate into how good of a Lawyer you'll be. How true is this statement?

For example I believe if I perform pretty poorly in my Contracts or Crim Law subject, I would feel that I have missed the fundamentals for working as a Lawyer in that field from the start, which may affect my performance and abilities. However I have been told otherwise, but I just cannot see how my example isn't true.

I will admit I am an incredibly nooby and naive law student.

Thanks in advance for any clarification!

Posted May 16, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

5049
Get_0n_The_Beers•

Very true. I know a lot of lawyers and barristers who were bottom of the class back in the day and did very well for themselves as QCs or partners of law firms. Being a good lawyer is as much knowing the law as it is having awesome people, networking and negotiation skills.

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JackPhalus•

Everything in life is networking and negotiation skills

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Get_0n_The_Beers•

Absolutely!

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throwaway2242985h2n•

Are there really bottom of the class law students who end up as qcs?

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hawkgrlIt's the vibe of the thing•

Well some QCs never even went to uni

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did_i_stutterrrrGets off on appeal•

pauline Hanson voice

Please explain??

1
malagawine•

Search ‘Diploma in Law’. At USYD you only need a 60-something ATAR. It’s like a non-conventional law school. There are successful solicitors and SCs who never went to law school and are very knowledgeable in their areas of law. I know a solicitor who went this route and failed commercial law and real property several times and is now successful in a completely different area of law.

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StinkyGoona•

It’s only as true as you make it. You might do poorly through Law School yet be an outstanding advocate. Don’t throw a blanket on yourself while you’re still so young in your career.

Keep your head down and more than anything, work hard! Don’t compare yourself to others in your cohort, work on improving how you apply the law. Good luck for the future :)

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MaN_of_AwE888•

Keep your head down and more than anything, work hard! Don’t compare yourself to others in your cohort, work on improving how you apply the law. Good luck for the future :)

I love this, so true <3 I feel like if your end goal is to be a good lawyer, you will be. Some people only study to prove something to themselves/their family.

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JRrivera654•

I really needed to hear this, thank you. It's very easy to get caught up in comparing yourself in law school.

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PMmeblandHaikus•

Depends what area of law you go into. A lot of it isn't that hard to be honest, you aren't going to start out flexing your brain, you will be flexing your endurance and eyeballs.

A HD student might be too much of a perfectionist to be timely in returning work. A C student might have a better handle on work life balance and avoid burn out.

To me a HD transcript says this person is a grinder with good English. However how that applies to practical work is hard to say. Could be amazing, or they might struggle with the boredom of junior stuff.

A charismatic credit student might be superior if clients love them.

Really depends what type of law you do.

If you're just passing/failing, in my opinion it might not be the career for you unless you have a strong passion for it. There are many credit students that struggle to find work so naturally an employer will have a good selection of candidates to pick from. (I'd say it was easier in the past to have rubbish grades because the supply of students was much less than it is today)

Its not an easy industry and resilience is not necessarily easy to determine through grades.

Edit: for some practical advice, if you struggle with boring academics go into people areas eg. Crim, family, personal injury etc. Your social skills will make or break you there. Everyday people want lawyers who speak plain English. Plus its very dynamic and fun. A bookworm without social skills will conversely struggle significantly in these areas. Naturally being academic as well will help, but its less important than your charisma levels.

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Neither-Run2510•

Great accurate comment.

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AgentKnitter•

All of this plus... it all depends on what kind of work you go into. If you are a HD Honours student and you go into some kind of work that requires a lot of research and analysis, then great.

But... that doesn't mean you'll be great at the rough and tumble chaos of criminal legal aid work.

Being better at one or the other doesn't make you a better or worse lawyer in the grand scheme of things, because we're not really comparing the same thing.

For instance, when I briefed counsel in Victoria, I didn't look for HD honours and connections. I wanted someone who has experience dealing with my chaotic clients. Someone with similar experience to me - legal aid, ALS, community law, practical skills and experience dealing with shit going sideways in a hurry.

But when I was (very briefly!) in a more business oriented field and needed to brief a barrister who specialised in taxation, I looked for very different skills and experience.

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calmblueme•

You can still have the fundamentals of crim law or contracts down without doing really well in those subjects. You can be a great lawyer without doing well in school. You can also be a great lawyer as well as doing well in law school, and be a crap lawyer despite doing well in law school. You can’t be a great lawyer if you can’t keep an open mind to lots of different outcomes, like deciding no one could ever be a good lawyer without great law school results. One of the main things a lawyer needs to be able to do is think about different scenarios and risks that may arise, and decide on the most practical and effective things to put in place to prevent them or mitigate against them. Black and white thinking will not help you see situations from different perspectives.

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gotnomiddlename•

Honestly- as a veteran of another industry- I’ve two words of advice. Make Friends.

Building relationships and maintaining them means if/when you are say a barrister or any other professional you’ll get work because people like and trust you. And if you get lots of work you’ll become a better lawyer.

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thefreshserve•

Great point - I think the most successful people (who don't go crazy) are the ones who are able to make friends in industries they enjoy working in. Genuine relationships scale more than almost any other force

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shae_w•

I wholeheartedly agree with this. And once you’re in the industry, listen to all your peers, including your support staff. They can all equally help you get far

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siliconbunnyProfessor of Pugilism•

how good of a Lawyer

how good of a Lawyer

No "of" in there.

Pet peeve.

How good a ... How good a .... How good a ....

"Are you a good lawyer?" => "How good a lawyer are you?" => Hence contraction: "How good?"

Argh. Had to vent.

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jumpingmassage•

Dunno why you're getting downvotes. That's solid advice.

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FirstTimePlayerVexatious litigant•

When reviewing somebodies drafting in a professional setting, go nuts with the red ink. Rip the writing to shreds if need be.

It's pedantry when critiquing informal discussion, in circumstances where it adds nothing to the conversation. It is especially petty asshole behavior when the entire purpose of the post is to hijack the conversation to criticize somebodies grammar, and the poster still can't be fucked actually addressing the actual subject matter.

And on the topic of pedantry, if you are ever going to do it, at least be correct. "Are you a good lawyer?" is not the same question as "How good a lawyer are you?". The former is a binary yes/no question, the latter invites a qualitative answer.

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Rewolf8•

How good of you.

2
adingostolemytoast•

Law school doesn't really teach you how to be a lawyer. It definitely doesn't teach you how to be an employee.

The reason why employers look at your other activities is that they want to see that you can function as an adult human who has to interact with other adult humans in a cooperative way in stressful and non stressful environments.

Being good at studying and writing essays is not the same as being a good lawyer.

Some people just don't learn or function well in an abstract environment of formal education and need the reality of practise to step up. It's the reality that motivates them.

Some people who are really good at studying and writing essays/doing exams don't cope with real work. The loss of regular quantifiable feedback in the form of marks makes them lose their motivation, or they just can't adapt from the simple questions of University, which are designed to test you on specific points, to the weird and random diversity of the real world.

And then there's all the admin and the need to figure things out for yourself, even if you have the best seniors supporting you.

I taught a first year law subject a few years ago when I was between jobs and I was horrified at the inability of my students to work things out without detailed study guides and prewritten answer plans.

The amount of handholding you kids get these days in highschool and University is just astonishing and it does not prepare you for the reality of work. Some will cope with the transition to work, some will thrive in the transition to work and many ... will not.

Marks are not a good predictor of which category any given graduate will fall into.

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teambob•

Upvoted until the 'kids these days' rant. Socrates complained about 'the kids' in his day

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localcounsel•

Students ask for detailed study guides/answer plans etc. not necessarily because they don’t know how to answer a problem, but to make sure they tick all the boxes the lecturer wants to maximize their marks. Most people know law exams/assignments are a bit of an artificial exercise.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

0
Acrobatic_Skill_4138•

Former lawyer here. As another lawyer once said to me: A grade law students make professors. B grade law students make judges. C grade law students make money.

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Lancair04•

Wowee there is a lot of B/S in this thread.

The best lawyers I know did extremely well in law school. This is not just the wonkiest black letter nerds either: the most impressive advocates, the most business savvy partners, the whole spectrum.

Nothing in law school is conceptually that difficult. The people who do the best are the ones who are the smartest and work hardest. Unsurprisingly, these traits have a large degree of crossover in success as an actual lawyer. And given you need to be very literate to do well at law, most university medal winners in law are actually very well rounded and are far from limited to plugging away at academia.

Now, obviously it is possible to succeed in the legal profession without having done well in law school, but that’s increasingly no longer the case. No one becomes really successful by just being very good at schmoozing clients or a fast talker these days. If you don’t have great technical skills you’ll get smoked by the many people who do.

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borbdorl•

Entirely agree - not knowing the subject matter and failing a unit does not mean you'll be a bad lawyer (or even bad in that practice area) but doing poorly at every unit suggests you may struggle in practice. RE stuffing one unit, that subject matter might just be better suited to on the job learning. You might not gel with the lecturer. You might have other stuff going on.

However, to be a great lawyer you need to be driven, self-starting, adaptable, intelligent, personable etc (different measures of those qualities, and others, depending where you end up in the profession). A person with all of those qualities is ceteris paribus going to do well at law school generally.

It's not unheard of to do really poorly at law school and still become a great lawyer. I would suggest that tends to be because there are other things weighing on you during uni which you are able to move past. Less often because you had not developed the necessary qualities/skills during uni and somehow manage to develop them afterwards/in practice.

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borbdorl•

As a counterpoint to many of the responses I would say that many at the very peak of the profession - your top silks, superior Court judges/justices, big law partners and so on - tend to be high academic achievers. There are some who aren't but there is a correlation.

They are not the only "good lawyers" out there of course (ie you can be an excellent lawyer and never go that far/down that path).

At the end of the day, I think it depends why you're not succeeding in law school. If it's because you're lazy then you may struggle as a lawyer.

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TomasFitzObviously Kiefel CJ•

The old carnard is HD students become academics, D students become judges, C students become lawyers isn’t perfect, but it captures the essence. The skill needed to be very good at law school certainly overlaps with the skills needed to be a very good lawyer. But the Venn diagram of the two is far from a circle.

Also, keep in mind that people end up specialising in areas they literally didn’t even study in law school. The ability to learn how to get across an area of law - and how to put arguments persuasively - are the key ones.

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kaze754•

You can absolutely be a good lawyer without having done well at law school, but it probably helps to have done well at law school. There is probably a correlation between those who did well at law school and those who are good lawyers, even if that correlation is far from perfect (you will get good lawyers who were terrible students, and fantastic students who are terrible lawyers).

The skillsets are not completely different, if looked at with a degree of generality. People who can adapt to succeed in one competitive environment are probably well-placed to do so in another.

But just be aware that there is a gap between doing well in law school and understanding the law, and between understanding the law and being a good lawyer.

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thefreshserve•

Dislaimer: Not a lawyer but worked in Corporate world and my partner is a recent Barrister.

There are certain traits that will serve you well in your early years in the Professional Services world directly related to work ethic, endurance, grit etc. These are of course always useful but particularly so at the beginning of your career when you're expected to take direction from others and put the hard yards in.

Over time as you potentially 'climb the ladder', you will learn that commercial skills (i.e. the ability to own client relationships and generate revenue) become the main determiner of success - the skills needed to excel at this are not always the same things that make a 'good worker' and some find this aspect challenging or off-putting. For those people, this can indirectly and/or eventually create a 'ceiling' to their careers as you can only climb so high while being a 'good worker' as opposed to someone who consistently brings in business for the firm

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Strangeboganman•

yes,no and maybe. uni performance is an indicator at that time of your ability to apply law. some people mature later on and some lose interest. If you are doing good work at uni say D average you will be ok with law as a career. if you are struggling at uni, law may not be for you unless you apply yourself but again everyone is different.

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Kitty015•

It’s true to the extent that people with bad grades can still make good lawyers.

But there is a pretty good correlation between candidates with good grades and candidates who become good lawyers.

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SausageintheSky•

We'll getting good grades doesn't mean you'll be good at the non academic side of law e.g. transactional crap, form filling, workplace relations, client interactions/care, stress management, resolve. It means you'll probably be good at written submissions and the like. But starting out, that other stuff is probably more important

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Kitty015•

As another commenter said, it’s not like getting bad grades makes you better at those other things.

Certainly firms cannot (and do not) hire solely on the basis of good grades and hope the other skills will be there too. Grades are a part of their assessment of candidates, not all of it.

But only a fool would think good grades are or should be viewed negatively.

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kaze754•

Getting bad grades doesn't mean you'll be good at all that stuff either.

Getting good grades probably means you're more likely to be good at it. Hard to say whether the relationship is at all causal.

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MultipleAttempts•

I did not do well in the subject/course of Corporations Law in uni and was generally an average student (think ~65% average), yet I've ended up working in a role at one of the big firms doing corporate law and generally feedback from my betters/seniors are very positive - also feels strange that graduates and junior lawyers (who graduated with honours and did much, much better than I did at uni) asking me for guidance etc. I would say I got a pretty good hold of the law at work but I sure know I have much more to learn (though one is constantly learning at law).

I would say my less than stellar performance at uni made me very humble and aware of the limits of my ability. The key was not to let it discourage me from pursuing my interest (in corporate and commercial law). I guess I just wasn't lucky with the test questions that were put to me and I'm generally bad at doing exams in 2-3 hours blocks.

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Ok_Huckleberry_8179•

It’s very true. Some (many?) grads with great grades are mediocre lawyers, and some grads with mediocre grades are terrific lawyers. In addition to various soft skills that are not taught at law school, a good lawyer needs to be intellectually curious IMO. Some / many grads with high marks score poorly against one or both of these criteria.

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UnashamedlyJimmy•

I think one of the most obvious things I've seen is that in uni there's always a more correct answer (and in some cases a right one). This rarely ever translates into practice. Try telling a judge or a magistrate that you have the right answer or even that the court would be wrong to find in the alternative and watch how quickly they do exactly that.

Another big point of difference, although somewhat related to the first, is that lateral thinking skills and an ability to sacrifice one argument for the case as a whole are of great value. Being able to adapt, change and think outside the box (as cliché as that might sound) are some of the most valuable skills you can have. This, at least in my experience, was never something that was rewarded at uni!

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Madzi206It's the vibe of the thing•

I agree that performance in law school does not translate to performance as a lawyer. Law school teaches you how to be a law student (accompanied by the obvious interest of universities to usher you into research degrees). Legal practice teaches you how to be a lawyer. From my anectodal observations, I know an even mix of high distinction students that are great lawyers and some that are terrible lawyers. I also known an even mix of pass students that are terrible lawyers and some that are great lawyers. Funnily enough, some of the worst marks I got in law school were the practice areas I'm now involved with. What shits me off about how some subjects are taught at uni is the overreliance on research/policy that has nothing to do with the practice of that area of law.

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yeh_nah2018•

It’s an indication but it is a long way from conclusive

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