I had spent the previous two weeks fishing. I would wake up at dawn, throw my gear and dog in the car and head out to the beach. Needless to say a classroom in Jamaica Queens felt like a world away from the beaches and vineyards of the North Fork. “Your goal is to find the issue at the heart of each case.” Issue? I didn’t really know what an issue was. It seemed like a relatively important concept though. I typed the word issue onto my laptop, control b’d it to make it bold and typed a question mark. All around me the clicking of fingers on keys rose to an impressive roar.
This was law school up close. We were all sitting in a tiered classroom on Utopia Parkway watching the strange creature called the “law Professor” behind the mahogany podium. “Sometimes the Court will be nice and actually state, ‘the issue in this case is such and such,’ but more often then not you’ll have to find it yourself.”
The first week of law school was basically an introduction to the procedural aspects of the study of law (the distinction between procedure and substance is a useful concept to become familiar with as soon as possible.). Today’s lesson was case briefing. So apparently the deal is that in each case there is an “issue,” the issue is the question the case addresses. The issue is the law. Again, the roar of fingers on keyboards.
Looking back I realize that I literally had no idea what I signed up for. The first year of law school was so intense, so insane, so much fun and so much pain that had someone attempted to explain it all to me I would not have believed them. People had told me that it will change the way you think. I was told that the abstract concept of “thinking like a lawyer” would invade every aspect of my life. It did. It was the first step into a larger world. I’d do it again.
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