Why You Shouldn't Lose Sleep Over Law School: Debunking Common Worries

Description

• Harrison explains the importance of different types of intelligence for attorneys in a Q&A clip.
• He highlights the need for social intelligence in some practice areas and academic intelligence in others.
• For commercial litigation, competence is crucial to avoid arguments against your abilities.
• Patent and corporate law require competence specific to those fields.
• Social intelligence is highly valued in personal injury law, regardless of the law school you attended.
• Harrison challenges the notion that success in law requires attending a top law school or working at a big firm.
• He questions the desirability of working in a firm where you feel unwanted.

Transcript

Transcript:

So let me just explain it to you. So there are different types of attorneys. Some attorneys need social intelligence, and some need academic intelligence. If you want to be like a commercial litigator, you need to be competent to do that because otherwise, people will make arguments around it.

If you want to be a patent attorney or a corporate attorney, you need to be competent to do these jobs for attorneys that need social intelligence; you have a lot of other practice areas. The big one, of course, is personal injury. So when I see a social intelligence thing other than your ability to come up with very complex arguments and be super bright, you can go to a bottom-of-a-barrel law school, the worst law school there is, and become the most successful personal injury attorney in the country.

It doesn't matter. You just go into a practice area that uses your skills. Everybody thinks they must be a summer associate in a big firm or go to a top law school to practice law successfully is insane. Why would you want to work in a firm? You don't want to be with people that don't want you?