You don't know crap

All these recent graduates, bar exam study groups, and the associated glee has made me nostalgic. Perhaps that is why I have lately been obsessed with blogging about how explicably (because it is far from inexplicable) naive and yet cocky all of these noobs are. Law school inflates what usually are already inflated egos. I am not sure who thinks they know more: a lawyer or a teenager? I think a lawyer probably does more damage with that misconception. Of course, this will all change for most noobs when they actually get into practice and get schnookered for the first time. They will screw something up, not realize there is a rule of civil procedure for that, or just make a strategic mis-calculation. It will ground them in reality, sort of. But there are a special few who don't get it--they will still think they are the second coming of Johnny Cochran. They will try to tell veteran attorneys what to do, or take on tasks far beyond their level of competency. In short, they think they know everything. These are the most dangerous new lawyers. They are the 87 year old women in 1982 Chrysler New Yorkers speeding down the highway listening to a Tony Bennet cassette while their cat sits in the back seat. They have no sense of their lack of capacity to do what they are doing and that makes them dangerous. Now keeping with the old lady analogy, most noob lawyers get a driver or don't drive at all. But not the chosen few. Not the dangerous noobs. No, they think they know it all. They think they know how to write the best, they think they have their fingers on the pulse of judges and juries, they think they can give advice to older and wiser attorneys. And they are wrong. WRONG!

Here is a quick test as to whether or not you are actually one of these dangerous noobs. If, in the last month, you thought that you knew more about something than anyone who has been practicing law for at least 2 years or more, you are a dangerous noob. If you have, on your own initiative, used any of your work for showing someone else how something should be done, you are a dangerous noob. So here is advice (as if you will take it!): shut up. No one cares what you think, even if someone tells you they care. You are not entitled to an opinion yet, even if someone tells you that you are. You are not as smart as you think you are, even if you did well in school. And, most important of all, you are halfway down the road of ruining your legal career because it is most likely the case that word has got out that you are full of yourself and not as smart as you think you are.

Of course, you can change this all now. You can reverse the effects of being a dangerous noob and just be a noob if you take a few drastic steps. First, get a haircut. Second, get rid of 80% of the books you have in your office. You only need a legal dictionary, a regular dictionary, a book on style, a book on grammar and usage, and Bluebook. You need nothing else. Third, go to Vegas and invest in a hooker. You are too high on yourself and maybe if you had something to regret, you would be a bit more humble in your life. Fourth, buy all of Eminem's CDs and listen to nothing else until you like them. Finally, every time you feel inclined to read a book on how to be a better lawyer or on a particular aspect of being a lawyer (trial procedure, writing briefs, etc.), go exercise instead or get another hooker. Those books won't make you a better lawyer. They will make you worse, because they warp the reality of the law. And the only thing you need to worry about now is the reality of your profession, not the "reality" you have invented in your mind.