Kathryne M. Young

Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years.

How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School

Reads better in context, but a great reminder

Kay so Queso

It is only useful to think about whether you are a better lawyer today than you were yesterday.

“When people asked me if it was hard, I'd say no. Scrubbing toilets and cleaning hotel rooms for minimum wage, getting wages stolen by management and supporting a family — that's hard.... [L]earning how to use the law for my people is a privilege.”

Great self-aware quote about navigating law school between different class identities

One affluent student reflected, "The legal profession is comprised of a very conservative and polished group of individuals. I can't imagine having to learn the norms and graces of the scene not having grown up in it.”

I, uh…big fan of the author, but is she really saying damn when are you gonna have time to fuck? 😂😂

Cool insight into how long shit takes tho, maybe it behooves you to be a one pump chump? 🤷🏽‍♂️

Suppose you have four cases assigned for Torts that day, three for Contracts, and three for Criminal Law. We're talking 10 hours minimum. When are you supposed to eat, sleep, or Netflix and chill?

If law school clases were set up to help you do well on law school exams, professors would distill the rules succinctly, then give you tons of practice applying them.

Legal practice also involves a huge number of components that are never formally tested in law school, such as your ability to investigate, negotiate, mediate, or ingratiate.

How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School quotes

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