Ambivalence about law school reigns. While good law students like Energy Spatula spend hours in the library trying to nail down complicated rules (and getting jobs—congratulations!), I've been feeling like law school is a distant acquaintance I haven't seen or really thought about in years. It's time to buckle down, outline, study study, but... Well, as regular readers known, and as you can see again from the lengthy discussion in comments of this post, I haven't been thrilled with my experience of law school so far. That's no shock; lots of law students aren't thrilled with law school. If we took a survey, we might just find a good majority of current and former students actually loathe (or loathed) law school. Why? I could list reasons, but they all beg the question: Does law school have to be such a crap experience? It doesn't, but it is. Everyone told me it would be like this. (Well, not everyone; I know practicing attorneys who loved law school, but only a couple.) I knew it would be like this. I mean, in theory you could get a bunch of people together to study the laws that regulate our society and expect to get some lively discussion of pressing issues, some critical thinking, some new ideas, some passion. But that's not law school. That might be something professors do in their own research and writing, but not in their teaching. Not when they're teaching 100 students or more per class, and not when they teach in an educational system designed by and for business/corporate interests. But I really don't want to go into it all here. For more thoughts on how law school could be improved, check out an upcoming edition of the [non]billable hour's five by five series (sometime in the next couple of weeks; I'll link to it when it comes up). So it's time to do the study thing. And all the other law school stuff. And then I see the decision by Evan of Going to Cooley to drop out of law school for now (for family reasons, I gather), and I admire it, and it makes me jealous. Being a law school drop out sounds so blissful! What a joy it would be to walk away now! But I fear the joy would be short-lived as I faced the prospect of getting a job and living a life wondering what I might have done had I finished this damned degree. And then I see Jeremy decide to turn down an offer from a big firm because the law just doesn't really grab him like writing does. I think, yeah, me too! Or, me neither! Maybe I should just do what Jeremy's doing—get the J.D. and then do something else. Obviously, that's an option. But that means I still have to take these damnable finals in the next few weeks, doesn't it? *sigh*