ciroccoj | Very Little of What I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Law School

In keeping with recent lj themes on "things I have learned today", here's my own list re. law school:

It is indeed possible for an elevator to be out for 4 months, with people working on it every single day. I would think that in that time, you could build a new elevator from scratch - and I include mining the metals and manufacturing the plastic needed for components into that estimate.
Sleep. Is. Good. Not totally law-related, but it certainly helped make the mediation demonstration bearable this morning.
Watching a mediation is like watching two snails mate. You're not sure what you're looking at, it's slow as molasses, and not even the participants have any fun.
Lawyers really are slimy. At least, law students are.

We're doing simulations and we've been beaten over the head with Ethical Considerations, and we still keep seeing students lying, cheating, not disclosing major facts, etc. Even on the day devoted solely to ETHICS, at least 25% of the students did the "unethical" thing in their simulations.

And we're not getting paid to win these deals. We aren't even being marked on our simulations. There is no reason to lie or be slimy, other than an intrinsic need to "beat" the other side. Scary.
The best kind of food is free food.
Just having a copy of the Charter and a package of articling info from the Department of Justice, from a job fair at which they served free food, makes me feel like some day I too will be a lawyer.
Over two years, you can slowly get used to the phrase "called to the bar" until it no longer sounds pretentious. Until you can picture yourself saying it without blushing or cracking up.