Keep Your Eyes Open And Your Collar Down

As I discussed yesterday, having a social life in law school is not the easiest trick. Between the work, the environment, and the expectations, being able to let your hair down and have fun can seem impossible. It isn’t. You can have an active social life in law school. Too much advice about having a social life in law school is to just not have one. That’s not an answer. The better way to think about it is to keep two big things in mind.

Awareness and Control
The awareness you need to have is that whatever you do will be discovered by the rest of the school. It’s so tempting to fight this. You don’t want to have to act like everything you do is being watched, recorded, and commented on. But you need to accept it. If you refuse to believe it, you’re going to find out just how true it is. Accept the fact that news and gossip will spread about even mundane events. Act accordingly and you’ll avoid a lot of unnecessary embarrassment.

The other key is to stay in control. This means the obvious, like not drinking so much that you don’t know what’s going on. But it also means having discretion. That means a bit of discretion about who you hang out with. It means a bit of discretion about who you sleep with. And it means a bit of discretion about getting involved in the law school gossip mill. Let’s examine those two big ideas along three tracks: alcohol, gossip, and sex.

Like High School with Legal Drinking
There’s a lot of drinking in law school. Has been for a long time and will be forever. There are events where you get free drinks from the school. There are “bar reviews,” especially during orientation and the beginning of the school year. There are the nights you just need to blow off some steam and get away from the books. There’s studying with a glass of wine. And there are big celebrations when finals are over.

The key with drinking is to avoid as much as possible getting caught in a situation where you’re not in control. That does not mean avoiding a night out just because there might (or absolutely will) be lots of drinking. Sometimes a night is just a shit show. If no one is in control on a given night, then you being out of control becomes a lot less significant. What it does mean is to not become the guy that turns every gathering of law students into a drinking game or has to be helped home from every trip to the bar.

Did You Hear…?
It’s hard to avoid getting caught in the law school gossip mill. I still love to hear the dirt from my law school, even though I’m not there anymore and the number of people I know is dwindling fast. Even more challenging is that the gossip in law school is so much better than you might have been used to in high school. How many of you have gossiped about a classmate getting engaged? And while it’s fun to talk about who drank in high school, it’s a lot more fun to talk about what people do when they can drink out in the open.

But be circumspect about your gossiping. Just like you need to be aware that everything you do will be known by everyone, assume that every juicy detail you pass on, whether it’s rumor or fact, will come back to you. Law students are smart. They can follow the breadcrumbs. This goes doubly so if you’re the person who starts the rumor. In a world where everything goes in one ear and directly back out someone’s mouth, the person who can keep a secret or stop the game of telephone earns much respect.

Let’s Talk About Sex
No doubt lots of people have told you not to have sex with your classmates. With so much law school advice focused on keeping your relationships with your classmates as professional as possible, not hooking up with them tends to float to the top. In general, it’s an area you want to be cautious in, though not for the same reasons some of the more prudish law school advice cites.¹

You want to be careful with sleeping with law students because of the nonstop rumor factory. If it gets out that you slept with more than one person in a short while, you’re going to get branded as someone who sleeps around. If you sleep with someone who isn’t discreet about their personal life, expect that not only will people know you slept with them, but that they’ll get the play-by-play and vivid details as well. You’re better off dating your classmates rather than simply hooking up with them. If you hook up with a random person in undergrad, you might never see them again. If you hook up with a section mate, you have to see that person every day. In every class. For the rest of the semester if not the rest of the year.

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy
The advice that you should simply avoid personal relationships and an active social life in law school has so many flaws that I can’t believe how many people still take to it. Either they come into law school with their game face on and think acting cold and professional is part of being a successful law student, or after a bad experience in or outside of the classroom they hop onto that wagon like hangover sufferers declare they’ll never drink again.

Not only are the dangers overblown, but it’s also one of the easiest ways to make law school difficult by isolating yourself. Who are you more likely to trade outlines with: the kid that does nothing but study or the guy you were doing Jager Bombs with two weeks ago? For all the professionalism rhetoric in law school, it’s conveniently ignored that some of the most productive professional relationships are forged over golf or drinks. Why should law school be any different?