Law School Quotes

“I supposed if you were going to make a career of breaking laws, you might as well know them.”
― Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice

“The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.

But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.”
― Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

“I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”
“How would you introduce her?” I asked.
“I’m just going to say her name,” he said.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“That weekend the city blushed with a great heat wave but on Monday it rained, cooling the ache in the street’s burn.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in all law schools.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘Kids aren’t getting jobs.’ You never hear faculty talk that way. He did.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“It's often the most naturally intelligent students who have the most difficult time in their first year -- law school, particularly the first year of law school, is not really a place where creativity, abstract thought, and imagination are rewarded. In this way, I often think -- based on what I've heard, not what I know firsthand -- that it's a bit like art school.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I asked Hillary why she had chosen Yale Law School over Harvard. She laughed and said, "Harvard didn't want me." I said I was sorry that Harvard turned her down. She replied, "No, I received letters of acceptance from both schools." She explained that a boyfriend had then invited her to the Harvard Law School Christmas Dance, at which several Harvard Law School professors were in attendance. She asked one for advice about which law school to attend. The professor looked at her and said, "We have about as many woen as we need here. You should go to Yale. The teaching there is more suited to women." I asked who the professor was, and she told me she couldn't remember his name but that she thought it started with a B. A few days later, we met the Clintons at a party. I came prepared with yearbook photos of all the professors from that year whose name began with B. She immediately identified the culprit. He was the same professor who had given my A student a D, because she didn't "think like a lawyer." It turned out, of course, that it was this professor -- and not the two (and no doubt more) brilliant women he was prejudiced against - who didn't think like a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to act on the evidence, rather than on their prejudgments. The sexist professor ultimately became a judge on the International Court of Justice.

I told Hillary that it was too bad I wasn't at that Christmas dance, because I would have urged her to come to Harvard. She laughed, turned to her husband, and said, "But then I wouldn't have met him... and he wouldn't have become President.”
― Alan Dershowitz

“Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?” asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them.
“Why is it an either or question?” the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Law school is a test – not a test of strength, creativity, or intelligence – but one of endurance. A law student’s greatest nemesis is not mastering legal concepts, but enduring the hours of solitude, which endless studying requires.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life’s worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, “Law school was over at last!”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“The stars glittered in the sky and as the number of people at the party grew there were merging conversations and laughter and bodies moving in outlines around the kegs of beer in a curtsy of youth.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Don’t you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world?” asked Connor irrelevantly.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“Law school teaches you one thing above all: how to speak while saying absolutely nothing.”
― Krysten Ritter, Bonfire

“A word now about the bar exam: It's a necessary chore, a rite of passage for any just-hatched lawyer wishing to practice, and though the content and structure of the test itself vary somewhat from state to state, the experience of taking it - a two-day, twelve-hour exam meant to prove your knowledge of everything from contract law to arcane rules about secured transactions - is pretty much universally recognized as hellish.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Should I have a doughnut or my disgusting cardboard?” asked Gwynn, as she drew up languidly before me at a study table in a bookstore on State Street, raising a puffed rice cake in the air.
My eyes narrowed attentively at her face, but as I hesitated, she announced eagerly, “Disgusting cardboard it is!”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“It’s not some romanticized Atticus Finch-type picnic. You’d probably love it, the whole risk of it all, but it’s not without a price. Out there in this city when you pass the bar, it’s all broken dreams and out-of-reach stars. You have to be brilliant, and you have to throw away your social life, your hobbies, but more than that you can’t get your moral values mixed up with legal ethics. They’ll both clash whenever you least expect it, and when you hit a crossroad you have to know when to go left or right or when to just blindly go forward… can you do that?”
― Rebecca McNutt, Bittersweet Symphony

“You know, sometimes I think this is just not it,” he said, his glasses flashing from the early night’s light.
He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause.
“You know what I mean, Tom?” he asked. “It’s just not.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“This is so funny,” said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. “Isn’t this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura.”
I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his chair over to Laura.
“That’s better,” said Ellen. “Isn’t that better?”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“If you can see it, you can be it. If you have inspiring partnership to support you on the way. If you're always learning and you're giving back so that others can learn from you too, then you're always growing and moving forwards.”
― Lorna Baldry

“Legal education," Nader said, "assumes its chief purpose to be the development within a refined ethical framework of the analytical and empirical skills necessary to further justice.”
― Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

“It was not that I felt that i'd done poorly; Ijust realized that I'd missed the chance to do wel..”
― Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

“It was not that I felt that I'd done poorly; I just realized that I'd missed the chance to do wel..”
― Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

“I am not sure," I answered. "I hope it won't break my heart if I don't do well." I had been concentrating on developing that kind of attitude since I'd emerged from my depression in November. I'd realized how much I had taken the achievement ethic to heart - I had been so hard on my mistakes and middling performances. A sincere effort was all I owed myself.”
― Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

“It was not that I felt that I'd done poorly; I just realized that I'd missed the chance to do very well.”
― Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

“I don't know what they might call this in law school, but I think it's pretty fucked up and it should be illegal.”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“If you ran out of ways to please and you had no family money, you went to law school.”
― Ann Brashares, The Last Summer of You and Me

“20. One of my closest friends in law school, Farahnaz Ali Ghodsinia, is a Muslim. After one of our classes, while walking to the parking lot of Malcolm Hall, we saw a caterpillar by her windshield. My immediate reaction was to fold one of our cases into a roll and hand it over. Instead of using it to kill the caterpillar, she carefully assisted it back to the grass. She told me that in a few weeks, that caterpillar would turn into a butterfly. Admittedly, I was surprised and soon realized it was a representation of Islam that needed to be told.”
― Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo , Night Owl: A Nationbuilder’s Manual