I am starting my third year at Harvard Law School, and only now have I finally gotten around to reading "One L" by Scott Turow. It's an embarrassing admission, I know, seeing as how "One L" is practically required reading before anyone goes to law school, and especially if they're going to Harvard.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I read it now as a 3L, and not before I was a 1L. I don't know how scared I would have been by it all (I'm too easygoing to really get my shorts in a wad), but now I definitely understand it all.

Comparing the world of "One L" to my world as a 1L, I saw many frightening similarities, and many stark contrasts. Harvard as an institution is still a hoidy-toidy place, very full of itself. Some of the professors are very full of themselves and exist only for the honor of the intelligentsia. I don't feel that my workload (or at least my work drive) was as severe as that portrayed in the book. I had time to go to parties and on dates, join academic and non-academic extracurricular student groups, play video games, read for pleasure, and keep regular sleep hours. True, I would often study late and on weekends. I remember one time as I was walking home near 11pm, I thought to myself how much I would hate a job that I didn't get home from till 11. However, the fascination of the law and the intellectual workouts I was getting were worth it.

I remember one time in the first week or so of school, I was studying Contracts in a part of the library I hardly ever go to anymore. I had been assigned to read a case that was meant to explain the consideration doctrine--a contract isn't valid till some consideration (some value) has been exchanged by both sides. I didn't know that definition of the word "consideration," and I was new at reading cases. I struggled for quite a long time trying to make sense of this. I wasn't motiviated by fear that Professor Frug (crazy old Professor Frug!) would call on me and I'd be unprepared; I was motivated simply because this seemed to be an important point that I needed to get in order to understand the course. For about half an hour, I think I felt the same kinds of emotions Turow describes throughout his entire book. Then I figured it out and went home.

Since then, I've never gotten that stuck on a case. Or, if I have, I have blown it off, waiting to learn about it in class. I have learned that in the end, the specifics of the cases are usually quite unimportant. I don't spend nearly as much time reading now as I did as a 1L. But my point is that I only achieved a Turowian state of intellectual anxiety once as a 1L, for half an hour, and Turow claims he felt it for an entire nine months.

The competitive atmosphere he describes does not exist in my life. I have been through four semesters at HLS now, and I still do not know what grade any single classmate of mine got in any of the classes I have ever taken. We certainly don't stand around talking about it. I only have a vague idea of who is on Law Review, and frankly I don't care. To the extent that I do care, I pity them--Law Review is a bad break if you ask me. Way too much work.

Ironical sidenote: I am currently in the throes of the clerkship application process where lack of Law Review membership may be standing between me and the ideal clerkship I want on the DC Circuit. I wouldn't wish Law Review on anyone, especially myself, but it is becoming apparent to me that in certain situations, it can make a difference.

I'm glad my HLS isn't the HLS of "One L." That was a hellish place to be. Intellectually invigorating, but full of unseen and seen enemies. To me, HLS is a happy place. I'm happy here, and I couldn't ask for anything more.