Laura: TODAY I AM INTERVIEWING THE LAW CLERKS! In order to get a different perspective and hopefully help people coming into the practice of law, particularly criminal law, I am interviewing three of my people who are at various stages of their careers/law school: JESSICA FANGMAN, a third year law student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, KEVIN MCMAHON, a recent graduate of Indiana University Law School who is awaiting bar results and was recently hired to be the part time law clerk at our office, and TIM BLACK, a full-fledged attorney who was hired here a year ago and has already participated in a first degree murder trial and a federal jury trial!
First off, I want to thank all of you for participating in this role reversal – normally you write content for our Law Office blog and I thought it high time people got to know law from your perspective as well as the challenges, triumphs and fears you face as you go forward in this challenging field.
Let me ask: What was the best class you ever took in law school (if any), and why? I would like you to give our readers specifics and brutal honesty-did someone ignite a passion or challenge you beyond your wildest imagination, and give some concrete examples of why this class will be useful going out into your career. Jessica, you are still in law school-why don’t you go first:
JESSICA: That’s a tough question, Laura! I absolutely love going to class and learning from my professors and classmates. Every single law school class has challenged me in ways I didn’t expect. I would say my favorite class thus far was Professor Devine’s Criminal Law class. The real world experiences he brought to the classroom were unparalleled, and I read each case as many times as I could! Now, about that exam. Talk about a challenge. I think four people died in the first two sentences! Not only did the class introduce me to a field of law that sparked an intense passion to fight for the constitutional rights individuals charged with criminal offenses, it prepared me for the stressful challenges of the workplace. My intellectual endurance was challenged, my ability to articulate arguments grew tenfold, and I was exposed to they types of cases criminal lawyers see day to day in the field. My love of the material ensured me I was well on my way to finding my place in the legal community. But honestly, I will never forget that exam!
KEVIN: The most important class was probably my first year Legal Research and Writing Class. When you first start out law school, you don’t have a great understanding of what lawyers do. All of your first year classes are supposed to help teach you how to think like a lawyer, but Legal Research and Writing does the best job of forcing the issue. When I got my first assignment back, my professor essentially told me that the finished product was awful. Legal writing is very formal, and very direct, and my work was just not on point. That assignment was ungraded, but it still terrified me. After a little panic, I made some adjustments and everything went fine for the rest of the class. My writing skills are constantly evolving, but that first assignment was definitely a turning point.
TIM: I am one of those strange gluttons for punishment that loved law school, so there are honestly several classes to choose from; the one class that stood out as the very best, however, was Federal Criminal Trial Advocacy. The combination of a fantastic professor, subject-matter that was both interesting and relevant, and an atypical syllabus made this class stand out. The professor, an Assistant United States Attorney, fashioned the class around her experience as an AUSA. Our first assignment was to watch the cult classic Point Break starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. We watched Point Break because (a) it’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking, and (b) because the remainder of the semester would place us in courtroom scenarios where we were either prosecuting or defending a bank robbery similar to the one depicted in Point Break. We were taught both the substantive law and courtroom procedure behind the major aspects of a federal criminal case from the Initial Hearing to Sentencing, including the use of federal law enforcement agents as investigatory tools and as witnesses at trial. Our professor went from making us hold a bond hearing one week, to bringing 15 FBI agents into the classroom for a question and answer session the next. It was great because we were challenged to put the laws we learned to use and we were given the opportunity to stand in front of a crowd of people and make an argument.
Laura: Playing off of this question, the next is a two-parter; what was the least valuable class and what do you wish your law school had taught but they did not?
JESSICA: Least valuable class? Another toughie. As I mentioned above I’m a sucker for the learning environment, so I do my best to take each class and apply what I can to my day-to-day life and future legal career. That being said, the least valuable class I have taken is repeating the externship class FOUR TIMES! I love that I can work and receive school credit doing what I love (I currently intern at the Office of the State Appellate Defender) but going through the exact same class four times has been extremely repetitive and slightly frustrating. As to what I wish my law school taught, I would say more practice style courses. The theoretical approach to law is great and necessary to developing a legal mind, but in the real world you need to work quickly. Classes that prepare students for what to expect there first day on the job would be invaluable. Also, more writing classes. Writing is so important and I think we should be required to take a writing class each semester. I also wish my law school had an indigent defense clinic.
KEVIN: My school required us to take at least 6 credits of ‘Legal Theory’ courses, which are basically courses that don’t have any practical application. I took one called ‘Constitutionalism and Democracy,’ which was pretty pointless. It was basically a philosophy course about the conflict between the rights of the individual versus the rights of the people to govern themselves. This sounds interesting, but ended up being painfully boring. The reading assignments were incomprehensible, and the discussions sometimes veered into metaphysics(also incomprehensible). It was not a class I would recommend. Useless, boring, and hard to follow are a bad combination for any course. One thing I wish was that they taught a course on starting your own firm. My school offered an Entrepreneurship course, but from what I understand, it was about helping other people start their own businesses. There are a lot of things that are unique about working in a small firm, which would be useful to learn while in law school. How to attract the right kinds of clients, for instance, is not something that you can learn from a regular business course. Then again, it may not be something anyone can really learn in a classroom environment. One other thing. Even though a lot of skills can only be learned through experience, I think they could have done a better job of stressing that we need to show empathy for our clients. This is true not just for Criminal Law, but for every area of the law. Law school trains you to look through fact patterns, locate legal issues, and attack those issues for the benefit of your client. Clients don’t look at their problem that way though. They come to their lawyer with a story and a problem, and they want you to hear their story and solve their problem. Teaching us to spot the issues while also seeing the case through the eyes of our client is probably something they could have addressed a little better.
TIM: 1) The least valuable class I took, which was also my least favorite, was Property. As a criminal defense attorney, it is unlikely that I will ever have to harken back to the days of Pearson v. Post in any argument I make, and I am thankful for that. I will be happy to let my colleagues determine who was first to catch the fox and what effect that had on ownership of said fox. I will stick to defending the alleged fox-snatcher when charges are officially brought by the State. 2) I wish my law school had provided a class on client screening. I find each and every time that I speak with a potential new client that I am learning something new about what to ask and how to ask it. I wish there had been a class to jumpstart that learning curve.
Laura: Tell us how each of you got interested in the criminal law aspect? When did you know you had such an interest? Was it a fluke, a class you took, an internship you did, or a mentor?
JESSICA: As I mentioned above, when I took Professor Devine’s class I new I had found my calling. I also volunteered for Cabrini Green Legal Aid my first year and thoroughly enjoyed helping clients seal their criminal records. After my criminal law class and my volunteer work with CGLA, I externed at the Fifth District of Cook County under the Presiding Judge and was able to observe countless criminal jury trials. I fell in love with the subject matter, the content of the cases and motion presented to the court. I also externed my first summer with the DuPage County Public Defender Office and that experience also reinforced my desire to practice criminal law. I am currently enrolled in Criminal Procedure and absolutely love it. I get so fired up about the material and I love to have intellectual debates with my professor and classmates.
KEVIN: I first knew that I wanted to be a Defense Attorney before I started law school, when I worked at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office. I was glad I did, because a lot of people decide to become lawyers only because they don’t know what else to do after college. Getting some experience before actually becoming a lawyer makes the process less stressful because you are less likely to turn around in your third year and decide being a lawyer is not for you. There are a lot of aspects to Criminal Law that are interesting, but I especially admire the procedural safeguards that have developed to protect people who have been charged with a crime. The job of the defense attorney is to protect those safeguards. It is sort of like being a bodyguard.
TIM: I think I always knew that I wanted to be a criminal law attorney, but I didn’t realize I knew until the summer after my first year of law school. I’ve always been fascinated by the “criminal underworld” and the players associated with it – criminals, law enforcement, legal professionals, prisons, etc. It wasn’t until the summer after my first year of law school that I realized that such a fascination could be an asset in a career as a criminal lawyer, and I have neither hesitated nor looked back since. The summer after my first year of law school, I was lucky enough to secure an internship in the chambers of a United States District Court Judge. My first day on the job also happened to be the first day of jury selection for a two-week cocaine conspiracy Cartel case. I watched, in awe, as both prosecutors and defense attorneys methodically picked through jury selection, theatrically offered opening statements, and fastidiously questioned witnesses about buying kilograms of cocaine, hiding the supply, selling it off, and laundering the money. I heard wiretaps and saw secretly-recorded videos, heard stories and saw evidence, and watched very skilled attorneys argue to a jury; and after the trial was over, I got a chance to listen to the jurors as the attorneys asked them about their experience. It was during that trial that I knew I wanted to be a criminal law attorney. I looked forward to going to work each day for the next two weeks, eager to see what would happen the next day at that trial. Then, over the course of the summer, I was exposed to many other criminal proceedings and every law school class I took from then on was taken with the goal of becoming a criminal lawyer.
Laura: Without intending to disparage any of your law schools, did they prepare you to work in a criminal defense practitioner’s office? If not, tell us the single biggest thing you wish you had learned that now having worked here, may have helped you?
JESSICA: The classes I have taken did not directly prepare me to work in a criminal defense practitioner’s office, but did indirectly prepare me for my work at LauraLaw. While criminal law was helpful in that I was aware of important concepts, I expect to encounter a sharp learning curve when I start practicing. I also wish my school would have taught me that sometimes doing a substantial amount of research isn’t necessary. Routine motions filed in court do not require extensive legal research. We also are given unlimited access to Lexis and Westlaw, which I think might prove to be detrimental during my first few years of practice. Legal research is expensive and it’s the client who pays the bill. Nothing beats on the job experience. Also, it seems like services at law schools are geared toward individuals who want to work at medium or bigger firms.
KEVIN: Not exactly. They do make sure that you are able to do legal research, but most of the practical skills only come through experience. This is why internships and extracirriculars are so important. I worked for the Cook County Public Defender and the Marion County Public Defender(Indianapolis) while I was in law school, and that is where the vast majority of my practical skills came from. The big problem is that a lot of things just cannot be taught in a classroom. You cannot teach someone how to interact with clients, or how to handle themselves in a courtroom. They have to learn it for themselves, and that can only come through experience.
TIM: As I said before, I had a great time at law school, and as much as I did love Loyola, there were definitely some things about my (very expensive) law education that left me unawares. Some of the very simple things that are required of a criminal defense attorney – filing subpoenas, writing subpoenas, practical motion-writing skills, office organization and management skills, marketing and self-promotion, and legal research without the resources of a law school or top law firm – were not taught at Loyola. I learned how to read legalese, interpret statutes and decisions, research points of law, and conduct a hearing, but I never learned many of the nuts and bolts of day-to-day law practice. Thankfully, I worked for a solo practitioner as a legal assistant before attending law school, so I had some familiarity with working in an office, because none of what I know about working for a criminal defense practitioner came directly from what I learned at Loyola. With that being said, I was equipped with many of the tools required to improvise. Luckily, Laura has allowed me to make a few mistakes and learn on the job.
Stay tuned for our next installment of the interview on how to get your foot in the door!
