What¹s law school like?

by EVAN BEVINS
reporter

Law school: what's it like?

"It's like going to the dentist every day."

That review came from Rob Aliff, an attorney with the firm of Jackson and Kelly in Charleston. Aliff was one of three panelists who participated in Monday's "What's It Like?" discussion of the legal profession.

The program was the second installment of "What's It Like?" this year. The other panelists were Carrie Summers, a third-year law student at WVU, and Jason Huber, an attorney with the Charleston firm of Foreman and Crane.

All three panelists shared negative opinions of law school, but positive opinions of the legal profession. The panelists agreed the hard work was worth it.

"I think it's a great experience; I think it's a bad experience," Summers said. "I think it's every emotion you could ever go through."

Dr. Richard Badenhausen, chairman of the Honors Council, said the What's It Like? program "gives students access to professionals in an informal atmosphere so that they feel authorized to ask questions that will give them an accurate representation of what it's really like to work in that profession."

Josh Carpenter, sophomore from Dunmore, said he is considering a major in political science and a career in law. He said the program brought the possibility of such a career "down to earth."

"It gave me a little bit of perspective on what law school would be like and what practicing would be like," he said.

Elizabeth Duke, sophomore Latin major from Hoover, Ala., was covering the program for the Honors Newsletter, but found herself interested in the law.

"I wasn't interested in law prior to attending this . . . . I'd only heard the negative folklore that surrounds the law profession," she said. "This panel helped me to see lawyers as real people with noble goals."

"If you go through law school and are successful at law school, then you can do anything," Summers said.

Aliff said there were six things a student needed to do to get through law schoolóread, write, read, write, read, write.

"If you don't like to read and write, don't go to law school. Period," he said.

Aliff also told students that practicing law in the real world isn't like practicing law on TV.

"It's not 'Ally McBeal.' It's not 'The Practice,' " he said. "Sometimes you're litigating what's on the front page of the paper and sometimes what you work on for six months, no one will ever know about . . . ."

Huber's speech was the most energetic of the three, displaying an excitement for his profession.

"There's nothing better when you win, there's nothing worse when you lose," he said. "There's a special kind of purgatory when you're waiting for the jury to come back."

Huber said law students need to believe in something and have a drive to get through law school.

"You can practice law and advocate progressive social change," he said.