I Am the Law

January 28th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt

My colleague Kyle McEntee has a new project that you’ll want to check out. “I Am the Law” is a series of podcasts exploring a wide range of law practice jobs. These aren’t typical attorney interviews: the lawyers offer more detail about their practices than I’ve heard on other broadcasts or career panels.

The podcasts are rich in detail, but free for all listeners. Law students will find a wealth of information on practice areas, work settings, and the paths that individual attorneys followed in their careers. I hope that career services offices will recommend the podcasts to their students.

Prospective law students will also appreciate these podcasts. The discussions can take them well beyond the media stereotypes of BigLaw associates and aggressive courtroom lawyers. What’s it like to practice as a family or patent law attorney? How about real estate, immigration, nonprofit management, and transactional work? Can you believe that there is still room for a “writs attorney” in the twenty-first century? These 20-30 minute podcasts are perfect for listening while working out, riding the bus, or walking across campus.

I’m intrigued, finally, about the possibility of using these podcasts to complement doctrinal courses. I wish that when I taught first-year Torts, I could have asked my students to listen to the podcast with personal injury attorney Tricia Dennis. (Disclosure: I’m the host who interviewed Tricia, and I serve as an ongoing host for I Am the Law.) We forget how much of our law school curriculum focuses on appellate lawyering. Even when we ask students to imagine how they would apply a rule to a client’s problem, it’s hard for them to see the world through a practitioner’s eyes.

We should do much more in law school to help students understand their future roles as problem solvers for real people and organizations. But as we explore those avenues, the I Am the Law podcasts are an easy, cost-free way to give students a small taste of law practice related to the subject areas you teach.

Have a listen. I think you’ll be impressed, as I was, by the thoughtfulness of these lawyers in explaining both their current work and their personal paths in the law.