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Old 29-05-2022, 12:16 PM
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Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
is litigation really that bad? I am a law student. if liti is so sh-t then why would people still choose liti?
Different strokes for different folks. As someone mentioned above, litigation is far closer to the "academic" side of law than transactional work, so it may attract people who really like the intellectual aspects of practice.

But you need to remember that law is also a business. It's no longer an ivory tower profession it once was in the 1800s. Lawyers can't simply wear wigs, sit in their hollowed chambers to dispense nuggets of wisdom to clients divorced from commercial reality, and expect to get paid for it.

To justify their existence (and comparatively high fees), lawyers need wade into more "business-like" aspect of things like facilitating deal flow, like the investment bankers, valuations advisers and HR/public relations agents. Even if this kind of work doesn't engage the "hard law" aspects.

As for why many law students still choose liti, my take is this: it's ingrained in law school as the default path for lawyers. Academic legal doctrine is mostly learned through judgments/cases which are the very product of litigation. Most law professors were ex-JLCs or had spent most of their practice time in liti practice (barring the adjuncts who are hired to teach more practical/commercial causes).

During my time in law school, it was common career advice (by well-meaning but naïve profs) for law students to working in litigation first, even if you intended to ultimately do corporate law. Btw, this is rubbish obsolete advice which has proven detrimental to many a law grad's career.

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