Scales and open law book
Law school is known to be one of the ultimate academic crucibles. Over three course-intensive years, a student of any undergraduate major may complete the program. However, that does not mean that all majors are created equal when entering law school. After speaking with educators, law students, and lawyers affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, it’s clear that English majors are considered valuable and sought-after students, as they often come to law school equipped with close reading and critical thinking skills that are required to parse through the often 100-page assignments given out, nightly.
Professor Teresa Brostoff, Pitt Law’s director of legal writing, teaches Legal Analysis and Writing to first-year law students, where she has a lot of contact with students who were English majors. When asked about the strengths and weaknesses of English students entering law school, she was eager to provide a list of strengths. “We are always happy when English majors apply. Because of the rigorous course of their study, they have done a lot of reading and critical analysis,” Brostoff explains. “They have the ability to take what they’ve read and provide a description of it in an organized and refined manner. English majors know to never turn in a first draft. Lawyers know that, too.” As far as weaknesses, Brostoff struggled to find a definite one, but did mention that “even students who come in as really excellent writers haven’t written the way that lawyers write, so there are things that they can learn to make their writing better.”
Marlee Myers
Lawyers write and read in a very specific way in order to absorb a case and find the truth in it. While English graduates enter law school with a significant advantage, as they are very familiar with close, analytical reading, it can be difficult for anyone to adjust to a new system of thought. University of Pittsburgh and Pitt Law alumna Marlee Myers, who is now a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, elaborates on this: “Effective use of the English language, for both written and oral communication, is essential to the study and practice of law. Law school courses, especially first year courses, rely on the case method of instruction. The case method requires student to read cases that are filled with facts, many of which are not relevant to the decision, and students must figure out how to discern the important facts from the irrelevant ones. A background in reading and criticizing literature is perfect preparation for this skill.” (T5F featured an interview with Myers in 2013.)
Second-year law student and Law Review staff editor Emily Costantinou, who received Literature and Business dual degrees as an undergraduate, understands the adjustment from reading and writing about novels to reading and writing about true events. She says, “Legal writing, structurally, is very different. It’s a lot of persuasive writing. They call the format IRAC, which stands for issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion. It’s relatively the same structure you can expect from any writing you’re reading. We, as students, try to mirror that style in our own writing.”
Emily Costantinou
However, she says her time with the English department (where she also served in 2012-13 as an associate editor for The Fifth Floor) created her foundation for this skill, recalling, “I had a professor in the English department talk about writing, saying that you were looking for the red thread running through the paper to follow it to find the consistent storyline. That helps me to track and follow arguments as I’m reading, as well as writing.” When comparing the significant differences and adjustments between the lessons of the two stages of her education, she explains, “We’re reading the story of something that happened and analyzing it, much like I did with my literature degree. There’s a lot of crossover. I think the biggest thing I had to ‘unlearn’ is that these cases are situations with real people, while with my literature degree, I read a lot of fiction. Sometimes cases may sound like fiction,” she chuckles, “but everything is true. What’s very different is that we’re reading for a different purpose: a practical purpose.”
Mike Potochny, a Pitt Law and undergraduate alum and associate attorney at Gaydos, Gaydos, and Associates P.C., calls this “writing like a lawyer.” He points out, however, that Pitt afforded him many resources along the way to improve his writing. “I think one of the best things I did was get into the Writing Center. Working through that really helped me with my legal career,” he says. Potochny went on to serve as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the freshman seminar Literary Pittsburgh and as a peer tutor in the Writing Center. Reflecting on his own appreciation of the challenges undergraduate writers face, he says, “Just thinking of the amount of cover letters you have to write applying to law school and internships is sickening, so being able to decipher what to do and what not to do and cut through the flowery gratuity efficiently is paramount. Law school is all about being efficient—with your time and your words.”
Mike Potochny
Writing to get into law school is one thing, but writing in law school is another, so I asked Potochny which skill was most vital in his day to day work during his time in school, and he sighed before explaining, “Practically everything that you read is almost in a different language. The texts are so dense and difficult, but you can’t be afraid to read and reread all the assignments in your classes, to find all the allusions and literary devices that will emerge from them.”
If there is any type of person who can be unafraid—excited, even—by tackling a large amount of text head-on, it is an English major. If you are one who is considering extending your education, law school is, as all of the qualified interviewees above can vouch, a viable and exciting option before English majors.
—Sarah Tomko
Sarah Tomko, associate editor for T5F, is a junior Public and Professional Writing, and English (Fiction) Writing major, with a minor in Religious Studies.
Scales of justice image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Law_Books_12.JPG
