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law school truly is miserable but not for the bizarre, aspie reasons you've stated

Welcome to the real world, where everything isn't unicorns and rainbows. It's a little callous, but it's the reality. Either people get their just recompense in the afterlife, or they don't get it at all. Karma doesn't exist, except in very limited circumstances.

Also, there are certain types of law that are just mood killers for folks like you (and me) who emotionally invest in the people involved. Avoid family law. Avoid bankruptcy. Avoid personal injury. Avoid medical malpractice. Take a bunch of corporate classes where the worst thing that happens is a company losing a couple hundred million bucks.

Welcome to the real world. The system isn't perfect and when you have money sometimes you can buy your freedom. Here's another dose of reality. Judge aren't impartial either. If they're having a bad day, you're going to hear it. I flip houses. Many times I buy them at auction and have to evict the previous owner. Some judges will lean their way and give them chances and others will tell them you've had enough time, you're done.

The study of law is really depressing. I think that this is because it seems to mostly deal with conflicting rights--rights that are important enough to the people involved that they are willing to go to court over them. When two people's highly-valued rights are in conflict, someone is going to end up with the shittier end of the deal.

Are you involved in any pro bono work or any student orgs? I think that volunteering can be helpful to feel like everything isn't shit all the time, and we're in a pretty good place to actually help people. (1ls are somewhat limited but there are usually volunteer spots for 1Ls doing things like client intake).

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Am I crazy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, so I was wondering how you guys handle it. How do you reconcile what you read in class that makes you sick to your stomach while staying sane and not growing into a bitter, depressing person to be around?

What kind of cases could you possibly be reading where rapists are getting off on technicalities? If a case is dismissed against a defendant, that's called "the prosecution not meeting their burden of proof," not a "technicality." If you are that worried about guilty people going free (which btw pretty much never happens in the real world compared to the amount of innocent people who actually get locked up) become a DA and make sure that guilty people don't go free because a) you didn't have enough evidence and/or b) you had the evidence, but it got thrown out because the cops screwed up the case by violating someone's constitutional rights. I think what you need is a nice dose of real world to make you feel better. I'm not saying this to be rude, it happens to most 1Ls. I know it's stressful right now and you don't have much time but maybe you could find a low-commitment volunteer opportunity through the school or even just shadow a lawyer for a day (either a DA or a PD if you are interested in crim). It really helps you stay motivated when you know what you are actually there for outside of the book stuff. It will also help you figure out what you want to do this summer (at my school, for instance, the VAST majority volunteer at some kind of public interest org their 1L summer).

sometimes just rules can produce unjust outcomes for individual cases. and yes it sucks and is depressing. I know everyone is too much of a badass to be affected by injustices, but implying that they don't occur is pretty silly.

...

I really don't get how this is what's making law school unpleasant for you.

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Am I crazy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, so I was wondering how you guys handle it. How do you reconcile what you read in class that makes you sick to your stomach while staying sane and not growing into a bitter, depressing person to be around?

I've found the opposite of this to be true. I had a really bad image of the justice system in mind coming into school, but am impressed to see overusage of words like "fairness" and "reasonableness." Maybe it's the case selection, but it feels much less frivolous or bias than I imagined.

Leonardo DiCaprio wrote:law school truly is miserable but not for the bizarre, aspie reasons you've stated

There's no need to be a jerk. I know people who had this reaction. It's not like law reveals humankind at its best.

A. Nony Mouse wrote: There's no need to be a jerk. I know people who had this reaction. It's not like law reveals humankind at its best.

if it took you until law school (which at earliest is about 21 or 22 y/o) to realize that, then you must have lived a pretty sheltered life.

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Am I crazy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, so I was wondering how you guys handle it. How do you reconcile what you read in class that makes you sick to your stomach while staying sane and not growing into a bitter, depressing person to be around?

...but how do YOU know the rapist got off on a technicality???

Leonardo DiCaprio wrote:law school truly is miserable but not for the bizarre, aspie reasons you've stated

What the fuck does this have to do with Asperger's

Leonardo DiCaprio wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote: There's no need to be a jerk. I know people who had this reaction. It's not like law reveals humankind at its best.

if it took you until law school (which at earliest is about 21 or 22 y/o) to realize that, then you must have lived a pretty sheltered life.

Bizarre and aspie are not the same as sheltered. There's also a difference between knowing something intellectually and getting confronted with specific examples for the first time. Dial it back.

What's "great" about law is that there are so many paths to take that you can avoid things that are simply not for you. For example, during law school, I did pro bono helping domestic violence victims. The things I heard in the cases was rough and it drained me completely. I knew then that I would never ever wanted to deal with that on a daily basis, so I steered clear from those types of jobs.

Also, not that this is necessarily what you're talking about, but when my class was discussing rape cases in crim, some of they guys I really liked and respected had no trouble getting up and saying things like "well, she never actually say no, so it was okay." That shit was depressing, but it's better to know the true side of people.

If you went to law school just because of a vague desire for "Justice" as you define it in your own head then you might want to cut your losses IMO.

Not saying that to be mean or snarky, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. It just might not be for you, which is fine.

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Am I crazy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, so I was wondering how you guys handle it. How do you reconcile what you read in class that makes you sick to your stomach while staying sane and not growing into a bitter, depressing person to be around?

Never forget that your casebook only has a small excerpt of one issue in one stage of one trial in .000001% of cases. In another words, its not real. The few times i westlawed a case from class, it turned out the actual point from class was irrelevant.

To echo the above, casebooks are designed to bring you close cases and controversial cases. In criminal law (I don't have crim this semester so yeah I'm assuming here), that means cases you study are all grey area cases. You're not going to be reading about simple open and shut cases, because how do you test that material? The legal system puts plenty of rapists and murderers in prison.

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Am I crazy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, so I was wondering how you guys handle it. How do you reconcile what you read in class that makes you sick to your stomach while staying sane and not growing into a bitter, depressing person to be around?

for starters, there's that part of our criminal justice system where we'd rather have a guilty person walk free than punish an innocent one

p1921 wrote:I'm a 1L at a strong regional school in the south, and so far my law experience is making me extremely pessimistic. Not in a way that I feel like I won't ever get a decent job or am going to end up in the bottom 10% of my class, but just pessimistic to the world around me. A lot of this seems to come from reading cases where rapists are getting off on a technicality, or something else like that. I guess I'm just losing faith in the legal system to really do justice the more I learn about it, and am apprehensive about entering a field I don't trust.

Here's one way to look at it: if it actually bothers you that criminals "are getting off on technicalities"—as you put it—then you actually care about something related to the law.

As you've probably read enough to learn, these "technicalities" are usually provisions of the United States Constitution. Do you think courts are misinterpreting those provisions of the Constitution? Do you think that judges and academics are distorting the Constitution in favor of criminal defendants? If that's your view, why don't you do something about it? Go work for a DA's office (or the DOJ) during your 1L summer. Write a Note on the exclusionary rule or something. Pessimism isn't your only option.

Plus, how do you know if that person was a rapist/murderer? If he got off, maybe he was innocent. Sometimes things look bad for someone but it doesn't necessarily mean he/she did it.

OP, what is JUSTICE?

i don't recall reading any cases about rapists getting off on technicalities

You're telling me that from reading the casebook you know that the person is guilty when the judge and/or jury found otherwise?