Dear Friends,

I recently met a young law student who seemed harmless enough. Unlike some other aspiring lawyers I have met, he seemed to be interested in lively conversation, did not try to hide his personality behind law blather, and resisted the urge to dominate lunch conversations with blah blah blah about memo assignments.

Since my summer fling was two hours away, I thought it would be fun to spend a night out at the bar with him.

Unfortunately, even those law students who seem to be able to hide our group’s curse cannot hide it after 5-10 whiskey and cokes. It started innocently enough with some idle political chatter with a pair of locals who were kind enough to share their table with us.

Then the couple started talking about their plumbing business and how they like working for themselves. He then gives them a lecture on law and how lawmakers ought to look out for the small businessman. Has he ever had a business? No. Do we learn ANYTHING about business in the first year of law school? No. Did this stop him from giving these poor people a lecture? No.

This all seems innocent enough. But I knew it was escalating into what I fear the most in a companion: Law School Tourette’s Syndrome.

You see, it is required to enter law school to think that you are smarter and more interesting than anyone around you. [You can see evidence of this in myself just in the fact that I am writing this blog about how I am smarter and more interesting than this poor guy.] Other professionals either don’t believe this about themselves or they manage to keep it to themselves. However, my colleagues have not mastered this. Wherever we go, no matter what the topic, we are unable to stop ourselves from making the following announcements:

1. I AM REALLY REALLY SMART!

2. I AM GOING TO BE REALLY REALLY RICH!

3. I AM REALLY REALLY SMART!

4. EVERYONE ELSE STUDIES HARDER THAN ME [OR GOES TO CLASS MORE THAN ME OR DRINKS LESS THAN ME OR IS LESS GOOD LOOKING THAN ME OR WHATEVER] BUT I AM STILL REALLY REALLY SMART!

5. I AM HAVING A LOT OF FUN IN LAW SCHOOL. REALLY!

6. I AM REALLY REALLY SMART [BUT I DON'T TELL ANYONE BESIDES YOU BECAUSE I AM ALSO VERY MODEST!]!

In this particular companion’s case, this all took the form of a short lecture on his life at a fancy big name law school. His spin on it was this:

“The people I go to school with are really, really smart. I mean, they got into *** [fancy big name law school] for god sakes [SEE 6]. But I decided not to compete to be the smartest of them. I mean they are really, really smart. So I only went to less than half of my classes [SEE 4,5]. Don’t get me wrong. I still finished in the top half of my class [SEE 1]. You have to finish in the top half if you want to work at whatever whatever & whatever firm [where I am left to assume he will be really, really rich -- SEE 2].

“So what I spent most of my time on was activities and drinking a lot [SEE 4,5]. I was all about the fun! I just love to act! And music!”

Now, keep in mind that I was trapped into this when I would have preferred to grab a quick water at the bar and go back to dancing on my chair as I had been doing, but I got stuck. It is a different twist on the regular Law School Tourette’s Syndrome, but it is the same. I could read every one of the symptoms between the lines of his speech.

I want to apologize for all of us if this also happens to you. Please understand that it is a curse on the whole class of law students. Luckily (based on the brilliant and humble and overall enjoyable people I have met who actually are lawyers) this seems to fade away in most of us after we graduate. In the meantime, please excuse us.