| Topic Name: |
Law Degrees and TV News |
| Message Name: |
The value of the JD |
| Date Posted: |
06/15/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
I've been contemplating the part-time law school/full-time news job as well... problem is, I don't think it does you any good in the field unless you have the gravitas of actual practicing under your belt... Legal analysts/correspondents are always pulling from their law background, "in the case I covered.... when I tried this case...etc.." Every lawyer I've spoken to has said don't do it unless you sacrifice a few years to work as an attorney... in the news biz, a few years could be death to the career...
thoughts??
the other thing of concern is that our schedules in news are grueling enough--- add in school, studying and exams... don't know if that's even humanly possible! |
| Message: |
Newsmac,
A JD (or for that matter, a bar number) doesn't even convey gravitas on many practicing attorneys, much less a journalist!
During my years as a reporter, I always had good relations with attorneys on both sides of the aisle, as well as a judge who acted as a mentor. Most legal professionals are pleased to find reporters who genuinely want to understand what's happening in court and get it right. During some murder cases, both the prosecution and defense took me into their offices and laid out their entire cases, with the understanding they'd burn me in the legal community if anything they told me showed up on the air, or was leaked to the other side, before it came out in open court.
I made the move after a couple of judges, whose minds I'd spent countless hours picking, invited me to lunch and handed me law school recommendation letters.
The time I spend reporting on the courts -- as well as working for criminal defense practitioners while I was in law school -- did a lot more to prepare me for practice than Real Property, Torts or Remedies. Much of law school is based on outdated common law, like the requirement that the seller of real estate hands over a dirt clod to the seller to close the deal.
From a criminal defense standpoint, there are only four classes out of a couple of dozen that actually have some application to real- world practice: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence and Constitutional Law.
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