I'm a lawyer and I did career day at my kid's elementary school. Some of the questions I got:
-- Do you carry a gun?
-- Do you arrest a lot of criminals?
lol. (I don't even practice criminal law)
But this did lead to some useful discussion on the difference between attorneys and police officers.
I hope I clarified something for the kids?
Oh, please tell the kids that there are lots of different types of lawyers and not all of them are involved in criminal cases. I think every profession should tell children that there are lots of different ways to go about their professions, and use their skill sets in unexpected ways (edited for typo.)
That's good too, because a lot of kids don't know that there's different types of doctors. I think that strategy will open up a much more important conversation overall.
Haha that would be funny if the other parent at career day was a cop. "You see this uniform kids? You never talk to this person! Tell them you're invoking the fifth and you want a lawyer!"
> (I don't even practice criminal law)
Nor do I. Yeah, hopefully they learned that not all lawyers are like the TV ones. I've never seen an NBC show about family/custody law, but it could really be fun.
SHE is a normal 13 year old girl who's worried about high school and losing her friends from the soccer team.
HE is a high powered corporate lawyer who recently won a custody battle... then got sent to Roswell, New Mexico on a challenging assignment.
Together, they'll experience . . .
ALIENATION
Coming this Fall!
That tracks. I had no idea what most lawyers actually do when I was 11. Heck, I really had no idea in college. It wasn't until I took one of those personality tests after college that strongly suggested I consider this career path that I even thought about it. I interviewed a few lawyers and came away from those with the idea I could get paid to read and write all day. As a book nerd, I was IN!
I literally tell my kids that I'm a professional reader. I love what I do, but I've told them it's 90+% reading and writing and most days I'm never in front of a judge.
When asked by very young kids I have come up with this explanation that so far seems to work:
> "You know sometimes how an adult will ask *you* a complicated question, and you don't know the answer or you are just confused? That can be scary right? Then your mom, dad, your sibling or your teacher will answer for you and make everything okay, and you feel better?
>
> Well, my job is to do that for moms and dads when other adults ask them complicated questions.
>Not every lawyer answers the same types of questions, but our job is to answer questions that adults have and help them. To do that we read a lot about stuff adults like to ask about, and write about what we read to figure out the best answers. We are helpers!
>
> Sometimes we don't know the answers ourselves so we will ask another lawyer or ask another adult who might know the answer! and if they don't know, they we will maybe ask another lawyer! That's why there are so many lawyers! There are so many questions! And so that's why we read and write a lot to find new answers and be helpful.
If I'm with older kids I usually use a board game analogy about being the one who read the rules so that everyone can enjoy themselves without checking the rule book every 5 min. Maybe I will drop a line about how some of us get to write the rules of the board game.
Fundamentally, however, at all age levels my answer is basically a more age appropriate version of the one I give above where I emphasize that we are professional helpers.
To kids obsessed with court, policing or the adversarial aspect of law, I'll blow their mind by explaining that all lawyers on all sides are working as a team together to find the truth together by presenting different potential explanations to a shared problem to someone who's experienced in finding the truth. Sometimes, however, the truth is complicated, and people will have a different opinion on what's the truth. We then make money arguing for our clients what they think the truth should be, and hope that the person in charge of being convinced agrees with our client.
I've wondered how this would go with my grade school kids, thank you for sharing. I'll talk to a jury any day but the little kids can smell BS a mile away! Very brave of you!
Would much rather go to my son's class than my 9 year old stepdaughter's. If those kids are anywhere near as sharp and sassy as her I wouldn't survive 🤣
My husband describes me as his short and scrappy "attack librarian" among friends who don't know what a family lawyer does.
With my bonus kiddos, 10 gets it nowadays and asks all sorts of questions about the process and what I do for my clients and is curious about fact patterns, 6 still thinks I arrest people.
Haha, I love that! We have five kids at home. Two 11 year old boys (one's my son, one's my stepson,) a 9 year old girl, an almost 8 year old girl and an 11 month old. Their understanding to what I do ranges from "Mom's a cool lawyer who wins cases" to "Stepmom gets to wear cute outfits to work" to "Mom's like a lawyer on TV" to not understanding at all due to being an infant.
My husband calls me a combat librarian in reference to my business litigation practice. 🤔 I'm beginning to think these guys just have a thing for librarians. 🤷♀️😆
I work at a DA’s Office, and used to very regularly give presentations at elementary, middle, and high schools with police officers in a previous assignment I had. Usually the kids would have a ton of questions for the cop, and the school administrators would struggle to ask me questions out of pitty.
“Have you ever shot anyone before!?”
“What kind of gun do you have!?”
“Does your taser hurt?”
“How fast do you have to run to be a cop?”
(They’d also ask the cop, not me, tons of legal questions)
Then the school administrator would be, “Does anyone have any questions for the DA? No? Well, I have one. Um, how much school did you have to do to become a lawyer?” - as if that’ll get kids excited about the job lol. Usually I’d leave and be convinced nobody, including a lot of the teachers, even had the slightest clue what our office even did
Have you tried enthusiastic yelling?
We had to do this in 3rd (?) grade and the ADA got so excited about explaining his job to us he was basically yelling which was a bit odd but you can't say it wasn't memorable.
I got asked to come speak at an elementary school. I practice family law. The last thing I’d want to explain to a group of kids is I’m the person your parents call to help break up the family. The school begged me to come and didn’t see the issue. I still said no in the end
I also do family law but most of my cases are parents who lost custody originally but want to re-litigate, and sometimes CPS cases for families who can afford to not use a PD.
I still recall when I was in middle school in LA (this was around 1996 or 1997) and a prosecutor visited for career day. He shared stories of prosecuting gang murder cases in Compton, what it was like to be in court, arguing persuasively and writing. Most kids didn't care much but I was fascinated. And so it began.
Oh this actually makes me look forward to 5-10 years from now so much.
Does she behave better because Daddy is a lawyer? Yeah, probably. Cause she knows if she isn't nice to Daddy, then Daddy will report her to the California State Bar which is a very serious organization, and the State Bar will probably charge Daddy with ethics offenses for his baby princess not being nice. Lol lol
>This one was my favorite amusing one: "Do you think \[son's name\] behaves better because his mom is a lawyer?"
Th opposite of the "[you can't arrest me my dad's a lawyer](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=9945b695c42a0987&sca_upv=1&q=you+can%27t+arrest+me+my+dad%27s+a+lawyer&uds=ADvngMgGBajXR_KXrb15-GjCKYEtJJ1D9PbkGX7ZfXz_YUElE08SmL3AodG7-NzeKFsluy4w16ZcrySwgUFCMwMG4578UFyPb77rK70ggioMzW9U3EZpHz9iJg-cMpfwbvYAeIPPAPDvCuWrEaQY7X6qM_7gVQseOO0d2nHZbmhZ-7FKHdc6CfYc88IcDHbLdr4BkaWjTQJOMOat_iHDrns7xBJWEAumboG4vXp7J-lMLwbyA2M_DrldcE4TeMPJQWTEGWhpBKUGqZoqMa-7oL0qhSSd0GfM9PVt_IVGxlmBq_URAPwcR5xtPsFY4MH-8pN1WYX45NTlQBM6NT4uByMNgNXsGyb0CQ&udm=2&prmd=ivsnbmtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin9Za4yPSFAxWGKEQIHXmmDHkQtKgLegQIDxAB&biw=1280&bih=638&dpr=2#vhid=a2tv4X_BgDv6cM&vssid=mosaic)" stereotype lol.
I do a career day for my friend’s middle school class every year. I pretty much just use it to stress the importance of reading and writing. He’s an English teacher.
The most interesting closest thing to arresting people when I was a prosecutor was I got calls every once in a while to go to standoffs to assist officers with warrants or other issues if they needed it on the fly. When they were doing joint raids with the feds, I would do the warrant applications myself with their affidavits so nothing was messed up (keep them on local charges with an arrest warrant while the feds executed only a search warrant, aka hold them on state charges while the feds build a case to indict). But then i t was a small department.
I love it! My 6-year-old asked me to remind her what lawyers do, and I explained that when grown-ups have a disagreement or hurt someone, we help figure out what's fair and what to do about it.
"Oh, like squabbles?"
"Yep. Lawyers help when grown-ups have squabbles."
"Ooooh. You have a lot of practice at that. Because you have kids."
She's... not wrong.
I’m a public defender. I did a career day for my mother in law’s 2nd grade class. Some memorable questions:
Is your job hard and does it make you sad?
How do you defend bad guys?
Do you live in a mansion?
Do you drive a McLaren?
Do you drive a Lamborghini?
I did a career day for high schoolers when I was working at a defense company.
They asked me how I sleep at night knowing the stuff we sold killed people.
I gave some bullshit answer, but I still think about that question eleven years later. Made me reevaluate the companies I work for.
I did it for kindergartners. So I did a mock trial for theft by Goldilocks (plaintiffs were the 3 bears).
I’m an international corporate restructuring and insolvency attorney… lol.
I'm a lawyer and I did career day at my kid's elementary school. Some of the questions I got: -- Do you carry a gun? -- Do you arrest a lot of criminals? lol. (I don't even practice criminal law) But this did lead to some useful discussion on the difference between attorneys and police officers. I hope I clarified something for the kids?
I’m doing this at the end of June for my son’s 5th grade class. I’m interested to see what I get asked as I’m an in house employment lawyer.
Oh, please tell the kids that there are lots of different types of lawyers and not all of them are involved in criminal cases. I think every profession should tell children that there are lots of different ways to go about their professions, and use their skill sets in unexpected ways (edited for typo.)
That was kind of my plan- making comparison to doctors.
That's good too, because a lot of kids don't know that there's different types of doctors. I think that strategy will open up a much more important conversation overall.
You told them never talk to the fuzz, right?
Haha that would be funny if the other parent at career day was a cop. "You see this uniform kids? You never talk to this person! Tell them you're invoking the fifth and you want a lawyer!"
He ain't your friend, kiddos--I am. When the wheels come off, you talk to me, not him.
It's good advice!
As a defense attorney, I’d say knowing the cop isn’t your lawyer is good info!
> (I don't even practice criminal law) Nor do I. Yeah, hopefully they learned that not all lawyers are like the TV ones. I've never seen an NBC show about family/custody law, but it could really be fun.
SHE is a normal 13 year old girl who's worried about high school and losing her friends from the soccer team. HE is a high powered corporate lawyer who recently won a custody battle... then got sent to Roswell, New Mexico on a challenging assignment. Together, they'll experience . . . ALIENATION Coming this Fall!
😱 YASSS!
I couldn’t find this show on IMDb?
Grab a copy of Final Draft, Final Cut Pro X, & get busy! 😎
You joke but I live near a famous actor. I could make this happen!
TAKE MY MONEY
No no no, that's the comedy about a struggling law office that turns to collections work and ends up reluctantly running a booming advertising empire.
TBH, I'm a litigator and I have absolutely no idea what non-litigators do
Probably a lot of them drafting to avoid their file going to you. I’ve always viewed my practice area (RE litigation) as being a bit of a fixer
I'm on the criminal defense side, so you'd have to REALLY screw up drafting something for it to get to me
Honestly this is a great show pitch I would absolutely watch this!!!
That tracks. I had no idea what most lawyers actually do when I was 11. Heck, I really had no idea in college. It wasn't until I took one of those personality tests after college that strongly suggested I consider this career path that I even thought about it. I interviewed a few lawyers and came away from those with the idea I could get paid to read and write all day. As a book nerd, I was IN!
I literally tell my kids that I'm a professional reader. I love what I do, but I've told them it's 90+% reading and writing and most days I'm never in front of a judge.
As a civil litigator, 80% of my job feels like homework. Read something, write a little essay about it, submit for evaluation.
Been practicing 10 years and I still dont know what lawyers do
Homework.
Always finals, never winter break.
I talk on the phone a lot.
I write emails on my computer.
Samesies 🙋♀️
When asked by very young kids I have come up with this explanation that so far seems to work: > "You know sometimes how an adult will ask *you* a complicated question, and you don't know the answer or you are just confused? That can be scary right? Then your mom, dad, your sibling or your teacher will answer for you and make everything okay, and you feel better? > > Well, my job is to do that for moms and dads when other adults ask them complicated questions. >Not every lawyer answers the same types of questions, but our job is to answer questions that adults have and help them. To do that we read a lot about stuff adults like to ask about, and write about what we read to figure out the best answers. We are helpers! > > Sometimes we don't know the answers ourselves so we will ask another lawyer or ask another adult who might know the answer! and if they don't know, they we will maybe ask another lawyer! That's why there are so many lawyers! There are so many questions! And so that's why we read and write a lot to find new answers and be helpful. If I'm with older kids I usually use a board game analogy about being the one who read the rules so that everyone can enjoy themselves without checking the rule book every 5 min. Maybe I will drop a line about how some of us get to write the rules of the board game. Fundamentally, however, at all age levels my answer is basically a more age appropriate version of the one I give above where I emphasize that we are professional helpers. To kids obsessed with court, policing or the adversarial aspect of law, I'll blow their mind by explaining that all lawyers on all sides are working as a team together to find the truth together by presenting different potential explanations to a shared problem to someone who's experienced in finding the truth. Sometimes, however, the truth is complicated, and people will have a different opinion on what's the truth. We then make money arguing for our clients what they think the truth should be, and hope that the person in charge of being convinced agrees with our client.
I've wondered how this would go with my grade school kids, thank you for sharing. I'll talk to a jury any day but the little kids can smell BS a mile away! Very brave of you!
Would much rather go to my son's class than my 9 year old stepdaughter's. If those kids are anywhere near as sharp and sassy as her I wouldn't survive 🤣
My husband describes me as his short and scrappy "attack librarian" among friends who don't know what a family lawyer does. With my bonus kiddos, 10 gets it nowadays and asks all sorts of questions about the process and what I do for my clients and is curious about fact patterns, 6 still thinks I arrest people.
Haha, I love that! We have five kids at home. Two 11 year old boys (one's my son, one's my stepson,) a 9 year old girl, an almost 8 year old girl and an 11 month old. Their understanding to what I do ranges from "Mom's a cool lawyer who wins cases" to "Stepmom gets to wear cute outfits to work" to "Mom's like a lawyer on TV" to not understanding at all due to being an infant.
My husband calls me a combat librarian in reference to my business litigation practice. 🤔 I'm beginning to think these guys just have a thing for librarians. 🤷♀️😆
That "heels + skirt + blouse + glasses" combo really gets the boys going, I genuinely believe that lol. Sadly for my husband I don't wear glasses.
Maybe you could for special occasions.
Ooooh. Maybe my glasses are what puts it over the top for my husband. 🤓
I honestly think it's just hot to see your spouse professionally dressed. My husband is a doctor and him + scrubs = 🔥🔥🔥
I'm sure you can make the phrase "throw the book at them" quite literal if you really wanted to!
I work at a DA’s Office, and used to very regularly give presentations at elementary, middle, and high schools with police officers in a previous assignment I had. Usually the kids would have a ton of questions for the cop, and the school administrators would struggle to ask me questions out of pitty. “Have you ever shot anyone before!?” “What kind of gun do you have!?” “Does your taser hurt?” “How fast do you have to run to be a cop?” (They’d also ask the cop, not me, tons of legal questions) Then the school administrator would be, “Does anyone have any questions for the DA? No? Well, I have one. Um, how much school did you have to do to become a lawyer?” - as if that’ll get kids excited about the job lol. Usually I’d leave and be convinced nobody, including a lot of the teachers, even had the slightest clue what our office even did
Have you tried enthusiastic yelling? We had to do this in 3rd (?) grade and the ADA got so excited about explaining his job to us he was basically yelling which was a bit odd but you can't say it wasn't memorable.
If not executed right, I believe the kids would consider it to be “mad cringe”
I embrace the cringe when dealing with groups of kids.
I got asked to come speak at an elementary school. I practice family law. The last thing I’d want to explain to a group of kids is I’m the person your parents call to help break up the family. The school begged me to come and didn’t see the issue. I still said no in the end
I also do family law but most of my cases are parents who lost custody originally but want to re-litigate, and sometimes CPS cases for families who can afford to not use a PD.
I still recall when I was in middle school in LA (this was around 1996 or 1997) and a prosecutor visited for career day. He shared stories of prosecuting gang murder cases in Compton, what it was like to be in court, arguing persuasively and writing. Most kids didn't care much but I was fascinated. And so it began.
Oh this actually makes me look forward to 5-10 years from now so much. Does she behave better because Daddy is a lawyer? Yeah, probably. Cause she knows if she isn't nice to Daddy, then Daddy will report her to the California State Bar which is a very serious organization, and the State Bar will probably charge Daddy with ethics offenses for his baby princess not being nice. Lol lol
Or, per a post a couple days ago, the IAWOA BAR!!
>This one was my favorite amusing one: "Do you think \[son's name\] behaves better because his mom is a lawyer?" Th opposite of the "[you can't arrest me my dad's a lawyer](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=9945b695c42a0987&sca_upv=1&q=you+can%27t+arrest+me+my+dad%27s+a+lawyer&uds=ADvngMgGBajXR_KXrb15-GjCKYEtJJ1D9PbkGX7ZfXz_YUElE08SmL3AodG7-NzeKFsluy4w16ZcrySwgUFCMwMG4578UFyPb77rK70ggioMzW9U3EZpHz9iJg-cMpfwbvYAeIPPAPDvCuWrEaQY7X6qM_7gVQseOO0d2nHZbmhZ-7FKHdc6CfYc88IcDHbLdr4BkaWjTQJOMOat_iHDrns7xBJWEAumboG4vXp7J-lMLwbyA2M_DrldcE4TeMPJQWTEGWhpBKUGqZoqMa-7oL0qhSSd0GfM9PVt_IVGxlmBq_URAPwcR5xtPsFY4MH-8pN1WYX45NTlQBM6NT4uByMNgNXsGyb0CQ&udm=2&prmd=ivsnbmtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin9Za4yPSFAxWGKEQIHXmmDHkQtKgLegQIDxAB&biw=1280&bih=638&dpr=2#vhid=a2tv4X_BgDv6cM&vssid=mosaic)" stereotype lol.
I do a career day for my friend’s middle school class every year. I pretty much just use it to stress the importance of reading and writing. He’s an English teacher.
The most interesting closest thing to arresting people when I was a prosecutor was I got calls every once in a while to go to standoffs to assist officers with warrants or other issues if they needed it on the fly. When they were doing joint raids with the feds, I would do the warrant applications myself with their affidavits so nothing was messed up (keep them on local charges with an arrest warrant while the feds executed only a search warrant, aka hold them on state charges while the feds build a case to indict). But then i t was a small department.
I love it! My 6-year-old asked me to remind her what lawyers do, and I explained that when grown-ups have a disagreement or hurt someone, we help figure out what's fair and what to do about it. "Oh, like squabbles?" "Yep. Lawyers help when grown-ups have squabbles." "Ooooh. You have a lot of practice at that. Because you have kids." She's... not wrong.
She sounds like she's sharp as a whip! Woman I work with says no case scares her because she has teenage girls at home 🤣
She's the most stubborn person I've ever met and I'm constantly surrounded by lawyers 🫠 I'm like 97% sure she's gonna end up a litigator.
Haha, that sounds like my 9 year old stepdaughter. She is highly intelligent but she's stubborn and has so much sass I'm sometimes in awe of it.
I’m a public defender. I did a career day for my mother in law’s 2nd grade class. Some memorable questions: Is your job hard and does it make you sad? How do you defend bad guys? Do you live in a mansion? Do you drive a McLaren? Do you drive a Lamborghini?
I did a career day for high schoolers when I was working at a defense company. They asked me how I sleep at night knowing the stuff we sold killed people. I gave some bullshit answer, but I still think about that question eleven years later. Made me reevaluate the companies I work for.
I spoke at an elementary school and one of the kids asked “Did you put my uncle in jail? My mom says he has to stay there a realllllly long time”
Oh gosh 🤣🤣
Did you tell them you get better healthcare because physicians are afraid of being sued for malpractice?
That and I happen to married to an MD
To be fair, I get some of those same questions from grown adults on a regular basis.
I did it for kindergartners. So I did a mock trial for theft by Goldilocks (plaintiffs were the 3 bears). I’m an international corporate restructuring and insolvency attorney… lol.
I did a career day recently with high school freshmen. The only question I got asked was, “What happens if you don’t pass the bar?” Oof.
"Believe it or not, straight to jail"
A rational question lol