The Yale LL.M: How to be a Meerkat

By Yale Blogger 2015 in LLM GUIDE Student Blog: Yale LLM 2015-2016 on Sep 17, 2015

It may be obvious from what I wrote so far, but I would like to explicitly point out that Yale Law School is a meerkat's haven. That is, it is the perfect place for people with a meerkat's temperament. This claim is, of course, grounded on my amateur biologist assumption (architectural amateurism is not my only vice) that meerkats' temperament fits their stereotypical behaviour. Deducing my vast knowledge in this regard from the brilliant documentary film "The Meerkats" I would like to qualify the species in the following way: Slightly erratic, alert but equipped with a rather short attention span, not very disciplined but intensely curious. They also seem to be quite sociable and to appreciate having some good food once in a while. (At least they look very happy when eating, which, I have to admit, - considering that they always look happy - does not say a lot.) But you best convince yourself of their character: Yale Law School is a place made for this kind of mindset. There will be millions of different, decidedly academic courses on array. Your unmanageable reading load (see The Reading Myth) will prevent you from digging too deep and from pondering too long over any single one of the various issues. Since everybody suffers the same fate, nobody will reproach you for that. You will be permanently challenged to quickly come up with prima facie ideas, but not forced to carry through with most of them. You will switch back and forth between classes on "Law and Cognition" and Lunch Lectures on the "End of class action". You will develop strategies to skim-read huge loads of materials, exposing you to an invaluable bombardment of ideas. You will socialise with your fellow LLMs before you run off to your next class or to watching students affiliated with the Democratic party watch Donald Trump making a fool of himself at the presidential debate. You will do all of that at an amazing and extremely entertaining pace. To be sure, you will not be resting a lot. You will not have enough time to focus on any particular question in order to come up with a perfectly systematised solution. But you will be drowned in ideas. For ten months you will just have to learn how to be a meerkat. For more on the LL.M. programs at Yale Law, please see the school's profile on LLM GUIDE.