A Thought on ‘Letters To A Law Student’ by Nicholas J.McBride

 by Faye Rustell

In case it wasn’t clear from the title, I am currently hoping to read Law at university and am in the process of completing my ‘super curricular’ research and expanding my knowledge of the law and justice system, in order to put myself in the best position possible to receive offers from universities. To admit honestly, I was not in this mindset 4 months ago when I didn’t have a full understanding of just how tough I would find applying for the next step in my education, however after having a rather serious ‘wake up call’ I realised that Law is an incredibly competitive option at the moment and therefore, one must need to stand out amongst the crowd in order to be granted further opportunities. 

Something that occurred to me was that although I knew Law was what I had wanted to study for a long time, I had not actually read hardly anything that would help me to get to that position and broaden my insight. After realising that this needed to change I spoke to a client of a family member whose son studied law at university and has henceforth been incredibly successful in his career. I was told that there was a specific book that not only benefited him enormously with his UCAS application, but also taught him a huge amount about the world of Law and the situations that may arise during his career. The book was called ‘Letters To A Law Student’ and after just finishing reading this myself, I hope that if anyone else in my position, thinking about studying Law is wanting to put themselves in the best position for the application process, they read this book. I believe it is truly invaluable and is guaranteed to tell a lot that you would never know otherwise. 

The book is split into 5 sections; Thinking about studying Law, Preparing to study Law, Studying Law, Preparing for your exams and Thinking about your future. In particular, I suggest that someone who is in a similar stage of the process to me pays attention to sections 1 and 2 the most as I found some of the points that were made within these two chapters were absolutely invaluable. ‘Arguing effectively’ comes under the second section closely followed by a follow up chapter called ‘speculative arguments’. Some may already know the difference between a logical argument and a speculative argument and consequently won’t be as stunned as I was after reading these two chapters, however I would like to discuss these ideas further as I was fascinated by the ways in which an individual can argue. 

McBride claims that ‘the most important and valuable thing you’ll have to do as a law student is learn how to argue effectively’ and after reading this, I would firmly agree. He starts off by explaining that a logical argument is otherwise known as arguments by deduction and speculative arguments are otherwise known as arguments by induction. A really simple and understandable example of a logical argument that McBride made was: 1. All children like chocolate 2. Max is a child therefore 3. Max likes chocolate. 

He then compared this to the argument of: 1. Killing is always wrong therefore 2. We should not have capital punishment. What I found so intriguing about this argument was something that McBride picked up on that whilst the two statements are not identical, the argument is circular because (1) assumes that (2) is true. Therefore the person making the argument is assuming that ‘We should not have capital punishment’ meaninf he isn’t actually arguing for or against anything he’s really just asserting. Now, if I had never read this then I definitely would not be able to tell the difference between these two arguments as I realised just how single-minded and closed my mindset was previously, something that I’m now aware should be avoided in Law as you need to be able to think ‘outside the box’ as it were. Another point that was made in this section was that in a logical argument, the conclusion must follow logically from its premises. Again, he put this in terms of stating that in order for an argument to be clear and logical, then the conclusion must follow ‘logically’ from the previous statements. For example, if 1. A happened 2. After A happened B then happened therefore 3. B happened because A happened. Admittedly, I did have to read this a few times before fully understanding it, but once I did I was incredibly aware of just how prevalent these situations were in day to day life. It is easy to argue this way, making an illogical conclusion but McBride suggests that lawyers must identify ‘alternative explanations’ of these arguments. Not only do I believe that this comment is relevant to Law, but I also believe that it will have an impact on everyone at some point during their life. The most obvious reasoning to make in these cases is to look at two events and say that because they happened one after another, they must have had an effect on each other. I’m not arguing that this is completely wrong, as this might well be the case, but I’m highlighting the point that became so apparent to me after reflection upon this, that a lawyer must not have a mindset like this. In order to be successful, it is vital that lawyers, whether a barrister or solicitor etc, have the ability to explore other pathways leading to the conclusion given and as a result of this they will not fall down the ‘trap’ as McBride claims of tunnel vision. 

This specific letter was just a small example of how insightful this book was into exploring Law at university further. It gave me guidance on how to prepare for interviews, LNAT tips, how to argue effectively and the mindset that I should obtain in order to be successful. I still have a lot left to learn (clearly) but this is just some advice I learnt and hopefully I can persuade you to pick this up if you have passion about Law like myself.