Advice To A Young Person Interested in A Career in The Law
Advice To A Young Person Interested in A Career in The Law
Advice To A Young Person Interested in A Career in The Law
In May 1954, M. Paul Claussen, Jr., a 12-year-old boy living in Alexandria, Virginia, sent a letter to Mr.
Justice Felix Frankfurter in which he wrote that he was interested in “going into the law as a career” and
requested advice as to “some ways to start preparing myself while still in junior high school.” This is the
reply he received:
My Dear Paul:
No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man. If I were you I would forget
about any technical preparation for the law. The best way to prepare for the law is to be a well-read
person. Thus alone can one acquire the capacity to use the English language on paper and in speech and
with the habits of clear thinking which only a truly liberal education can give. No less important for a
lawyer is the cultivation of the imaginative faculties by reading poetry, seeing great paintings, in the
original or in easily available reproductions, and listening to great music. Stock your mind with the
deposit of much good reading, and widen and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much
as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe, and forget about your future career.
Sincerely yours,
From THE LAW AS LITERATURE, ed. by Ephraim London, Simon and Schuster, 1960.