Before I went to law school, I thought I knew a little something about the law. And I had every justification for thinking so. I mean, I'd finished an M.A. in philosophy, and written my thesis on principles of rule enforcement, basically a philosophy of law topic. I'd read H.L.A. Hart on the Concept Of Law, and I had a strong grasp of ethics and epistemology. So I did really have a bit of a head start on understanding what law was all about. How hard could it be?
And in fact, it wasn't really that hard. I did have a head start, and a pretty good foundation to build on. There wasn't an awful lot in the little something I knew about law before law school that turned out to be flat out wrong. But it was underdeveloped and incomplete to a degree that is kind of amazing to me now. the little something I thought I knew was akin to knowing that force is equal to mass times acceleration and thinking I knew physics. Because it's true that a LOT of physics follows from Newton's three basic laws, but you really have to put in the effort to understand exactly how that explains gyroscopes and hydraulics and the gas laws.
So three years of classes and writing papers and exams and arguing in moot court competitions taught me a whole heckuvalot of stuff I didn't realize was out there to learn, such that when it came time to actually practice law I found myself thinking I still didn't really know enough, but the fact is I did know what I needed to know, which was how to find out. I now knew enough of the vocabulary and basic concepts of law and how they related to each other than I knew where to look for the answers, and how to think about questions and try to solve them myself if they hadn't been addressed directly by someone else.
I'm mentioning this now not to present myself as an expert on law (I'm not practicing, and let my license to do so lapse, back around the time of that cancer adventure), but rather to emphasize how I know I'm most decidedly not an expert in other things. The little something I thought I knew about law before law school wasn't nothing, but it was nowhere near what I knew after earning my LLB and practicing for a few years. And after having actually studied the subject, I would often run into people without law degrees who would confidently lecture me about the little something they knew about law as if it was all there was to know. And then I knew how ridiculous I must have sounded, talking to lawyers about the law back when I only knew a little something about it.
And that's the point I want to make here. I also know a little something about science, and a little something about technology, and a little something about medicine, and a little something about history and literature and a whole lot of topics. I may even know more than the average layperson about many of these. I can feel fairly confident about the little something I know, but then I remember how underdeveloped and incomplete my little something about law turned out to be. Now, my son is studying molecular biology at university, and while I'm glad that the little something I know about science is (barely) enough to make his talking to me about these things not be a complete waste of time, it reminds me just how underdeveloped and incomplete my understanding of genetics is. I can ask intelligent questions, and it's good exercise for him to try to make the answers intelligible to me, but I am painfully aware of how much not and never will be an expert I am in this stuff.
It is important to be aware of this, because it's so easy to feel like you're an expert in a subject just because you know a little something about it. A little something is more than nothing, but it's just enough to know it's more than nothing, and not enough to know it's less than everything. Maybe the most useful thing I gained from law school was not knowing the law, but an appreciation of just how much work goes into understanding other subjects well enough to become a licensed professional. Know enough to ask intelligent questions of the experts and understand the answers, and don't be afraid to challenge things that seem inconsistent with the little something you know, but never forget that it's only a little something.
