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"Oh you went to law school? Name all the laws": A guide to techies on why lawyers don't seem to actually know laws. Brought to you by a law grad who hasn't practiced law a day in her life 
I get asked at least twice a week how come I - gasp - work in the startup world despite having a law degree, and how my degree helps. What I want to say: how come metallurgical engineering IIT grads aren't told to mine copper instead of bitcoin? What I should say:
A legal education has taught me how to examine the world, understand power structures, ask the right questions and has cemented a strong value system that guides almost every action I take. So how did law school manage this?
You know how product managers are expected to know "enough" about tech but not actually know to code? That's what law students are taught. We're taught mainly about the legal system, or "stack" if you will.
Law students are taught about how the constitution informs all law making. How to examine whether a law is valid against the constitution. We learn about how power is delegated in a democracy and what checks and balances exist.
We are taught what goes into making a law, how laws can be amended, why some laws came to be the way they are. We are taught to examine what the law should be versus what it actually is. We ask - whom does this law serve? Whom does it exclude?
We are taught to compare laws, dig into how a law evolved. A lot of what we ask as law students is "why". The "how"- the law, or code if I may- is almost irrelevant and keeps changing. A lot of our exams are open book, we can always look up the "how".
We are taught how to write. A lot. How to make logical arguments, how to structure them, how to use the hierarchy of sources to our advantage. When to refute facts and when to question the law itself.
We are also taught how to read. Law students read judgements and articles running into hundreds of pages and come up with key takeaways fairly quickly.
And the burning question: Are lawyers bad at math? Well, that depends. Basic math forms a big component of the entrance exams for the top law schools. But a lot of practicing lawyers are probably out of touch. Could argue that lawyers will benefit from more analytical training.
So next time you ask a lawyer to recite a law or tell you the law on something out of memory, remember it's something like asking an engineer to recite on the go the program to calculate the number of days between two dates and show the output in a yellow box with blue borders.
Tldr: A person with a law degree is like a product manager who can code. They're great at the "why" and the "if" and can define the "what". But they don't need to go into the "how" though they probably can if they have to.
To the corporate/startup world: hire more lawyers as generalists! There are tons of lawyers out there who are whip smart, articulate, empathetic. Lawyers are also among the hardest working class of people - almost to the point of masochism.
Tagging my fellow "lawyers not lawyering" @anitasrinivas1 @_waabi_saabi_ @10mayD @shukla_apurva @SengupSubhro @sowmyarao_ @brotherbadri
