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Hey everybody. In this episode, let's talk about what a gunner is in law school and three reasons why you definitely don't want to be one. Let's talk about it.

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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school. Let's get started.

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Okay, so you may have heard the term gunner to refer to certain law students. What does it mean to be a gunner? And spoiler alert, it's not a positive thing. In law school, a gunner refers to a student who takes up a ton of the class's time and attention by talking a lot in class in unproductive ways, often to the detriment of their peers. It is a derogatory term. It is not a good thing. It is someone who over-participates in class. It's someone who makes the class about themselves and their perspectives. And it's someone who is disruptive in a way that creates unnecessary distractions to the learning process. So what does a gunner look like? In class, a gunner might be someone who, in general, dominates class discussion every time they have an opportunity. Even when they're not called upon, they are raising their hand and trying to inject themselves into the conversation. They are posing crazy hypotheticals to the professor. So they might ask the professor, well, what if this crazy fact pattern happens? And they go on and on and on about this crazy idea that they have, or some crazy situation that they think could come up and they feel for some reason that they need to know about. Along the same lines, even if it's not about hypotheticals, they may ask super convoluted questions about the facts of the case or the law. Often those questions reflect a deep misunderstanding of what the law is that they are learning in class. The questions themselves are so poorly thought out, so convoluted, so deeply, deeply off base that they're really not productive to the coursework. Often gunners will challenge professors who say that they're wrong. They fight with the professors. When the professors say, hey, gunner, I don't agree with your perspective on the law in this area. The gunner will say, No, no, no, no, no. I'm right, I'm right. And let me let me explain to you why. Let me let me walk through this. Here's why I'm right and you're wrong. Here's what I'm saying. Here's why I know the case better than you do, professor. Here's where I know the legal rule better than you do. And Professor, I want you to agree with me. I want you to give in and say, oh, yep, I, the professor, am wrong about this, and you are right. They're often self-promoting and come off as competitive. Why are people gunners? Why do people engage in this behavior in law school? Probably a few different reasons. One is simply that they haven't interacted much yet in a collaborative working environment where being a gunner is deeply unproductive and is ostracizing to your team members in a way that is going to diminish the effectiveness of the team and in some cases can even lead to termination of employment. Being a gunner in the working world isn't going to make you any friends and isn't going to help you achieve your goals, but they haven't experienced that yet. So they're a gunner in law school because they don't know how to act any different. Many people in law school haven't worked before, they haven't interacted in a professional environment before, so they go with what they've got. What they do know about law school is that they want to do really, really well. They have a sense that achieving solid top grades in law school will lead to better employment outcomes. And that's true. But gunners have a fundamentally wrong perspective about what it is going to take to succeed in law school. Gunners believe that as they are promoting themselves in class, as they are injecting their opinions into class discussions, as they are debating the nuances of the law with the professors, that they are doing something to inch their way to a better grade. And the fact of the matter is that in almost every instance, those kinds of behaviors aren't doing anything to get the gunner a better grade. They aren't doing anything to help them be at the top of their class at the end of the semester. Why is that? Well, what is it that gets someone an A in their class and to the top of their class? It isn't being a gunner in class. It isn't knowing the nuances of cases and debating them with the professor or asking crazy hypotheticals. Getting a top grade in the class means writing a good exam answer on an issue spotter exam, usually at the end of the semester, that's totally cumulative. And that is done in silence. There's no talking on those exams, there's no impressing anyone. On the exam, what matters is you, what you put down through your keyboard, and what makes it onto paper. That is what you are graded on. It's not the debate that you had with the professor earlier in the semester. And I can guarantee you that if a professor does reserve any of the points for the course to course engagement, like attending class and answering questions in class, being prepared, if there are some points for that, being a gunner isn't going to win those points. It's going to ostracize the professor and make the professor say, ugh, I don't want to have to award this person points because they are annoying to me. This is their workplace. They have to get up every day and do this to earn a living. And if you are a gunner, you're a lot like a customer who comes in who is obnoxious. You are the customer as the student. And you can either be a gracious customer or you can be an ungrateful customer who is self-centered. Gunners are the latter, and that's not going to help you. Also, remember law school is about the Socratic method. That's how the professors are helping the students learn. So the professors are asking questions of the class and saying, hey, class, answer these questions. Think about how challenging these questions are. The professors are teaching you by asking questions, not by telling you things. It's kind of interesting that when someone is a gunner, they're taking the exact opposite approach. They're trying to learn by lecturing. They're trying to learn by telling the professor something and broadcasting it to the poor captive audience that is the entire class. Well, that's totally contrary to how learning in law school works. You don't learn by you talking. You learn by the professor talking. You learn by listening. And the more you are talking, the more the professor isn't talking, and the more you aren't getting a sense of what it is that the professor wants you to get out of the class. So gunners might engage in that behavior because they think it is going to help them be a top law student, but in reality, it isn't. So what are reasons why you shouldn't be a gunner in law school? Number one, being a gunner doesn't help you get better grades. It is not the activity that gets you points on the exam. It just isn't. Having a holistic view of the law as taught by the professor in class, drafting a superb outline and deploying that outline on the exam is what will help you succeed. And bantering with your professor during class doesn't get you anywhere. You are in law school to get good grades if you want to maximize your career potential, if that is your goal. It doesn't necessarily have to be. But if you want to have access to a broader scope of careers after law school, you should try to focus on achieving the very best grades that you can and being the very best that you can in terms of your academic career and prowess. Being a gunner is not the behavior that gets you there. Why else is being a gunner unproductive for you in law school? Well, the second reason that I want to focus on is to let you know that if you are a gunner, you are distracting yourself from the behavior that will get you good grades. So number one was that being a gunner isn't going to help you. But number two, my tip is that being a gunner is actually a distraction from behavior that will get you good grades. Remember, what gets you good grades is what you write on the exam. Being a gunner does not help you write a better exam answer. It's a distraction. If you are focused on impressing people in class, you aren't focused on your exam outline. If you when you are reading cases to prepare for class, you are thinking about how you need to understand those cases super well so you can have a lovely discussion with the professor about them. You are not outlining the case and thinking instead about how the case is going to be used at the end of the semester on the exam and how you can deploy the rules from the case and the holdings of the case to write an exceptionally strong exam answer. Being a gunner is a distraction from that behavior. That's the behavior that you need if you want to perform as strongly as your potential allows. So don't get distracted. Also, it's unproductive and a distraction from your success because when you are a gunner and you're focused on what you are going to say in class, you aren't listening to the professor. And in fact, you're taking up time when the professor could be dropping hints about important perspectives on the case law for your exams. When you are talking, your professor is not talking. And so you're not learning what you need to be to maximize your exam performance potential. Later on, you might take depositions in your career. And there are people who take depositions who ask really long, lengthy questions that are super attacking and try to get in upper hand. But the people who are really good at depositions just say, hey, tell me your story. I'm going to ask you some open-ended questions. I might challenge your story a little bit and ask some follow-ups, but I'm going to listen. I'm going to learn because there's no bad facts you can tell me in this deposition. I just need to know the truth. They listen. You should do the same when you're in your law school class. You should listen like you're taking a deposition where you want to learn the facts. The third and final reason you should be a gunner is this. Being a gunner is super obnoxious to other students. If you are a gunner, if you are there to try to impress other people, it isn't going to come off positively to those around you. Other students will talk about you. They'll talk about the fact that you are annoying in class. You might say, well, I don't really care about that. I just care about knocking it out of the park in law school and being the number one favorite student in my law school class and the one who seems to know the law the best day to day. And I don't care what other people think of me. That's fine, but remember two things. One, being a gunner and ostracizing these potential law students is also ostracizing potential future career paths and clients. In the future, at some point, you're going to be looking for professional opportunities in one form or another. It could be that you are in private practice and you're offering your legal services of one type or another. You're probably going to get referrals from other lawyers. Lawyers can be the best form of business development. And guess what? In law school, you have the best opportunity to meet other students who might refer you cases. I got cases from people who I knew in law school when I was in private practice. I wish I had made even more friends when I was in law school, because that would have been even more business development opportunities for me later on. If I didn't talk to anyone in law school and they go get a job and they could toss me a lot of business as an outside counsel, maybe they get an in-house job and I'm outside counsel and I could really help them. If I reach out to them and say, hey, I know we never talked in law school, but you know, I want to talk about what I can offer you. Maybe they'll message back if I had a good reputation. But if they truly knew me during that point of my academic career and they respected how I was going about pursuing that academic career, they are much more likely to reach back out to me. You've got to think about the long term. Your goal in law school is not to impress people in class, it's to have a flourishing law career. That means that you need to keep the long game in mind. Annoying people during class time isn't going to help. Second, remember that as you are obnoxious to other students as a gunner, you could even be limiting your opportunities in law school. So when you start to think about law school activities like trial advocacy teams or appellate advocacy, moot court teams, or law journals, law review, many of those organizations are run by students. And those students are going to know your reputation. If you have a reputation that is unfavorable, it's not going to help you. Same thing with judicial externships and even potentially postgraduate jobs or summer associate positions. If you have a reputation as someone who is gracious to other students, who realizes that law school is not a rat race or a competition against other students, if you're someone who truly cares about other people and comes off as kind and compassionate to others, you are more likely to have those people go to bat for you. These are the people who you need in your corner to advance professionally. You shouldn't be doing anything in law school to ostracize them. So the moral of this story is do not be a gunner. Being a gunner in law school is distracting, it's unproductive, and it isn't going to help you get better grades. In fact, it can detract from your efforts to succeed. If you find that you may have been a gunner before listening to this podcast, or at some point a light clicks on, don't worry. It's not too late to change your path. Unless you're at a law school, then we can't help you. But do your best to be the very best person you can in law school from day to day. You aren't there to impress anyone and you aren't going to impress anyone. So don't. Don't try. Don't put yourself out there in a way that is obnoxious and ostracizing to your peers and your professors. It isn't going to help you get better grades. So that's why you shouldn't be a gunner. That's why being a gunner isn't helpful to your law school career. I hope that this is an insightful podcast for you as you think about what kind of law student you want to be, as you think about what kind of lawyer you want to be. Thanks everybody. We'll see you next time.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law one step at a time.