Justice Scalia gives law students some advice: have a life, perhaps in Cleveland, and take serious" classes, not "made-up stuff."

Speaking at the University of Chicago, he said:

“Try to find a practice that enables you to maintain a human existence … time for your family, your church or synagogue, community … boy scouts, little league,” Scalia said, noting he started with Jones, Day in Cleveland. “You should look for a place like that. I’m sure they’re still out there. Maybe you have to go to Cleveland.”

Noting his son joined a California-based law firm, Scalia laughed and said, “My son Gene went to Gibson Dunn. Any big firm has the basic ethos of its head office and if the head office is in La La land, it’s gonna be a little laid back.”

Scalia as for classes:

“I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not 'Law and Poverty,' or other made-up stuff," Scalia said to laughter. He said his advice to law students at the time was: “Take serious classes. There’s so much law to learn. Don’t waste your time.”

Oh, now, now, there's plenty of made-up stuff in classes with conventional names like "Contracts" and a decent amount of regular old doctrine in classes that have "Law and —" names. Unless what you care about is how it looks on your transcript, you need to know more than the name of the course to figure out where you're going to get law and what's going to waste your time.