History class is often criticized as just the memorization of dates and the names of dead people. My favorite class was always history, I studied history in college, and even I have to agree that studying history is mostly just memorizing stuff. But to anyone who wants to be a trial attorney, a history degree comes highly recommended.
Besides memorizing dates and names, studying history teaches many skills that a trial attorney will benefit from. It teaches us to evaluate the credibility of different sources and to form arguments based on our findings, much like an attorney will do to advance a client’s position. History is never cut and dry, either, so a good historian has to consider all possible explanations for an event and reason through them. An attorney should anticipate the strengths and weaknesses of their adversaries’ arguments and be prepared to counter them, which means reasoning through all of the possibilities — just like the historian.
And who did it ever hurt to memorize dates and names, anyways? It’s a skill that pays off as an attorney. Especially as a family law attorney, it’s critical to remember the details of your client’s case, the timing of the events in your client’s story, and the names of the people your client’s case affects.
