So, "law school changes the way you think." True or false? Maybe for some, it's difficult to see how law school changed their thinking because they came more or less directly from college and didn't really have time to put their college-level mental skills to use out in the world.

But I did. Here are the three questions that I now routinely ask myself in almost every situation. And I credit law school. None of them are new ideas, but I do think law school a) makes you understand why they're valuable and b) turns them into habit.

What are the determinative facts? In any problem, there are facts that matter and facts that don't. Signal and noise, if you prefer. Learning how to separate them out is useful. It simplifies the problem (by removing extraneous information). And it helps show you what kind of problem it is. Kind of like when you clean out dirt from the top of a screw to find out whether you need a regular screwdriver, a Philips head, or a hex wrench.

What is the principle behind the outcome? You're better off devising a principle that implies the outcome rather than just deciding the outcome. Because when a similar situation comes up, you'll be able to solve it more quickly (you won't reinvent the wheel) and more consistently (you're protected against random and arbitrary results).

What are the incentives that affect the participants? I was almost going to say law school makes you look at things more fairly or even-handedly, but I don't think that's quite true. Law school teaches you that you can manipulate situations using incentives. Whether you use that power for good or ill is up to you.

Laws exist to modify behavior. And they do that by modifying incentives. A potential $300 fine is your incentive to not park in a handicapped space. A mortgage-interest tax deduction is your incentive to own a home with borrowed money. And so on.

Again, this isn't a new concept. When we were babies, we screamed until we got fed. The potential for silence was the incentive for our parents to comply.

Law school helps you see that not much has changed. Most situations are sets of interdependent incentives, like a chess game. You want to think a few moves into the future so you get the outcome you want without causing unintended side effects.

Here's an example. Recently my fiancée was looking forward to dinner with a girlfriend. Girlfriend insisted on bringing her boyfriend. Fiancée thus insisted I attend, to occupy boyfriend so she could talk to girlfriend.

That would've been the obvious solution. But having been to law school, I pointed out that if we announced that I was attending, we'd be giving boyfriend a positive incentive to show up. If we announced that I was not attending, then boyfriend would see that he would be miserably bored and stay home. Which was really the desired outcome.

It worked.

21 Jan 07