The other day, I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a video of a flight attendant walking down the aisle of a plane holding a cat.
Presumably, the cat belonged to one of the passengers. The flight attendant was holding it up and asking everyone, one row at a time, if it was theirs. It was one of those videos that was clearly supposed to make you smile. A cat had somehow gotten loose on a plane, a flight attendant was trying to reunite it with its owner, and everyone was apparently having a pretty good time.
The news story ended there.
No catastrophe. No dramatic ending. No angry passenger. Just a cat wandering around an airplane and a flight attendant trying to figure out who it belonged to. Except my brain apparently couldn’t leave it there.
Almost immediately, I found myself thinking: What if the cat jumped out of the flight attendant’s hands and scratched someone? Who would be liable, and to whom? Would the injured passenger sue the attendant, the airline, or both? Was the attendant acting within the scope of her employment? Could the airline argue that she wasn’t? Would it matter whether the passenger was actually injured, or would emotional distress be enough? What facts would we even need to know?
And that’s when I stopped and literally thought, Wow, I’m turning into that person in class who turns one case into an entirely separate hypothetical.
It was supposed to be a funny Instagram reel. Why couldn’t I just let it be a funny Instagram reel?
I think that’s one of the stranger things law school has done to me. It has made it almost impossible to consume information without immediately trying to figure out the legal framework underneath it. And it’s not just Instagram, either.
I’m walking down the street and see a car accident, and suddenly I’m wondering who had the right of way and whether there’s comparative negligence involved. I’m driving and see someone blow through a stop sign, and my brain starts constructing another hypothetical.
And then there are the headlines. Law school has made me deeply suspicious of headlines.
Not because they’re necessarily wrong, but because I’ve started to realize how much they can leave out. A headline can make something sound obvious when the actual dispute is much more complicated. “Company Sued for Millions” sounds very different from “Company Faces Lawsuit Seeking Millions.” “Judge Rules in Favor of Defendant” can sound like someone was found innocent, when the case might actually have been decided on a procedural issue. “Plaintiff Wins” doesn’t necessarily mean the plaintiff got everything they wanted. And don’t even get me started on appeals. A verdict might make for a great headline, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the case is over.
I find myself wanting to know what happened before the part of the story that made it into the headline. Of course, that’s also where law school can make you a little annoying.
You start noticing that there are usually at least two sides to every story, and sometimes neither side’s version is quite as neat as the headline suggests. You learn that what someone alleges is not necessarily what happened. You learn that a legally important fact can be buried in the fourth paragraph. You learn that the question isn’t always who is right, but what can actually be proved, under what standard, by whom, and in what forum.
And suddenly, everyone you know has a lawyer.
Or, more accurately, everyone you know has you.
I can’t count how many times friends who have nothing to do with law school have sent me a news story with some variation of, “Okay, so what do you think about this?” Over the summer, I got questions about the Clancy trial and other cases making the news. Sometimes I have an answer. Sometimes I have to remind them that I’m still a law student and probably shouldn’t be giving anyone a definitive legal opinion based on a three-minute news clip.
I understand why they ask. But unless I’ve actually been following the evidence and the details of a case closely, I usually end up giving the least satisfying answer in the legal dictionary: “It depends.”
Once you start learning how to read cases, statutes, arguments, and evidence, it’s hard not to bring that lens everywhere. You start seeing the questions behind the story. What happened? What does each side say happened? What evidence supports that? What is the actual legal issue? What does the law require? And perhaps most importantly, what don’t we know yet?
Now, I find myself automatically looking for what might be missing. Not because every story is misleading, but because I’ve learned how much context matters.
There is a downside, though. Sometimes I really would like to just watch the cat video.
I don’t always need to identify the potential defendants, analyze vicarious liability, and determine whether the flight attendant’s actions were within the scope of employment. Sometimes a cat is just a cat. Sometimes a car accident is just a car accident. Sometimes I should probably let a funny Instagram reel be funny.
But I also think there’s something valuable about having your brain changed, or maybe expanded, in this way. Law school hasn’t just taught me more about the law. It’s changed the way I interpret information. It’s made me slower to accept neat narratives, more interested in context, and much more likely to ask what happened before deciding what I think happened.
Maybe that’s part of becoming a lawyer. Not constantly turning everything into a legal hypothetical, although apparently I haven’t quite mastered that part.
It’s learning to pause when a story seems simple and ask a few more questions, even when you’re doomscrolling.
Bella Calise is a second-year student at BC Law. Contact her at calisei@bc.edu.
