When you think of an attorney you know, you might think of a family member, friend or maybe even a television character who plays an attorney, like Annalise Keating or Ben Matlock. Despite that many attorneys are ones that don’t litigate, you might think of attorneys as having strong verbal skills. They use their verbal prowess and ability to read people to convey and sway people to think one way or another. Many of them also spend hours reading through documents to find positioning to win cases or protect their clients and their interests, so they likely are very strong readers with a great ability for comprehension. What you might not think of skill wise when you think of attorneys, is the ability to do math.
Math is currently not a large part of most law curriculums and the Law School Admission Test (the test that must be passed to get into law school which measures skills in critical reading, analytical thinking and verbal reasoning) doesn’t include a math competence section. However, math is very useful when practicing law. Practicing math sharpens analytical skills and it helps with anything financial and statistics driven. Having good numerical fluency and a certain level of math competence can also help attorneys start and run their own practice, again, because of the finance side of business. Lastly, it can help them relate to clients who own businesses that are heavily reliant on math, say, a financial or private equity firm. Let’s look more deeply into how math can be useful for those who practice, study and defend law.
Analytical Development
If you break math down to the basics, math is comprised of numbers, proofs and formulas. Math equations have a huge range of difficulty that goes from simple, like 1+1=2 to difficult, like Einstein’s E = mc^2. Going beyond just solving equations to find answers, when we do math, we are teaching our brains to think better critically. When logic is brought to the way we examine and approach situations, we tend to be able to present argument better. And, well, this is exactly why it’s important for lawyers to critically think. Sometimes they are required to work on emotionally charged cases – particularly defense or prosecuting attorneys. When they approach cases with analytical eyes, they can represent their people more clearly which leads to more desired outcomes for cases.
Analyzing and critically thinking is also useful when reviewing contracts and other documents that are used to support cases. Beyond that, when terms are reached legal agreements are made, it’s important to have an attorney with strong analytical skills to review the terms, as legal language can be tricky and it can create confusion, depending on the way it’s worded. Properly examining and questioning slippery language is definitely a skill that requires a trained critical thinker.
Business Management
Attorneys who work independently, own their own law firm or work with partners must have strong financial and accounting practices at some point to know how to run a business. Those who have their own practice need to have solid processes for bookkeeping and even if they hire someone to do bookkeeping for them, understanding the finances helps them plan and grow strategically. Accounts receivable and payable, wages and taxes are all math related and having a handle on them as an attorney running a business will help everything flow more efficiently.
Types of Law
Analytical skills gained from understanding foundational math concepts and are useful for attorneys in and indirect way, but there are some specific types of law that require lawyers to have legitimate math skills and be strong at mental math. In some instances, lawyers can contract work out to other professionals who are experts in different fields, say, a Certified Professional Accountant, but for the most part, lawyers still need to have enough math competency to be able to accurately represent clients and businesses. Here are some examples of legal issues that require attorneys to be pretty skilled in various math concepts:
Tax Law – government and the way it works is complicated to say the least. Taxes are almost exclusively dealing with government and it’s ever changing laws. CPAs can be brought in to aid in transactions dealing with tax law but attorneys who represent clients need to have a good understanding of the documents and reports they submit.
Family Law – this is law having to do with anything related to families, but most often child custody and divorce law. Valuating the net worth of property and goods to calculate the division of what should go to who and apportioning support payments for either children or alimony requires a lot of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Medical Malpractice Law – this occurs when a healthcare professional or hospital causes injury to a patient due to negligence. Sometimes cases like this are settled out of court, other times they have to go through litigation. Either way, damages that plaintiffs suffer have to be calculated and putting together all those numbers plus arguing them is necessary for defendants, judges and juries.
In the end, there are many ways attorneys use math in their profession on a regular basis, but to be honest, it isn’t just attorneys. There is a long list of careers that use math equal or more than lawyers. It can be hard to draw parallels to math work done in a classroom and at home to future career paths, but math isn’t just about keeping busy in the moment. There are many ways math teaches us how to approach problem solving in the real world. Being an attorney is one of those ways we see math put to work in a very real way.
