Having secured law-firm employment for the next summer (which will be more than 4 times as lucrative as any summer job I've ever had) it is high time for me to buy new work clothes. Aside from a few dress shirts here and there, a new suit last spring, and a much-needed pair of dress shoes, I haven't gone on a serious shopping spree since the middle of college. I hardly know where to begin.

I'm not ready (financially or psychologically) for $300 custom-made shirts or the beautiful bespoke but there are still loads of decisions to be made. (New York seems like the obvious place to shop, but I find midtown soul-sucking.) The first stop will be necktie-shopping in Roma over Thanksgiving. Advice welcome.

More from Posner's foreword (on Hart, Frankfurter, and Brandeis):

It is a source of frustration to brilliant people to be unable to persuade their intellectual inferiors, and a natrual reaction is to seek more time to persuade, knowing they can out-argue their duller colleagues. What they may not realize is that reasoned argument is ineffectual when the arguers do not share common premises and -- what turns out to be related -- that people do not surrender their deep-seated beliefs merely because they cannot match wits with the scoffers.