The Jekyll and Hyde Components of the Legal Profession

This introduction notifies the reader that in order to read this essay as the writer intended we must grant the premise that impoverishing law students is one purpose of legal education. This is not a premise the reader is likely to grant. You are making it hard for yourself to communicate, because anyone who doesn't grant this premise is likely to stop reading. Because the premise is absurd, this is likely to deprive you of all readers.

What is the problem?

Law schools pride themselves on thinking that they are instructing Jekylls, passionate and client loving individuals, to go into the world. In reality they are sending Hydes, selfish, money hungry individuals, into society to fix our nation's legal issues.

Neither one is true. Because law students are a mix of individuals with different characters and temperaments. Why establish a definition of the subject which the knowing reader will be aware from the beginning isn't true?

I think back to my personal statement and wonder how it was possible for me to have been so quickly derailed from my passionate goals or helping some weak unrepresented group. Now perhaps being canned meat does not seem quite so bad, at least just for a little bit. I can help my group of choice for the time being with the simple signing of a check.

Nonsense. If you earn an associate's salary at a big firm you will be able to make tiny charitable contributions that affect nothing. Your "group of choice" will be lucky to buy a cup of coffee with the charitable contributions you can afford after paying your taxes, loan payments, and living expenses out of $160k, even if you get such a job. Do the math. This is a favorite excuse of law students, but it is bilge.

Have I given up on who I am and what I stand for? Have I lost sight of my personal goal and only seeking economic ones now? I feel more the pressures of paying off the large amounts in student loans I have accumulated than the pressure to stay the course one would believe I was on by reading my personal statement.

But that's because you have assumed that paying your loans off is an enormous problem, which it will not be if you build a canny practice. The trick to having your economic security and your social goals is to stop treating them as opposed objectives. You need a strategy to attain both, which you can make during law school if you don't take your eye off the ball.

Law institutions cannot expect law students to graduate and go rain justice and legal morality on society when their movements are being restricted by the chains of capitalism.

Why not? Capitalism is a source of injustice, but it is also a source of wealth if you can tap it. Capitalism's alternatives would not eliminate injustice; they would change its form. If you can figure out how to use the wealth concentrated by capitalism to attack capitalism's injustices, you can "rain" justice on your society using capitalism's water. I do, so why can't you?

As a law student I do not feel as if I am being taught to be the best lawyer I can be. I do not even feel as if I have the ability to direct the path of my legal career. Can I really go and start a practice and feel comfortable that I would be able to pay back six figures worth of loans before the creditors come banging on my door

Why not? Almost everyone you know has a six-figure mortgage and most of them pay it. Your practice has a monthly nut, which includes your loan repayment, and it must have a book producing an income sufficient to meet the nut. Do the arithmetic, figure out what your clients must pay you each month in order to make your nut, and confidently expect to be able to find the clients who will pay what you require.

Those are the questions currently on my mind rather than how best can I serve a future client. Law students are being told that they should uphold a sense of legal morality and justice but at the same time are indirectly being taught that all that matters at the end of the day is their ability to amass a large amount of money in a short amount of time. As the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrate, the two cannot coincide with some destructive results. Can we really blame Wendy Howell for backdating stock options for Steve Jobs?

The Apple General Counsel who backdated the options was Nancy R. Heinen. Why shouldn't we be able to blame her? If she knowingly broke the law in order to steal money for a client, what excuse can you offer for her? That the King of the Undead, now dead, was prepared to sacrifice her career and her license in order to prevent his own punishment is a reason to condemn him, one among very many, but not an excuse for her.

Would we all be as admirable as Robinson from Lawyerland?

Perhaps Robinson is admirable, but he is hardly as admirable as all that.

Why it is happening

I am being educated to be a money hungry behemoth.

I doubt that completely. You're no behemoth, you're a calf, and you will be for quite some time. Your money-hunger doesn't come from us; if you have it, you brought it with you. You're being offered help to become anything you want. But law school is an imagination test: you must imagine what you want to be in order to become what you imagine. So far, you are not succeeding in the imagination test.

Who says? I don't think either reason or passion are the relevant springs of human conduct.

But as I have pointed out, there isn't any inherent conflict; you just made that up.

This sentence is confusing. What is it supposed to mean?

What has this to do with the "bad economy"? I've been hearing that nonsense from law students, "good" economy and "bad" for a quarter-century.

Nonsense. Almost all the lawyers who exist never had that "Big Law" chance, and it hasn't busted them. This is just lint you've stuffed your ears with, to avoid listening to the sound of your own heartbeat.

Problem reaches farther than expected

One could argue, but wait if I do manage to get into the public sector my loans will be paid off after a number of years have elapsed. But even a lawyer who goes into government or the public sector still drags along a heavy ball labeled "capitalism." Stereotypically they tend to be happier creatures, whose inner Hydes are kept at bay by possibility of their loans being graciously lifted of their heads by some higher being.

What? This doesn't make any sense to me.

They are not chasing after money to pay any pressing bills but it is easy to see that they are still nonetheless stuck in these positions. If these individuals were to wake up one day and think that their true calling was working at an investment bank and leave the public sector, they would quickly realize the federal government is unforgiving when it comes to bills owed.

What? I don't understand this point either. The whole graf needs rewriting for clarity, at least.

Conclusion

The desire to want to practice in Big Law is not a characteristic that should be looked down upon by anyone.

Why not? It's an exceedingly poor way to live a lawyer's life, and it's small return on society's investment in the young person who chooses that path.

This paper is merely to attest to the fact that the law school system is directing the majority of its students towards Big Law.

Not the "law school system." Not even all of this law school. You can't blame others for your own choices.

It simply is not for everyone. Everyone will not find happiness in that area of law. The current legal system is creating more unhappy lawyers that find themselves practicing in areas they lack interest in.

This is not the conclusion to the preceding argument.

This is a good bad first draft. Now that you've gotten the rhetoric of impossibility off your chest, expressing your fear completely, the next draft, which will look very different, can address the real questions:

1. What do I want to achieve in society through my lawyering?
2. Who are the clients I will help?
3. How much will it cost and who will pay?

Sometimes it is the clients who will pay, sometimes someone else. Strategy is about matching resources to objectives. What you want to be taught is how to strategize. People here can teach you, but only if you are making the effort to learn. The current draft expresses resistance to learning: it's too hard, capitalism is at fault, there aren't enough government jobs, greed is good, etc. These are all excuses, covers for anxiety about the job you've set out to do. But if you are prepared to tolerate injustice in return for personal comfort, there are easier ways to sell your soul than by going to law school.

-- By BiyeremOkengwu - 25 Feb 2013

The Jekyll and Hyde Components of the Legal Profession I. Intro The training of future lawyers is made up of the duality of two contrasting forces. The first of which is trying to educate legal scholars who will go into the world with the proper legal morals and sense of justice to best serve their clients and the general population at large; we will refer to this as the Jekyll component of the legal profession. The second component, which we will refer to as the Hyde component, is the draining of these “future lawyers” of as much economic capital as possible prior to graduation driving them to seek mainly capitalistic endeavors. But is it possible for the two components to coincide as well reach their own specific goals? II. What is the problem? Law schools pride themselves on thinking that they are instructing Jekylls, passionate and client loving individuals, to go into the world. In reality they are sending Hydes, selfish, money hungry individuals, into society to fix our nation’s legal issues. I think back to my personal statement and wonder how it was possible for me to have been so quickly derailed from my passionate goals or helping some weak unrepresented group. Now perhaps being canned meat does not seem quite so bad, at least just for a little bit. I can help my group of choice for the time being with the simple signing of a check. Have I given up on who I am and what I stand for? Have I lost sight of my personal goal and only seeking economic ones now? I feel more the pressures of paying off the large amounts in student loans I have accumulated than the pressure to stay the course one would believe I was on by reading my personal statement.

1. Subsection- Law institutions cannot expect law students to graduate and go rain justice and legal morality on society when their movements are being restricted by the chains of capitalism. As a law student I do not feel as if I am being taught to be the best lawyer I can be. I do not even feel as if I have the ability to direct the path of my legal career. Can I really go and start a practice and feel comfortable that I would be able to pay back six figures worth of loans before the creditors come banging on my door? Those are the questions currently on my mind rather than how best can I serve a future client. Law students are being told that they should uphold a sense of legal morality and justice but at the same time are indirectly being taught that all that matters at the end of the day is their ability to amass a large amount of money in a short amount of time. As the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrate, the two cannot coincide with some destructive results. Can we really blame Wendy Howell for backdating stock options for Steve Jobs? Would we all be as admirable as Robinson from Lawyerland?

Paper Title

-- By BiyeremOkengwu - 25 Feb 2013

Section I

Subsection A

Subsub 1

Subsection B

Subsub 1

Subsub 2

Section II

Subsection A

Subsection B

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