Law in Contemporary Society

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EmmaShumwayFirstEssay 4 - 02 Apr 2021 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Recruitment

It can be demoralizing to acknowledge the limited ranks of environmental lawyers. Inspiring my peers to help in some capacity must be a part of my strategy. Right now, this may just look like having open conversations about our futures. There are countless psychological barriers that prevent climate action; short-term thinking, avoiding cognitive dissonance due to lifestyle choices, etc. I can help alleviate the cognitive dissonance barrier by reminding people that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of CO2 emissions. I can also push back on the assumption that I’ve heard from many of my classmates: “someone else will do it.” A glance at Columbia employment statistics dispels this myth. In general, I hope that by forming strong, trusting relationships, I can at least plant a seed of curiosity.
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The draft shows the advantages of knowing what you want to do in your practice at this stage in law school.

As you say, this is less an essay about a general theory of social behavior and more about how to build your practice. For that purpose, which can be made more explicit without doing harm to your other perceptive comments, this draft does very well indeed.

I would offer two routes to improve the next draft that I think are both promising. First, you could say more about building the network of your practice than following up on the idea of "recruiting" lawyers to work on the issues that concern you. One part of building a practice network is thinking about potential partners: both mentors and peers. This is close to and perhaps an advance on what you have written about in the present draft. But there are many other elements in a good network for your practice. You could think of them as lists of people you want to meet, operationally, but a little categorization and thoughts about where and how to meet the right people would be very useful here.

The other route to improvement is to begin to think about "how much," which is a very important part of planning your practice. Shouting into the wind for minimum wage isn't the only choice that might turn out not to be right for you. I know you will begin by saying that you grew up with modest expectations about lawyers' incomes and don't need big law's idea of big money. That's important, but other elements are important too. Do you want to have more people in your practice, or do you want to be a salaried lawyer at a place like EDF, where other people raise the money and make the decisions? Beginning to feel your way to the right answers for you (yes, only now, everybody knows that everybody will change) develops the imaginative and also the procedural muscles for going out into the world and realizing your intentions. That may not make the system uncorrupt, or the planet cooler, but it's part of how not to be motivated only by fear and anger in your own professional life.

 

Revision 4r4 - 02 Apr 2021 - 17:11:46 - EbenMoglen
Revision 3r3 - 26 Feb 2021 - 20:31:01 - EmmaShumway
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