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JustinPurtleFirstPaper 7 - 17 Aug 2009 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Fears of a law student | | | | |
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- You haven't explained why you think that the best way to prepare for practice is to be trying to practice without having learned how. The hypothesis on which law school is based, and which I think has validity regardless of the reasons why law school presently works badly, is that a coherent attempt to teach is more effective than undirected apprenticeship. As a person who both teaches in classrooms and also operates a legal services entity where young lawyers, including law students, practice all the time, I can say for sure that law school education, including at high student-faculty ratios in large classrooms, serves purposes that practice-oriented school-to-work programs can't have on their own. But why should I stop you from explaining how lawyers should be trained?
- I think there is courage and strength in admitting the anxiety, but the next step is to be willing to let go of the cords that tie you to it. If every time you spoke to some suburban householder he told you how he lies awake at night worrying about his mortgage payment and that it's preventing him from doing what he wants to do with his life, you'd wonder. So I wonder. You're going to have a small mortgage to pay, probably in addition to some long-term debt on your home. So what? Life choices aren't made on the assumption that your only way to pay the mortgage is either (a) get a job with the worst industrial polluter in town, or (b) do something no one can quite define or knows how to do. People have been making a good living using law licenses for a thousand years. Large leveraged law firms have been around for less than a hundred years. The belief that you can't make a good enough living to pay the mortgages without hocking your license to some sweatshop isn't worth three essays your freshman year. It isn't worth one. To let the issue have an y significant effect on your life choices is stupid. That's really how it is. Now, can you deal with it?
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JustinPurtleFirstPaper 6 - 18 Apr 2009 - Main.JustinPurtle
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Reasonable Doubt | | | The Columbia Solution | |
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< | Columbia Law school would have you believe that problem is easily solved and the system is the solution: either take the high paying job or rely on LRAP and you have nothing to worry about. I don't find this to be helpful. | >
> | Columbia Law school would have you believe that the problem is easily solved and the system is the solution: either take the high paying job or rely on LRAP and you have nothing to worry about. I don't find this to be helpful. | | | Admittedly, at first, these seemed like acceptable options. But every day since I've started at Columbia I've questioned their adequacy more and more. Nevertheless, what has held me as well as many of my fellow students back is the lack of a clear alternative way out that leads not only to career satisfaction but also to a comfortable life with income that renders our debt manageable. Professor Moglen has pushed us to consider alternative career paths and to avoid becoming “meat” packaged by the Columbia assembly line, but the ability to entertain the option of pursuing off-the-beaten-path careers we must still consider our ability to support ourselves and pay off our loans. The pressure of paying back loans, it seems, is too great to permit us with any breathing room upon graduation to reflect and explore our options. |
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JustinPurtleFirstPaper 5 - 17 Apr 2009 - Main.JustinPurtle
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> | Fears of a law student | | | | |
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< | American law schools may be the biggest swindlers in higher education. Currently, there are 199 ABA approved law schools in this country, most of which charge outrageously high tuition rates with the false promise that their graduates will be able to be “lawyers” - that is, that their graduates will be wealthy. Columbia Law School, and other top law schools, stand out from the crowd, supposedly because their promises are not empty – if you attend one of these schools, the common wisdom goes, you can, and probably will, be rich. However, although we are all students who attend one of these prodigious institutions of higher learning, we all seem to be at least somewhat discontent with our prospects as professionals in the future. For those who do feel they are being swindled despite promises of potential wealth and stability, there has been little discussion regarding what can be done to change things for the better. And such a discussion is necessary, as it is clear that individual action alone never will be sufficient to bring meaningful change to the system. Many of the problems in the legal profession could be solved, or at least significantly improved, if lawyers were able to change the educational system so that they would not only feel more prepared and competent as future lawyers, but also create a greater impression of competence among those not in the legal profession. | | | | |
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> | Although I have committed myself to be trained to participate in a profession that has traditionally allowed many to live comfortable and fulfilling lives, I find that my days are filled with anxiety. From my observation this is typical of the majority of my fellow students. Some of the most troublesome worries of a law school student, or at least, the worries that trouble me the most, are anxiety about finding jobs and fear of inability to pay off debt. If many other law students feel this anxiety to the same extent as I do, it is easy to see why many choose the security of working at a big firm over choosing to exert control over their own lives and careers and find their own place in the legal world. Because I feel this is a considerable problem, I think it would be useful to discuss these fears and perhaps try to find a way to cure, or at least mitigate, this crippling anxiety.
Coming into law school, my greatest fear was fear of being saddled with soul-crushing, unaffordable debt upon graduation. In this I was hardly alone. My dread was further fueled by my discovery of jdunderground.com, a forum where unemployed lawyers burdened with huge amounts of debt complain about how miserable their lives are. The idea that the debt of a law school education leaves you with the choice of either accepting an offer at a big law firm or one at a public interest law firm and leaning on the crutch of LRAP is, by my own observation, the dominant sentiment among our student body. The anxiety that fuels this belief is probably detrimental to the ability of the student body as a whole to choose the lives that best fit them, so I think it is useful to address this fear directly. | | | | |
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< | Career Opportunities, the Ones that Never Knocked | | | | |
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< | In class we have already established the fundamental flaws in the two most apparent career choices presented to us by law schools. On the one hand, one could choose to go down the big law path, leading to financial stability but potentially meaningless work and the “pawning” of one's license to practice law. On the other hand, one could choose to work in “public interest” law, where the pay is less but the work is theoretically more rewarding. What compels law students to generally choose only from these two paths is the amount of debt that they incur by choosing to attend law school. Indeed, it seems that there is no choice but to either take the huge salary or to throw yourself at the mercy of Columbia's LRAP, which, according to Professor Moglen, is an essentially empty promise made by Columbia that requires students to sacrifice their own financial comfort for dubious debt relief assistance. | >
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< | The easy solution would be for law schools to charge more reasonable tuition. This would certainly make it easier to say no to big law salaries. However, I don't think that this is a sufficient solution, nor is it even a necessary part of the solution. I think that the problem lies with the sort of people that law schools produce. Because law school is supposedly a professional school meant to train lawyers, perhaps we could learn something from another professional school – medical school. | >
> | Columbia Law school would have you believe that problem is easily solved and the system is the solution: either take the high paying job or rely on LRAP and you have nothing to worry about. I don't find this to be helpful.
Admittedly, at first, these seemed like acceptable options. But every day since I've started at Columbia I've questioned their adequacy more and more. Nevertheless, what has held me as well as many of my fellow students back is the lack of a clear alternative way out that leads not only to career satisfaction but also to a comfortable life with income that renders our debt manageable. Professor Moglen has pushed us to consider alternative career paths and to avoid becoming “meat” packaged by the Columbia assembly line, but the ability to entertain the option of pursuing off-the-beaten-path careers we must still consider our ability to support ourselves and pay off our loans. The pressure of paying back loans, it seems, is too great to permit us with any breathing room upon graduation to reflect and explore our options. | | | | |
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< | Solution? | | | | |
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> | Or is it? | | | | |
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< | The fundamental problem with law school and with earning a J.D. is that holding the degree by itself does not indicate to anybody that you are capable of actually practicing law. Clients hiring big law firms are insistent on having partners and upper-level associates do their work, and with good reason – law school does not provide any real practical training. Contrast this to medical school – patients do not only trust new graduates with their lives, but they will sometimes so trust even medical students during their residencies. The reason for the difference is apparent – medical school takes education much more seriously than law school. Practical skills are emphasized and the educational process is given the time and seriousness that it deserves. Law schools, on the other hand, have contented themselves with becoming big law associate factories, and, as we have established in class, big law associates do not actually practice law. | >
> | Maybe the solution to the problem is to stop worrying about our ability to pay off loans right away and start worrying about achieving some sort of happiness in our lives. In other words, maybe it's time to take the focus off the money. This is not an easy step. The entire law school system fights against this intuition. But it might be worth putting into perspective; in the grand scheme of things, nobody will leave law school with education loans greater than the mortgage on an average house. As Professor Moglen pointed out to me, inflation is on our side, and our investment will become easier and easier to pay off as inflation increases every year, assuming inflations outstrips interest rates (which, in this economic situation, is not unlikely). These considerations might calm the anxieties of some, but regardless of how relatively small our debts will be compared to the debts of most home owners, paying off our loans still seems to be a daunting task. Putting it into perspective makes the task of paying off our student loans seem possible.
But it might be useful to explore other options to further mitigate our debt anxiety. | | | | |
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< | If law school, like medical school, could gain a reputation for training individuals who were competent on graduation day, there would be a fundamental paradigm shift in all areas of the law. Big law firms might continue to exist, but they could no longer exist as they do today. If law schools could gain a reputation for training trustworthy, knowledgeable and able lawyers, then clients of big firms would no longer be distrusting of their work being assigned to first year associates. Suddenly, partners would lose the immense leverage they currently have over first year associates, a leverage which is founded on the fact that associates are essentially useless to the firm and know it, but still want large salaries. The uselessness of associates combined with their desire for money has been partners' justification for forcing associates to spend outrageous amounts of time working on essentially meaningless projects. With this leverage removed, partners could no longer force associates to “pawn” their licenses to practice law and would have to change their entire business design. | | | | |
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< | For those students who have no intention to work for big firms, the benefits of a more practical legal education are even more apparent. If law school provided practical training, then students would not feel compelled to work for institutions that they find distasteful in attempt to obtain the practical training they so desperately need after three years of useless academic wankery. If law school could adjust itself to train confident lawyers, such further education would be needless. | | | | |
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< | It is of course difficult to say how these changes could be brought about or implemented given the stubbornness of the system and the willingness of most to accept the status quo. However, the current economic crisis might expedite or even force such a change to occur. Surely law schools will no longer be able to swindle students if they can no longer offer lucrative firm jobs upon graduation. Instead, they might have to offer their students a different promise – the promise that attending law school is more than just jumping through hoops on the way to the rat race, the promise that, with the requisite effort and will, one can be a competent professional at the end of their education. | | | | |
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- Ranting is okay, but you have to know what you're talking about. Your view of law firm economics, which assumes that first-year associates are unprofitable, is wrong. If there is enough work to employ the firm's more senior hours, there is work on which first-year time turns a handsome profit. Your use of the word "leverage" to imply something more than the attraction of $165k/yr for a twenty-something who doesn't know very much was not, unfortunately, well-advised. Similarly, the myth of "training" makes your points about the educational system hard to follow: the firms don't make their associates into people who could be solo practitioners; they turn them into specialists in large-firm activities. Nowhere in the world are lawyers produced by a school system that makes practical training via apprenticeship unnecessary. Most systems have required apprenticeship periods; the US is as usual particularly hospitable to personal reinvention in allowing graduates who pass the bar to practice on their own from the beginning, should they so choose. There's no explanation in the essay about how to achieve what no other system achieves either, so it's hard to judge what the consequences of an attempt would be.
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> | Another way of helping ease the anxiety we feel about debt is strengthening our belief that we can, in fact, be lawyers and will do so. This resolution will not be helped by the status quo, however. At present, law schools leave their students woefully unprepared to do anything of the sort. The practical skills that we would need to start off on our own can not be learned in huge lecture halls. Probably the only way to learn such skills through the university curriculum is through participation in clinics and externships. However, there is a limit to how many of these classes you can take (they, along with any non-law school classes taken toward earning the J.D., can comprise 23 of the 83 credits required for graduation) and spots are limited. So why aren't we complaining about this? The best way to get our money's worth with respect to our professional education is to get as much professional experience as possible. As consumers of the product that is a Columbia Law School education, we should demand more for our money.
What to do with it
Looking at our debt with some perspective along with being more proactive about the practical aspects are two things we can do to help ease our anxiety. I'm not sure that either one or both of these things will be able to solve or even substantially mitigate the problem of fear. I think, however, that it would be useful to open up the discussion to the rest of the law school community and recognize and confront each of our own fears with respect to law school and employment so that we can put our focus where it needs to be. | | | | |
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- I think we need to figure out what you really wanted to write about. I don't think it was law firms or how law school should work, because those weren't things you wanted to spend time finding out about or you'd have been more accurate about them. The identification of being a lawyer with being rich probably should be more thoroughly considered, too. It doesn't strike me as obvious that being a lawyer means being rich. But it does seem obvious to you, so maybe that's the real subject here. What does being rich mean, and what are you willing to do for what kind of money?
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< | -- JustinPurtle - 27 Feb 2009 | | |
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JustinPurtleFirstPaper 4 - 26 Mar 2009 - Main.IanSullivan
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Swindlers | | |
It is of course difficult to say how these changes could be brought about or implemented given the stubbornness of the system and the willingness of most to accept the status quo. However, the current economic crisis might expedite or even force such a change to occur. Surely law schools will no longer be able to swindle students if they can no longer offer lucrative firm jobs upon graduation. Instead, they might have to offer their students a different promise – the promise that attending law school is more than just jumping through hoops on the way to the rat race, the promise that, with the requisite effort and will, one can be a competent professional at the end of their education. | |
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- Ranting is okay, but you have to know what you're talking about. Your view of law firm economics, which assumes that first-year associates are unprofitable, is wrong. If there is enough work to employ the firm's more senior hours, there is work on which first-year time turns a handsome profit. Your use of the word "leverage" to imply something more than the attraction of $165k/yr for a twenty-something who doesn't know very much was not, unfortunately, well-advised. Similarly, the myth of "training" makes your points about the educational system hard to follow: the firms don't make their associates into people who could be solo practitioners; they turn them into specialists in large-firm activities. Nowhere in the world are lawyers produced by a school system that makes practical training via apprenticeship unnecessary. Most systems have required apprenticeship periods; the US is as usual particularly hospitable to personal reinvention in allowing graduates who pass the bar to practice on their own from the beginning, should they so choose. There's no explanation in the essay about how to achieve what no other system achieves either, so it's hard to judge what the consequences of an attempt would be.
- I think we need to figure out what you really wanted to write about. I don't think it was law firms or how law school should work, because those weren't things you wanted to spend time finding out about or you'd have been more accurate about them. The identification of being a lawyer with being rich probably should be more thoroughly considered, too. It doesn't strike me as obvious that being a lawyer means being rich. But it does seem obvious to you, so maybe that's the real subject here. What does being rich mean, and what are you willing to do for what kind of money?
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-- JustinPurtle - 27 Feb 2009
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