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< | The Paper Chase: Chaser or the Chased? | >
> | Letter to My Future Peers | | | -- By MarcusStrong - 16 Feb 2012 | |
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< | Two Anecdotes | >
> | Personal Introduction | | | | |
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< | At the beginning of term in law school, two small discussions of which I wasn’t even a part forced me to reassess my view of choice and academics. The first was a discussion I heard about a girl who was so disappointed by her pre-selected Torts professor that she petitioned the Registrar to completely change her schedule so she could presumably learn the law of wrongs from someone more qualified. Immediately, I was critical of her decision and couldn’t figure out why she needed to take such drastic measures. Our schedule in the second term is decided by, among other factors, what section we were in the previous term, and what elective we chose for the Spring. Should anyone be dissatisfied with their elective, one could understandable change it and potentially have a different schedule as a result. But changing a professor of a core class like Torts? I couldn’t understand it. Why couldn’t she just accept her schedule like everyone else? As it got later in the term though, another discussion in class turned my prior opinion on its head. When asked by our professor why grades matter, a student retorted, “Because…they’re a proxy for all the qualitative skills we can’t measure.” As with the prior discussion, I was also struck by what seemed to rash decision-making. This time, however, I couldn’t understand why my fellow student took grades as the norm, as the baseline, rather than some other measure, like his own self-evaluation. Given a desire for choice in one situation, I now had to reevaluate my complicity in another. | >
> | In many ways, my path to law school and any success at this point in life is traditional and formulaic. I went from public school and magnet programs to private school and an Ivy-league school, where I was in all the requisite extracurriculars and had all the grades to make it to a top law school. In one sense, I conformed to surrounding expectations to get where I wanted to go. But in between going to class and getting all my work in on time, I read about the world, learned new skills, and dedicated myself to causes larger than school or social status. I also learned to take care of myself in ways that I hadn’t learned by observing my peers. Most people I knew in college did the same, starting out one way but ending up a very different person in four years, not merely because of their surroundings but because of their own initiative in molding themselves. That’s an obvious observation when you look at people entering law school, but after my first year, I’m not sure if I can say the same of my fellow students or myself now that we’re here to (at least temporarily) stay.
Most students enter law school with at least 22 years of life experience under their belt, coming from disparate countries, regions, colleges, professions, and income levels. Yet when they enter law school, the system of rapid outlining before exams, eating pizza lunch at hosted talks, signing up for bar exam prep in 1L year, getting little sleep, drinking too much coffee, and grades quickly becomes the norm. And between information sessions on private sector or public interest work, our schedules outside of class are basically organized for us. But that socialization also occurs without the aid of faculty or administration. Students mythologize grades and “gunners” they first observe in The Paper Chase and One-L or from the stories their relatives tell. That socialization could be called a culture, but unlike a living and breathing culture, it does not change much year after year. But recognizing those differences I mentioned earlier, I have to wonder why the same process continues to occur.
Why the Conformity?
Duncan Kennedy points to the nature of the bar and firms as the reason for conformism in law school. For them, it’s natural and fair for law school and the legal profession to be organized the way it is. Law school as it exists now continues to produce hard-working, compliant employees so it must be successful. Students have respect for that product, because it gives them skills, but status and security, whether honorary or monetary. But do they also possess fear of what will happen if they don’t become that product? And if so, of what? I, for one, have a fear of the unknown. Lawyers invited to the law school talk about their experience at corporate firms or as in-house counsel, but fail to mention what to do if you can’t get a large firm job or try to make it on your own. Contrary to post-statistics on admissions brochures, everyone doesn’t get a job when they leave school, even at the top schools like Columbia. Without any discernible alternatives from their mentors, all students can see is darkness. As Kennedy points out, “it would be an extraordinary first-year student who could, on his own, develop a theoretically critical attitude towards this system.”
Another reason that Kennedy gives for why students conform to the hierarchy is that law school teaches its students that they’re lazy. He’s right in some ways. The administration doesn’t tell us that in a bad way, as if we’re good for nothing, but tries to give us reasons to relax so students don’t have emotional or mental breakdowns. But by telling us to trust that our first-year professors always know what they’re doing, that the legal methods we learn will be helpful, the law school debilitates us from thinking critically about what and how we’re learning. One reason that students don’t challenge that hierarchy however is because the superstructure is difficult to change in three years. When you enter school, despite all the time and debt, you’re processed quickly, from first semester classes to journals and internships to graduation and a job. Given the speed and quantity of the work, there’s little incentive to criticize lecture style or ask career services to tailor their events to more diverse interests. There’s little incentive to change any part of law school when you’re encouraged to leave from day one. But this reason doesn’t make sense for the socialization among students themselves. Most law students being young adults, one would think that they would more carefully scrutinize their choices about health, friendship, and intellectual development. Actually, considering most students are in their twenties, that’s probably not true. That said, we made a conscious, independent choice to come to law school, and that independence doesn’t need to go away once you’re actually here. Maintaining friendships outside of social networking sites, experiencing culture, and committing time to others are valuable goals that don’t need to be paused for three years.
Self-Preservation or Torture?
By acclimating ourselves to a larger culture, we law students also induce the same qualities in students who come after us. We put our time in as servants until we can become the masters, which is another reason for our conformity. Knowing there’s a time limit to our self-induced torture, we last long enough until we can watch others suffer. Putting your time in or getting hours served could be seen as a form of self-preservation, but this type of masochism and Schadenfreude belies the fact that law school isn’t prison. However rigorous or difficult, it should still be a school.
Word Count: 953 | | | | |
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< | I don't understand the
second anecdote. At the time, I understood the point to be that
grades matter because they are a useful stand-in for a large number
of qualitative measurements no one knows how to make and communicate,
but which are the "real" underlying quality of a lawyer on sale in
the canned meat market. (Where, presumably, such fine qualitative
measurements would be even more useful, if they could be gotten and
interpreted easily.)
I thought the point was unestablished by the argument presented, and
I think it's still wrong when given its best possible presentation,
but it isn't, in any event, displacing self-evaluation: it was about
the utility of grades to other people. Here, it seems to be serving
a purpose, and creating a conflict, I didn't understand to be the case
at the time.
Arguments for Self-Evaluation
There are a few arguments for self-evaluation. First, as law students, we have very little that we can choose to do about the way we are educated, so why not take advantage of the little choice we do possess? Per most university’s policies, professors will still dole out grades, but students can still evaluate themselves on another metric. While students leave much up to the administration and to professors, in terms of what classes we take and the depth of the material in the first year, we still choose to come to law school in the first place. That choice isn’t merely one about the name on a degree or a vocation. Choosing to attend law school is a choice about what fields one wants to be exposed to, how much one wants to be challenged, and the skills one learns in the process. In other words, it’s not one-sided. Contrary to the contention of the abrasive Contract’s professor in Paper Chase, law students are not merely skulls of mush for professors to mold. Most students enter law school with at least 22 years of life experience under their belt, coming from disparate countries, regions, colleges, professions, and income levels. Yet when they enter law school, the system of rapid outlining before exams, eating pizza lunch at hosted talks, signing up for bar exam prep in 1L year, getting little sleep, drinking too much coffee, and grades quickly becomes the norm.
Communism and Rebellion
This situation mirrors the circumstances of any person caught in the talons of a movement or higher authority. The early 20th Century black American writer Richard Wright wrote these observations during time in the Communist Party: “An absolute had first to be established in the minds of the comrades so that they could measure the success or failure of their deeds by it” (Black Boy, 371). At the time, the Party in Chicago wanted to attack the plight of blacks in the city, but denied anything literary, intellectual, or outside of their political plan of attack. This lack of independence led Wright to later disassociate himself from the party completely. In his mind, they were living in “a fantasy that had no relation whatever to the reality of their environment.” (Black Boy, 363). Law students, of course, are not put on trial before their peers when they choose not to look at their grades or pursue an alternative course of legal study. But students year after year establish the same norms of mythologizing grades and “gunners.” And that socialization occurs without the aid of faculty or administration. That socialization could be called a culture, but unlike a living and breathing culture, it does not change much year after year.
Conclusion
No wonder the anecdote above seemed so strange to me. As first year students, we quickly exchange our eagerness to learn for an eagerness to comply. To be an outsider then is a courageous act. Choosing not to take every upperclassman’s advice at face value or petition for professors better suited to you are acts of rebellion. By focusing on the results or the standards by which the larger law school measures individuals, students deprive themselves not only of choice, but of the reasons they came to law school in the first place. Whether that reason is a life mission or a desire to learn, it shouldn’t be readjusted by a data collection and organization system that doesn’t know anything about you besides a name and a number.
Marcus, I think the
central idea here is "law school induces and reinforces conformism."
I don't think we need the anecdotes to understand that idea if you
start out with it, unless there's something about the process by
which you came to the idea which plays a larger role in what you want
to make of it than I understand. I also don't think we need Richard
Wright on conformism in the Communist Party, unless there's something
about that particular example of conformism which tells us about your
idea in a different or more generative way.
It seems to me that, once you've put that idea forward simply and
clearly, the way forward then lies down a couple of possible sets of
questions: How and why does law school induce and reinforce
conformism? As several people have noted, those are the questions
Duncan Kennedy tries to ask in his piece about law school and the
reproduction of hierarchy. Why do students not only accept but
unconsciously desire to conform? Why do teachers, who might be
expected to fight conformity for conscious intellectual and
unconscious emotional reasons, also accept and complicitously
facilitate it instead? What destabilizing self-knowledge are both
teachers and students fleeing? These would lead to an account with
more "Freud" and less "Marx" (or Gramsci, really) than Duncan's.
Does the conformism associated with legal education in other times
and places as well as this one play a significant role in creating
legal stability? Is legal creativity an adversary law school
conformism tries to starve out?
Maybe these aren't your precise questions. One of the sources of
creativity is to stop conforming to the horse-blinding millwork of
arguing whether ideas are right or wrong, and instead to ask
questions to which, right or wrong, they lead. | | | | |
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