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PrashantRaiSecondPaper 8 - 09 Jul 2012 - Main.PrashantRai
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Control the Narrative | | | After a year of law school I find myself under-skilled in working with the stories that form the foundation of the cases we read. This is disheartening, as stories can bridge the gap between different people’s world views, and help us understand what life is like for others. Story telling can also be deconstructive. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a great example of someone retelling a story to expose a history of oppression and violence. Stories can also be a form of healing. Story telling can provide an opportunity for people to escape the plight of having to suffer in silence. Stories can put a name to a pattern of discrimination and can as a consequence serve as a rallying point for resistance. Controlling the narrative in a trial is a powerful tool of legal advocacy. Anyone following the Trayvon Martin story can tell you that. I wish we spent more time in law school thinking about finding the stories in cases, and telling the stories that constitute our life experiences. I think it would make us more compassionate counselors and more powerful advocates. | |
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< | There are a few ways that law schools could make an immediate impact on this deficiency. The first is of course for students to stop caring so much about grades. There are several other pieces of writing on this wiki that give good reasons for why law school should place less emphasis on grades. In addition to this suggestion, I think there are a few other ways that law school can facilitate students to practice their story-telling. The first is by easing the time pressure on exams. Note the difference in approach between the memoranda/briefs that we wrote in LPW in comparison to exam answers. I found myself spending quite a bit of time contemplating the factual distinctions between the relevant cases when I prepared my LPW submissions; put differently, it is not that the stories behind cases are irrelevant to legal analysis, it is just that there is no time on exams to contemplate them. Second, exams could ask different types of questions then they do currently. "Examine all relevant issues" is too broad a question and encourages breadth of analysis over depth. Consider the following sample questions: "What is the best argument for why Peevyhouse was wrongly decided?" "Present the facts in a light most favorable to the defendant." "What are some factual issues that the fact pattern fails to resolve that, if you represented the plaintiff, you would want to explore during discovery, and why?" These are questions that one would never see on a contemporary exam but are relevant to testing mastery of the material as well as preparing law students for the tasks they will face upon graduation. The third possible solution is to provide more avenues for students to write in non-traditional ways. This class is a great example. We were not told to write in a particular way; when given this freedom, the students in this class found unique ways to present information that were equally as persuasive and impassioned as the writing we did in other classes. This is just a starting list, but it seems to me that that there are a number of simple solutions to the problem. Currently, law school fails to properly instruct us on the art of storytelling, but to quote Jim Croce in a slightly different context, "It doesn't have to be that way." | >
> | There are a few ways that law schools could make an immediate impact on this deficiency. The first is of course for students to stop caring so much about grades. There are several other pieces of writing on this wiki that give good reasons for why law school should place less emphasis on grades. In addition to this suggestion, I think there are a few other ways that law school can facilitate students to practice their story-telling. The first is by easing the time pressure on exams. Note the difference in approach between the memoranda/briefs that we wrote in LPW in comparison to exam answers. I found myself spending quite a bit of time contemplating the factual distinctions between the relevant cases when I prepared my LPW submissions; put differently, it is not that the stories behind cases are irrelevant to legal analysis, it is just that there is no time on exams to contemplate them. Second, exams could ask different types of questions then they do currently. "Examine all relevant issues" is too broad a question and encourages breadth of analysis over depth. Consider the following sample questions: "What is the best argument for why Peevyhouse was wrongly decided?" "Present the facts in a light most favorable to the defendant." "What are some factual issues that the fact pattern fails to resolve that, if you represented the plaintiff, you would want to explore during discovery, and why?" These are questions that one would never see on a contemporary exam but are relevant to testing mastery of the material as well as preparing law students for the tasks they will face upon graduation. The third possible solution is to provide more avenues for students to write in non-traditional ways. This class is a great example. We were not told to write in a particular way; when given this freedom, the students in this class found unique ways to present information that were equally as persuasive and impassioned as the writing we did in other classes. This is just a starting list, but it seems to me that that there are a number of simple solutions to the problem. I hope that others contribute with their own ideas about how to approach constructing a solution. | | | | |
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< | Jared and Skylar, thank you for your comments and edits. I incorporated them to the above draft. I left Rohan's comments below this draft because I think that they are important, but I do not have space to incorporate them into my own writing. | >
> | Jared and Skylar, thank you for your comments and edits. I incorporated them to the above draft. I left Rohan's comments below this draft because, while I think that they are important, I do not have space to incorporate them into my own writing. | | | Eben, I would like to keep working on both of my papers after the formal grading period ends. Thank you for a great semester. |
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