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Robinson & Brown | | | This insight might also be useful in analyzing our own motives at this early stage in our legal careers and help us to fashion ourselves into ‘Robinsonian’ lawyers as opposed to carbon copies of Wiley. Leff notes that the “critical con move was that initial push in the right direction; damping the later impulse to unbuy takes further energy”. Here at Columbia, the Big Law funnel, we have all already been subjected to that initial push in the ‘right’ direction – we are now “partial prisoner[s] in a sort of spatial monopoly”. Some of us came to Columbia to do corporate law. If that is your goal and ambition - I say all the more power to you and go get em’. What really saddens me, however, is those of us here who are averse to Big Law but see no other option. I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently who is questioning her decision to continue with law school. When I asked her why, she said it's because she knows she doesn’t want to do corporate law. I reminded her that although living in the Columbia bubble may make it seem as though the corporate life is the only option upon graduation, this is in no way true. Some of us – myself included – have developed tunnel vision at Columbia, and forgotten about all of the other career alternatives we once imagined. In line with Leff’s analogy, Columbia has us in “a particular store” and now the “universe of choice [has begun] to seem limited to what is there”. With copious firm networking events and email reminders about EIP, we often forget that we have the opportunity to ‘shop around’, and our “contours of choice” are consequently distorted. For those of you with an unnerving feeling that you are being manipulated into “selling wigs door-to-door – something you would never have done if all you could expect to earn were the normal profits from such extraordinarily hard work”, it’s not too late. You have two years to get creative and pass Eben’s imagination test. Any initial costs you may have sunk by attending firm events or lunch panels are minimal, and certainly worth abandoning if you fear the cognitive dissonance that may result from pursuing a career your heart is not in.
-- MeaganBurrows - 21 Mar 2012
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> | Martha Tharaud's description of "most lawyers" gave me some more insight on Wiley's situation. I loved this passage from p. 128 of Lawyerland:
"But the older you get, you realize you've wasted so much time, so much time lost. No appreciation of subtlety, of beauty. That's what it is. That, finally, is what it is. To know anything about beauty, you have to take the trouble to learn. Most lawyers are like most everyone else they don't take the trouble to learn anything other than what puts money into their pockets. I know it sounds like a cliche, but it isn't even a cliche anymore no one talks about it any-more. What happens is, one day the dimwits wake up in a 'what-is-life-really-about?' stupor, but it's too late, it's already over, so they try to bring you down into their misery. It happens over and over again every generation, the same thing happens. How many lawyers do you know who think of themselves as sophisticates, cosmopolitans, when, in reality, they don't know very much about very much at all. In the scheme of things it's all so silly, but, in the scheme of things, there are a lot of people hurt by it, really hurt. I'm not sure, either, what you can do about it, other than protect yourself, protect what you believe in, those whom you love. I'm really not sure there's a whole lot more you can do about it."
Unlike Robinson, Wiley isn't a mentor to anyone. No one has anything to say about what they learned from him because Wiley hasn't taken the trouble to learn anything other than how to make money - the only thing his colleagues have to say about him is his money; the only thing that Wiley can sell is his billable hours. As Eben said, "If you don't measure time by money, you measure time by life forgone." The life forgone is the "stupor", "misery", and "hurt" that Tharaud refers to.
Cerriere has similar problems as Wiley. I think that one reason why Cerriere is so hostile to Tharaud is that Tharaud has figured out how to have a materially good life while fighting injustice (the challenge that Eben has repeatedly offered us). Thus, he makes snide comments about how Tharaud has probably made 10 mill suing the government as if this necessarily excludes her ability to do good.
Tharaud's ability to avoid Wiley/Cerriere's predicament is partly because it isn't difficult for her to see and hear injustice. She's "aware of the fact that [she's] a woman" (126). She "remember[s] all the indignities" and she's aware that indignities "change form, and in some instances even multiply"(126). The kind of lawyer that she is has very much been influenced by her awareness of certain injustices in society.
-- MichelleLuo - 23 Mar 2012 |
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