Robinson & Brown

Michelle, I agree with you completely about Martha's awareness and want to expand a little more on another closely related idea that I think Martha is symbolic of. I think what makes Martha have such longevity as a lawyer is that she knows how to listen, which allows her to spot not only the changing forms of discrimination against her but also identify those bigger picture issues that haven't changed. To explain, here is one of my favorite excerpts:

"Dreiser said the favorite drama of the American people is the story of a murder trial. Nineteen twenty-five he said it. During that big-money boomtime. Notice he said favorite drama, not the real drama. The real drama? No one wants to talk about it. Work. Wages. Hours. Conditions of employment. Employment! Listen closely to what people talk about-it's what people talk about almost all the time. Let me tell you about the law. One of the fundamental legal relationships in any society--as fundamental as the relationship between the state and who the state deems its criminals--is the employment contract. It is certainly as fundamental as a commercial transaction, wouldn't you say?" (128-27)

Of course, the murder trial would be our favorite drama. These are trials that make the headlines because we're attracted to the noise -- i.e., the controversy, the sensationalism. I think of our attention to murder trials similar to the attention law students give to practicing mergers and transactions just because it's the often practice that grabs most attention. "Doing M&A" commonly sounds "sexy" and "cool" -- like this is where all the drama and excitement happens.

Martha not only can see through this, but she is capable of about knowing about the real drama because she knows how to listen. How else could she have been aware of something that "[n]o one wants to talk about"? But even if an employment case doesn't make the front pages of the newspaper all the time, Martha somehow can tell by paying attention to other public expressions that employment is the real drama. And notice that when she explains what makes employment law so important--that the employment contract is a fundamental legal relationship--she doesn't go into a complicated discussion about specific issues within this area or the different trends in the field, but she keeps things simple and focuses on the bigger picture.

Take her approach and compare it to Wiley. When the author asks him how things were at the firm, he said: "'Things at the firm? Changing,' he said, and then was quiet. I asked how. 'How? More pressure to bring business in, for one thing. That's how. You don't keep up, you're irrelevant fast--real, real fast...The business is so large now --and it's getting larger. We've got offices in seventeen cities now, eleven foreign. We just opened an office in Bombay...The game is changing as we speak'" (38). He later goes on to say that the only thing that doesn't change is what lawyers do is determined "by who pays us." Wiley, here, is clearly just hearing just the noise around him (the new offices, the demands, the firm), but is not listening to what the real issues are.

I think this comparison shows that there is an crucial difference between hearing and listening, just like there is between skimming and reading a book. Wiley is a mess because the noise tells him the business is constantly changing and that he needs to stay relevant in order to keep his job. But Martha knows how to listen and identify the real drama in our society. And when she describes it, she sticks to the bigger picture. I emphasize that again because the best advice I've ever gotten from a several professional mentors of mine (at separate times) is to keep things simple. It's so important to have this in mind particularly at law school because everything we learn doesn't seem so simple. We have fact, rules, standards, codes, exceptions, exceptions to the exceptions, etc. The times I confuse myself the most and get lost is when I focus on the details and feel like every case I read is saying something completely different -- that things are changing every time. But I'm most successful when I get myself out of that funk and force myself to keep these concepts simple. Overall, listening, rather than hearing (the noise), is much more conducive to becoming "simpler" thinkers.

-- LizzieGomez - 24 Mar 2012