DISCLAIMER TO MY FELLOW CLASSMATES

This Wiki entry is an essay for a cause not for a grade.

As you should all have realized by now, this course has not been your typical law school course. It was truly enjoyable. Thus, I present you with an atypical law school essay. I hope this too is truly enjoyable. This may not be an essay that you expected to read during your law school experience but thanks to the advent of open forums like this wiki, I have the freedom to write this essay and share it with my fellow classmates. Likewise, you have the freedom to read it and comment on it as well, building it out in collaboration with the author. That is amazing. Further, I am not worried about it being right or wrong. It is just an idea, or maybe it just some thoughts but hopefully one that we can build upon collaboratively in the future. The worst thing that could happen is that I edit it. You may be able to tell by now that I am not too concerned about my grade in this course (but we will get to that later). This wiki, this uncomfortable open space that allows us to actually think and create, is bigger than your grade. It is an opportunity to fix a problem that we all see but never do anything solve.

AN AMBITIOUS ENDEAVOR

To those still reading, let me now say that I do not know if we have enough power to do so but I want us to change the legal education. This wiki entry is a starting point for anyone interested in thinking about this topic. If you are not interested, ask yourself how many times you overheard someone within the walls of our law school talking about hating a class, or hating an assignment, or hating their entire their law school experience. We go to one of the top law schools in the world, we enjoy reading and thinking about the law. So what is it that you hate? I believe it is the failed education system that is in place in most law schools in the country.

For the most part, the majority of law school courses don't ask us to think. They instruct us to read. Then they test us on our reading comprehension skills. Rather than allowing us to think about what we learned and contribute to the legal field, we spit back a bunch of information that someone else understands better than us in hopes of the professor giving us a good grade. Those grades limit us as well. You can have my A or B or C or D or F. Take it.

In the past few months I have dug deep into my thoughts to understand my lack of concern for grades and to put it into words. This course has made me realize that true progress does not come from getting a check+ on a paper nor does it come from a check from a law firm. Those checks bring you little freedom and a lot of restraints. Those things are limitations on our intellectual capabilities. At this level, competing for grades is worthless for every one of us. I do not want a grade to gain a competitive advantage over you in the job market. I do not want to be in that particular job market. You know, the one with the big checks and pinstriped suits (although I enjoy both of those things). I want to create something with you.

When you have proven yourself by grades your entire life, there should come a day when you no longer need to compete for the top grade (just ask Yale). But the school has to get us high paying jobs to keep up with the rankings and grades are their way of solving this problem. It fails us to compete at this level and it fails society even more. Collaboration of our minds could create so much more and I am banking on that collaboration to build an alternative to the current legal education. This is not just a fleeting idea that will go away when the semester ends. This is a real opportunity to think and create.

MY PROPOSAL TO ALL READERS

Once you step outside of the current law school mold, you will be grateful for this open space to think collectively and create collaboratively. So let's get on with it. Knock down the walls of grades, hold off on the competition for high-paying jobs, and THINK. Think about how we can change things enough so that students are not walking through the halls balding and aging because of their finals schedule.

If we fail with this idea, maybe you can even fit this endeavor into your restrictive 1 page resume that is supposed to capture your entire suitability for wearing an expensive suit to work every day. If we fail and you want it enough, I am sure you will find a high-paying job. If we succeed, we can delete the resume file from our computers and attach our names to something that actually matters, not just by giving money to a staircase in the JG lobby.

We are all intelligent. We were admitted into this school. Let us use the education we received here to actually change the system. Let's make use of our minds and fix a real problem.

CONCLUSION

Law school is supposed to be a tool used to better American society by allowing the interested student to build on laws of the past and apply concepts to the future. At one point in time, law school’s purpose was to educate interested students in a way that they could accomplish this goal, teaching students that they can improve the world by contributing to our nation’s law-making regime. But at some point law school lost this purpose, leaving this purpose behind in order to pay for a house in Southampton and a Porsche Carrera (two things I also like).

Instead of achieving its purpose, law school tried to shove me into a nice little mold without knowing if I would fit in it. I could not fit into that mold no matter how hard I tried and I did try. I want that Porsche too. It is important to realize that molds are not necessarily bad things but the mold we are talking about is only good if you are the "molder" and you want to maintain control over the "moldee" or if you are the "moldee" and you are willing to give up your own purpose for a comfortable ride in the passenger seat.

I am asking you something that I was never asked in law school. I am asking you to take a few minutes and just think if you are doing what you want to do. If you are still reading, I am asking you to collaborate with a classmate and create something of substance. I am asking you to take an idea to fix the legal education and build on it. Do not spit back my essay's words back at someone and do not cite me on a test or in your life. My words are not yet worthy of that praise.

Mark Twain once said, "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Although our addiction to oil and complex chemicals has shown that changing the weather is possible (maybe we will discuss this in another essay), the weather remains fairly difficult to change, or at least more difficult to change than this legal education system.

-- AlanDavidson - 08 Dec 2011

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