The Jekyll and Hyde Components of the Legal Profession

The training of future lawyers is made up of one prevailing force but the system in which this force rests comes with an underlying contrasting force. The prevailing force is the law school system trying to educate legal leaders who will go into the world with the proper legal morals and sense of justice to best serve their clients and the general population at large; we will refer to this as the Jekyll component. The underlying contrasting force inspired by the capitalistic law school system, the Hyde component, is the draining of these “future lawyers” of economic capital driving them to seek mainly capitalistic endeavors upon graduation.

The underlying consequences of the current system

Law schools pride themselves on the idea that they are instructing Jekylls, client loving and creative individuals, to go into the world swinging the hammer of justice in the name of innocent people or organizations. In reality the system in which law schools train their students have an underlying crippling effect. The necessity to repay six figures worth of loans is feeding these innate Hyde tendencies. Graduating and having Uncle Sam knocking on their door is sending students crawling to big firms with the innocent intentions of working a couple of years and eventually pursuing the true reasons they came to law school. My guess as to why they are so many unhappy people at big firms is because they weren’t meant to be there to begin with. They are not becoming the leaders they were meant to be but rather are now sheep. I think back to my passionate goals of helping some weak unrepresented group in my personal statement and wonder why being canned meat doesn’t seem quite so bad, at least just for a little bit. I can help my group of choice for the time being with the simple signing of a check; perhaps one can make a reasonable argument that this of course doesn’t initiate true change. I feel more the pressures of paying off the large amounts of accumulated student loans than the pressure to stay the course one would believe I was on by reading my personal statement. Maybe the problem is that law students are being instructed in the ideologies of Jekyll but not instructed as to how to make this ideology economically salient on their own without the aid of some other firm or organization.

Why the instruction persists

Students are not being trained to avoid the restrictive chains of capitalism and utilize it instead. I am told if I want to make money I go to a big firm otherwise I can take a pay cut and go into another legal subfield. Why isn’t there a middle ground and students being trained how to seek out clients who will pay them the monthly nut they require? If law schools stopped illuminating these big firms as the only alternative of getting a payday then those firm checks and grants may stop rolling in. Students are being instructed to be leaders and seek creative endeavors but at the same time are indirectly being incentivized to put these goals on the backburner to first work under someone else in the name of currency. As the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrate, the two cannot coincide without some destructive results. Can we really blame Nancy R. Heinen, previous Apple General Counsel, for backdating stock options for Steve Jobs? Heinen was working in a system that to make money you had to be someone’s employee. We should be denouncing the system that continuous to foster this thought. I am being educated in a system that incentivizes me to chase currency before my aspirations, though unintentionally. When the Hyde is sufficiently feed within us the Jekyll component becomes compromised. When a six-figure loan meets a young scholar who thought they would use their law degree to save some unrepresented neighborhood or population, unfortunately the loans tends to win without sufficient guidance as to how to make this ambition profitable. Too often you hear a law school graduate talk of how they will go to a big law firm only to practice for a couple of years till their loans are paid off. Too often you hear a senior associate talk of how they planned on practicing for just a couple of years but it was too hard to walk away from the lifestyle they were accustomed to living. Too often you hear a ex lawyer who quit the profession because the big firm life made them unhappy. This idea that one must first pass through a big law firm before pursuing ones goals is crippling the legal system.

Saturation throughout the legal field

The Hyde component travels to the public sector side of the legal field as well. Public sector lawyer stereotypically they tend to be happier creatures, but they are now keep locked in an complacent in their current positions; they must remain there for a certain amount of years for their loans to be dissolved. They are not chasing after money to pay any pressing bills but it is easy to see that they are still nonetheless stuck in these positions. The public sector lawyers are no freer than their private counterparts. They too are not comfortable with venturing off and starting something that is new, that is theirs.

Conclusion

Law schools and their faculty are resistant to the changing of legal education. If law students are to be instructed how to build up themselves rather than relying on others then some tenure professors will have to give up their jobs because they have nothing to offer these students. The current system feeds the innate Hyde component but it is quite possible to keep it at bay with the proper legal instruction.

-- By BiyeremOkengwu - 25 Feb 2013