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Law in Contemporary Society
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I plan to edit these notes over the course of the day (my crim class got canceled). I'd like to ask that you POSTPONE editing these notes until I've had time to clean them up. It will be when I say so, or midnight tonight, whichever comes sooner.
-- AndrewGradman - 09 Apr 2008
To sum up where we are b/c we’re moving into final stage of this course’s plan
At more than 4/5 in, I hope you can see what my __ was.
The first basic point that I wanted to establish:
There are ways of having ideas about law, that the substance of what we [think about/talk about/take tests about] is malleable.
The tendency is to treat that malleability in law school as “about policy”→so we relax the putative disciplinary activity (analyzing cases, & holdings…) and we “assess policy.”
But I Eben think that’s just pointing in the GENERAL DIRECTION about what I mean by thinking creatively about law.
Since the 19th century, I’d say there’s been a direction laid out for lawyers; and that discipline was towards multidisciplinary understandings of social action.
Late in the 19th century, the economists “imperialized” (haha, empericized?) those methods; so there way became the only acceptable way to “talk about policy:
I try to create some alternatives: to look at human action from as many perspectives as possible, so that the lawyer [who … peole in trouble] is able to undertake to familiarize self with THAT SEGEMENT OF SOCIAL LIFE in a number of ways –
AND I PRESENT IT NOT AS NORMATIVE VIEWPOINTS, but justify the perspectives in thinks we can agree upon: biology, psychology, sociology, path-dependent historical accounts of organizations perhaps influencing each other – and on up, into philosophic inquriry into the prcinples of ethics, morality, political engagement .. . whcich generally characterize __.
And I put us to a numver of tasks to looking at ways in which persons – lawyers looking at lawyer-stuff – could bring us to looking at form of thinking in the stack to bear:
→I did less than a tour than a suggestion of a tour: i.e. showing how one might GENERATE QUESTIONS that could be asked AGAIN IN NEW SITUTIONAS: “What can I learn about this subject in an e.g. psychological way? Where might one multiply knowledges in order to add value to __ lawyerly? _ thining?
I don’t care whether you find yourself more APPEALED to this way, that way, or another way; everyone has favorites … the goal was to suggest that the ABILITY TO THINK IN MULTIPLE MODES is accessible to each of you; that the variety of ways are _; and that the use of the variety of ways is
A) liberating
B) valuable
Liberating: in that in frees persons at this stage in law school from the belief that there’s on right way to do it
Valuable: Because there is a sense in which you are (hopefully) sellers of KNOWLEDGE rather than of time
whch brings us to teh
Second theme:
An appeal to hang onto the license.
An __ in relation to you own work-lives: “that the usual outcome of a legal education – namely, getting a license – permission to HAVE AND TO TURN AWAY CLIENTS – ie. Being in charge of the shaping of your own practice – is NOT AN HISTORIC ACCIDENT ONLY, but is also an EFFECTIVE, HUMAN WAY FOR LAWYERS TO WORK
Efffective, contra the alternative way as has developed in the last hundred years – i.e. to GIVE UP THE LICENSE, IN RETURN FOR A JOB.
So popular that for many purposes, it’s the only one discussed; but possessed of enormous drawbacks.
And, in general, enormously unsatisfying to the people who take it.
So my goal was, for that branch, to say, YOU DON’T’ HAVE TO, and you probably shouldn’t.
But of course: giving up the license in return for a job (by “pawning”) is SO OVERWHELMING DESIRED OF YOU BY OTHER EOPLE whose convenience it serves – whose lives are made simpler, and whose numbers are better if you fit yourself into the can, and present yourself as happy to have the lid welded on, and are delighted to be sent down the conveyor belt to the purchases of canned goods – so much more convient for them, for stupid reasons—
That they’re not merely passively hapy in your making the worst choice, but consciously conspiring to make you make the worst choice
And their means: to make you frightened and incscure.
If you knew that you could come out of law school _, you’d have an overwheleming reason to keep the license—
And they want you to be too afraid, too insecure, to __ to want to do that.
The consequence, again, I’ve seen: is that people decompose the question, how do I use my skills to have a good life? Into a series of competing questions;
Do I use my skills & smarsts to …
Meaningful life?
Get paid enough
Achieve a work-life balance with respect to the non-work parts of my life I care about,
When the actual questin: how do I used my skills with respect to getting smarts to give me the _ work and non-work that Icare about.
Admittedly, no small job for a _, but actually, APRIVILEGE OF THE RICHEST & SMARTEST __ TO _.
Re Julian Baez’s question
My own life: I had a low-debt way of life: I had other marketable skills, and I rented didn’t buy, and didn’t buy flashy things.
I decided in my mid-forties to make a way for other eople to do things in a way _.
Thus, I have every year a new debt of 2 million dollars to pay – because that ‘s what it costs for us __.
Which means that eery hyear, while I’m talking t you, I have to find 2million dollars or else I’lll have to fire people I really care about
That feels to me the same way is it does to you, EXCEPT that I** can’t go bankrupt of it EXCEPT in the legal way; so every year I find 2 million dollars and I give it away to other people.
You understand what I’m trying to say about the debt? The debt’s a state of mind. Smart people can get money . if you need money, get money. But you shouldn’t get it by selling your autonomy: because there isn’t enough money to justify the sale of the autonomy: in the long run, it isn’t wort hit.
But those are auestions. The right questions.
We need if we can to begin using this course to answer questions like that;
Because everything we’ve done so far is the foundation for that inquiry.
Student question: can you be a partner and do the thigns that you want to do?
Eben: blah __ __ so why would you sell now for _?
The system asks you to mortage your youth, when you are least encumbered: the system asks you, during that part of your life, please chain yourself to the desk; and understand that you sell your time to us at a fixed price whereas we sell your hours at a variable rate, so that we will use every neuron at much as possible; that’s leverage
‘ so that means, taking your brain, when it’s young and fresh and full of new ideas, and selling it to someone at the long _,
so that you might be granted
I know a lot of law firm partners who, when they were associates though they would have the practice of their dreams; and they don’t
I know a lot of partners who were chased out of their practices bcause their ideas conflicted with those of __
One of the reason of my pratice, is because a lot of people found that Microsoft says, “I’d love to give you 9 million $ but your partner is in my way”; and that has a remarkable way of breaking up partenershps.
But I say: every toime you are offered to sell now, in order to place a bet on later,
You ought to closely scrutinize,
Because every time, you are given a _ to sell what you certainly need, __
Because every time, they are afraid that they won’t be able to __ on their own.
“I went to columiba – they didn’t teach me how to be a lawyer, they taught me how to be a law firm asswociate. _ . It’s simpler cheaper faster easier.
BUT THE SYSTEM HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO TEACH YOU WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO LEARN: NOT WHAT IT’S EASIEST TO TEACH YOU.
The institution may have said, “we don’t have any room for lawyers, but for dentitsts or journalists.” But YOUR option actually has been to use the university to teach you what you want to learn. And your option has been, “How to learn to live well.”
Student question: the praxis – what classes to take, or wht?
Eben: I felt that there were some experiences that would help to refine that inquiry. And I’ve tried to p__ that I think useful in that process.
We’ve got one more exercise in which everybody will participate, and everybody will get the same grade.
My goal with that exercise, is to begin to comple and answer the real questions, as to what it would take to come out of law school prepearede to be a layer.
I suggeset that we use the exercise towards that question, “why you’re here” – not just this spring –
I expecttaht you should use those answers to collaborate – that it should be a resource for you, to identify what alternatives there are, in your lives, really.
Bcause there are many questions:
How WILL I get the mentoring I need if I’m NOT sold out to a law firm?
How ould I manage risk? How would I __ economically?
→ so that you can assemble the other side of the story.
So that going through law school YOU CAN SAY, HERE IS WHAT WE DON’T KNOW YET IN THE __ OF LTERNIVES?
I Eben will of course contribute for these three years; and so will, perhaps eighty people, and then twelve –
Femi: I’m looking for an example of how this function (Eben: wht’s this?) Femi: in your personal life, how did you learn to utilize your licesnes on your own?
Eben: no I went to yale: I wasn’t taguth to
Femi: so where’d you get that knowledge
Eben: well I’ve been out of lw school for a wehile. Judges, teacdhing. I invented arrangements in the world,
Things worked economically, partly because I developed my capacity for getting: I learned how to ask for money: things that most law professors don’t know, because they’re shielded by immense bureaucracies doing it for them
Femi: it seems one of the questions you’re asking is, How do we learn to use our licenses on our own while in law school …
Eben: TO PREPEARE to be able to use the license on your own outside the efirm.
I don’t expect you to acquire two decades of experience because we made a Wiki
Did Abraham Lincoln know how?
He learned. And he was a good lawyer. And out of it, he financed the love of his life, which was politices.
It’s a funny thing because as you walk through streets of NY you se signs, “X & Y attorneys at law” and you think, “well, they didn’t go to Columbia, mere legal scum – but they’re doing it! – but you think, I couldn’t do that, I’m to this, I’m too that – but it doesn’t make sense! If the system is on in which persons with fewer advantages than I can do that, how come I can’t do that?
Femi: Wh ycan’t, in the mass of trial an error in learning to use your license, be at a firm, interacting with lawyers
Eben: great, if that’s what happened
Femi: but that’s what you did
Eben: I worked at a very large law firm, as a summer associate, and
… the reason it’s hard to get out of the army is, IT’S A TOTLAIZING INSTITUITON – THEY POSSESS MECHANISMS TO MAKE YOU FEEL A CERTAIN WAY: INSECURE SELF DOUBTING BUT HOPING TO GRASP THE BRASS RING IN THE END
You want to know what you’re going to quit for
The biggest problem I have with the times I’ve been told that, is that I don’t see it actually occur very often and I know why
so who's judge day? She's a good government lawyer. What makes her a good government lawyer? What skill does she use to figure out when the argument is over? She discerns. That is to say: good lawyers are catching the imploicit. they're separating otu enough to see what's tehre. that's discernment. She's good at that. So what was it like being a junior lwyer at the FTC? She had a policymaker under her eye; and she did the work, in order to have the privilege of seeing how it was actually do be done. What interests her: how is law really made? why is it the way it is? If you've started wonderign that at the FTC, you'll __, including that judges don't make law. Now she's also been a prosecutor; she's got discernment, balance. The theory is [ notetaker spaced out] she's got slut pasted on her. That's her unspoken label (though all labels are unspoken here). [ notetaker spaced out] So she told the story about the guy on the subway, the lawyer. how's he related to other lawyers, in her mind? |
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