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Law in Contemporary Society
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When Eben talks about the fear and anxiety created by law school, grades, and dwindling firm jobs, does this resonate with you? How about fear that you won't find something that you are passionate about, that fulfills you, and that allows you to support yourself and your family?
I wished that Eben had spoken more to that fear and anxiety today in class, and more specifically, what to do about it.
Fair point. Let's take some time on this Thursday. There was too much to do today, even without opening the conversation on Jerome Frank, and I too was dissatisfied with the allocation of time.I have never found an educational experience to be so stressful before. As an undergraduate, I felt that my education was an incredible luxury. To sit in the library and read work that inspired me and then to get to discuss it and write about it was a liberating experience - I understood for the first time what it was to have a life of the mind. I think my legal education is also an incredible luxury, but I haven't felt the same sense of freedom of inquiry. There are right ways and wrong ways to approach a legal problem, it seems, and they don't have much to do with artistry. Maybe. Or maybe—inasmuch as the experience of the first semester was really just language acquisition, as I've mentioned—it's just that there are right and wrong ways to speak the language. In fact, as I keep trying to get people to consider, the actual legacy of our recent intellectual history as American lawyers is that there are no right or wrong answers, just political outcomes. In which event, if you take seriously what our realist interlocutors came up with, the stress you have is not about learning the one right way at all, but rather learning how to be just as creative in your thinking as a law student and lawyer as you were as a literary critic. Such creativity may be a little more difficult than slinging around cultural theory jargon, but it does more work in the world, too.Maybe I've still got too much of the English major, too little of the lawyer. And don't get me wrong - I have enjoyed my classes so far and am excited to have a law degree. I've also never thought much about grades before law school, and now you can't walk through the lockers without hearing something about them, can't apply for jobs without talking about them, and can't sit in class without watching the person in front of you compulsively check their grades on Lawnet every five minutes. That has been a strange phenomenon. Yes. It's literally insane. Induced paranoia. As I started to say in class today but never got a chance to finish, I had no grades in my first semester of law school, in fall 1980. In the second term, spring 1981, I took four courses, including two law school legal history courses that were crucially important to what I understood to be my future because I was also beginning the PhD program in history next term; Criminal Law; and Political and Civil Rights. My Crimes teacher had literally torn up my work in my face the first term, so I deliberately enrolled in his Crimes course. The work was important to me in every way, and so—I suppose you could say—were the grades. I took the exams in May 1981 at the end of the term, and went about my business, working at IBM and going to school. The first time I checked my grades (which at Yale back then required going into the registrar's office to look physically at a transcript card) was the following Christmas. The belief that anything requires you to pay frequent or apprehensive attention to your grades is utterly false. But the illusion is very strong. It requires more presence of mind than most of your colleagues have to press against the point apparently held to their chests and discover that it's nothing but empty air. (Hence the symbolic importance of such a moment in the ritual of induction into Freemasonry: men are prevented from attaining freedom by their substanceless fears and the deliberate illusions created to hold them captive.) Whether it is good for society to have its leading law schools training people who are too timid to be contemptuous of grades I leave for further discussion.I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this kind of discussion, but I'd really like to know what you guys think about this process. Your questions are good ones. I too hope they will be throughly discussed.-- CarolineFerrisWhite - 03 Feb 2010 Part 1: Like most people here, I'm taking out an enormous amount of money to be in law school. I may be naive, but the thing I am most anxious about is finding a job that is going to satisfy me, not paying off that debt. I am certain that the debt will be paid off somehow, either by myself or by Columbia's LRAP, but finding a job that is satisfying is something I think about every day. I don't want the story of my life to be (in Eben's words) helping Company X acquire Company Y, but studying here is making me feel inexorably drawn to that work. When I came to law school, I told myself that I would not allow myself to get sucked into the firm culture, and I really hope to remain true to that (although I could see working at a firm for a few years to pay off some of the debt). Part 2: During the first semester, I felt like an empty cup sitting underneath a faucet that was turned on full blast. Unfortunately, the faucet never stopped streaming water into the cup, so once it was full within the first few weeks, it was hard to find room to retain anything else. As stressful as the end of the semester was, I really enjoyed it because I felt like I was able to finally turn off the faucet and absorb all the concepts that had been thrown at me. I didn't start understanding law talk until late in the semester, but it was very rewarding once I did. Above all, what I find have found most interesting about law school is the close connection it has with the real world. Every case we read is a story about something that actually happened, and actually affected peoples' lives, which is so different from what I experienced in college. Perhaps the cases we read now aren't as interesting as some of the literature we read in college, but the thought that what we are learning may actually allow us to do something powerful is inspiring in its own right. Part 3: In some ways, I actually don't mind the grades too much because I find them to be a good source of motivation. I know that the motivation should come from wanting to master the concepts so we can apply them when we graduate, but that extra little push is helpful sometimes. I know a 1L at Yale right now, and she barely studied at all for her finals. Obviously everyone here is very motivated, but can we honestly say that we would all work as hard all the time if we weren't graded? At the same time, I am really unhappy about the harmful effects of grades. The goal of this law school should be for all of its graduates to have the greatest chance possible of success when they leave, and I really don't think that objective is furthered by grading us - especially in our first semester. - NathanStopper? @Caroline My fear is concentrated in the large amount of loans I am and will be taking out to attend law school. Eben pointed out today how bizarre on some level it is to be going into debt for groceries and basic living expenses (well maybe not so bizarre considering that 1/5 Americans could not afford food at some point last year: article). The high price of upper-level education really does scare me. It's unfortunate that while accessibility of government loans is what allows many people to attend school, it is also what drives tuition prices up and up. I don't know the solution to escalating law school tuition and diminishing returns, but as long as there still are willing participants, I guess nothing will change. I do feel that the fear regarding grades and job placements might not be such a terrible thing. Fear, as long as it's not overwhelming, may compel us to question, work harder, seek more meaningful relationships, and generally take full advantage of the privileges we've been offered. Kierkegaard said: "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." I view angst as being somewhat tied up in the current human condition, not just a 1L phenomenon. 
@Nathan I completely agree with you on how exciting it has been to be studying legal concepts that have such relevant and immediate application in the real world.
-- EricaSelig - 03 Feb 2010 For what it's worth, there's a seductiveness to the law firm. I was walking around Midtown today, and I began to notice a secret world. I've lived in New York for the past four years, and I've been to Times Square countless times. Today, for the first time, I noticed that Skadden Arps is located in the Conde Nast building. Partially, this is because I had never heard of any of the "v100" law firms before law school, and by the same token, many law firms have silly names. To the uninitiated, if a company were important, it wouldn't have a name that ends in Flom. I have no doubt that I've passed innumerable halls of white-shoed greatness over the years, oblivious to everything but the occasional unfortunate appellation. Now, I know better. Today, it was astounding to think that the simple fact of being a law student at Columbia could be parlayed into a job here. 
The implication: work at Skadden, have a sexy life.
And so, I discovered a game. As I walked around Midtown, I shot a glance into any lobby or skyscraper that caught my eye. If there was a law firm in the building, the secret world of Biglaw earned a point. Without fail, any building that looked even remotely cool had a law firm with top billing near the front desk.
In short, law firms are selling instant success. Work for us, make six figures, get an office in Times Square/Fifth Ave./Mt. Olympus, and enjoy life. Couple that with the anxiety that most law students feel, especially regarding their lack of experience and qualifications, and it almost seems like a 2L would be crazy not to snap up a job offer-- lest the firm realize their mistake and hire somebody with actual qualifications. I felt the tug today, and I was just looking at buildings.
Gratuitous Example: Covington and Burling
@Ron: I know what you are saying. I found myself in Midtown during workday lunch hour this fall and I've never seen anything like it. Thousands of people in suits running around, talking business on cellphones, attending lunch meetings, etc, etc. A graduate recently told me that Columbia switched from an Excellent/Very Good/Good grading system to a letter system sometime in the 90's, in response to concerns that students weren't as competitive with out of town firms. With Harvard and Stanford joining Yale in abandoning the letter system, will Columbia follow suit? I know the arguments for doing away with letter grades, but I'm a cynic, and would think that the above schools only modified their grading system once they felt confident that employers needed nothing other than the brand name to judge a candidate. Grades serve as a way to shift the burden of ranking and evaluating job candidates from firms to law professors teaching 1L classes, and the letter system with plus/minus designations provides firms with even finer distinctions between students. The question is whether Columbia graduates are in high enough demand that they don't need the extra data. It's also interesting to note that Harvard and Stanford retain a High Pass designation (Yale has Honors I think)- maybe because they recognize there are legal jobs that still require a line to be drawn between the best and brightest and the bestest and brightest? I actually found the atmosphere here to be what I'd expected, just by envisioning what a class of 300+ hypercompetitive, highly intelligent people would act like when placed together. Unfortunately, I do not think switching to a High Pass/Pass/Low Pass/Fail system would ameliorate the anxiety. As long as you are ranking people, and their rank in the system depends on the outcome of one four hour exam, there will be high levels of stress. Even though the school has tried to soften the blow somewhat (by not publishing class rank or GPA values) people still obsessively check grades or figure out ways to calculate their rank relative to the class. I think eliminating the 1L grading system entirely is the only way to measurably reduce anxiety, and it's my hope this wiki can help us figure out a way to do that while still promoting the skills we as first year law students need to learn. -- JonathanWaisnor - 03 Feb 2010 |
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