Reflections on Where I Am and Where I'm Going

Right now, when I think about my legal career, it is easier to consider what kind of lawyer I want to avoid becoming. Law students have been described in this class as “risk averse control freaks.” That description is completely appropriate for me, but, like the rest of the class, it doesn’t sum up my entire personality. My goal is to avoid living up to the stereotype.

What I worry about most is that risk aversion can lead to complacency. Working on boring cases, for powerful, vested interests, with boring colleagues, for reliable but ultimately mediocre sums would not ultimately make me proud of myself. To my credit, it would probably be unsustainable. I would eventually say or do something reckless, or just perform poorly, and get fired.

What I do want

I haven’t yet figured out what exactly I want to do, or how exactly I want to do it. What I know is that I want to feel connected to the people I represent. I’ve come across a few cases, two of which I discuss below, that have been bouncing around in my mind as examples of legal reasoning with an actual regard for its consequences. My feeling right now is that if I can find and maintain that kind of empathy, legal creativity, a concept we’ve discussed at length, will take care of itself.

Hynes v. New York Central Railroad Co.

One of the first cases I read at law school, Hynes v. New York Central Railroad Co. has always stayed with me. A young man is electrocuted while standing on an improvised diving board extending over the Harlem River. The board is planted in the ground on the shore, which is owned by the railroad.

Cardozo explains that one interpretation of the law would treat the boy as a trespasser and deny his mother any recovery. He tells us that “the conclusion is defended with much subtlety of reasoning.” He then tells us that “Rights and duties in systems of living law are not built upon such quicksands,” Citing “considerations of analogy, of convenience, of policy, and of justice,” Cardozo lays down the law and holds the railroad liable.

Jacobs & Young v. Kent

Another Cardozo case, this one from my contracts course, Jacobs & Young v. Kent, strikes me as similar in its approach. A construction contract stated that “all wrought iron pipe must be well galvanized, lap welded pipe of the grade known as ‘standard pipe’ of a Reading manufacture.” Mr. Kent refused to pay his contractor for the work when he learned that the pipes in his building were made by another company, though identical in quality.

Kent argued that he was entitled to the cost of completion—the expense of tearing out all the pipes in the building and replacing them. Cardozo, however, held that he was only entitled to the difference in value between his pipes and Reading brand pipes—that is, nothing.

According to Cardozo, “Intention not otherwise revealed may be presumed to hold in contemplation the reasonable and the probable,” and “that an omission, both trivial and innocent, will sometimes be atoned for by allowance of the resulting damage, and will not always be the breach of a condition to be followed by a forfeiture.”

In both cases, if the Court had applied the literal letter of the law, the result would have been unjust. What is most interesting to me is that he probably could have come to the same ruling without the bold gestures. In Hynes, Cardozo doesn’t just label the boy a licensee on the railroad’s property entitled to certain protections. Instead, he remained a bather in a public river, entitled to all the rights of citizens in public places.

In Kent, the contract specifies “pipe of the grade known as,” not pipe of a given brand. But, instead of just reading Mr. Kent’s preference out of the contract, he established two things:

1. When contracting with an insane person, the promisor does not have to read his mind. 2. When literal application of the contract will lead to absurdity, throw it out.

Cardozo was able to do justice on its own terms, and that is what I most admire. In both cases he had the nerve and the talent to make it work. Moving forward, I want to find ways to develop my own talents without losing my sense of justice.

A Practical Concern

We’ve talked at length about the job hunt, especially as it relates to law firms, and also as it relates to “doing well by doing good.” This summer I will be working for the local ACLU affiliate in Indiana. Next summer, I’d like to make some money. I am quite tempted to go to EIP and take a summer job with a firm. Law school is expensive enough that passing up the three thousand dollars a week that I could make for a summer seems difficult. As I noted above, the money isn’t so good in the long run that it would make corporate law a worthwhile career, but as a student, doing it for a summer feels like a good idea.

The second reason I’m tempted to do this is that I could be completely wrong about what working at a law firm is like. I have a strong feeling that I’m not, but I might be better positioned to make an informed decision about my career if I spent a few weeks seeing how a law firm works firsthand.

My concern is that if I do end up taking a summer firm job, I’ll get seduced by the money and the boat trips and lose sight of the good things I’ve discussed above. I have enough confidence in myself that I don’t think this will happen, but any advice about the matter would be appreciated.

-- By FrancisWhite - 24 Feb 2013