Mark, I think you have a lot to say and an interesting way of framing it all. I had difficulty parsing your individual sentences and ended up rewriting a lot more than I wanted to. In an effort to make the paper clear enough for me to easily understand, I am sure I inadvertently cut much of what you have to say. Hopefully you will be able to use some of my suggestions to find a satisfactory balance between clarity and sophistication.

At some points I am heavily relying on Eben’s vocabulary. The irony of repeating the professor verbatim in a paper about setting one’s own terms is not lost on me. I used Eben’s words because after a semester with him it is a shorthand vocabulary that we all share. Because I’d hate for Eben to think I was sucking up, I will add that I wrote this revision on my Windows partition in MS Word. -Alex Asen

As a dog trainer – if you pay attention – you learn some things about power dynamics. Through ritualized fights, dogs challenge each other for dominance. When dog A drops a ball in front of dog B, takes a step back and wags his tail, he is issuing a challenge. Dog B now has two options: he can either pounce on the ball or ignore the challenge. If he accepts the challenge, dog B communicates that dog A is worthy competition. The winner of the ensuing competition is less important than the statement that “it was a competition worth engaging in.” If dog B does not react to the challenge, he is communicating either “I am too low of rank to compete with you” or “you are too low of rank to compete with me.”

The law school power dynamic plays out is a similar way. Students who understand the social forces behind this metaphor are better able to have creative legal thoughts. They don’t sit in class and get pissed on. They rise above the law school game, and direct their own education.

To direct one’s own education, one must not fall into the trap of reactivity. Being reactive is giving up power to the one who initiated the action. You have engaged the challenger on his terms, implicitly acknowledging his relevance. On the other hand, not reacting to the challenge is a way to independence.

As we learn to think like lawyers, professors dictate which modes of thought are reasonable and which are unacceptable. Imposing their own legal reasoning on us is the first step in teaching us to be effective advocates. We learn how to craft our arguments and our thoughts in a manner that judges are accustomed to. This first step in our legal education may be necessary, but it is also dangerous. Accepting a new way of thinking, handed down to us part and parcel, makes us less likely to have our own creative thoughts. It reinforces the law school power-structure where professors are the omnipotent source of legal ideas and it is the student’s role to soak them up. It keeps us thinking about the law in formulaic ways and those ways lead to predictable outcomes.

If we get lost in imitating how to sound and think like a “lawyer,” we may not stop and question whether the challenges laid before us are challenges worth engaging. We should not react simply because a professor drops a ball and wags his tail.

Be wary though, non-reactivity, as you will recall, can be interpreted in two ways: While your non-reactivity may be interpreted as a sign of strength, it may also be interpreted as a sign of weakness, an acknowledgment that you are too low ranking to even enter the arena. To be the director of your education, you need to learn to play the game and become the challenger. The goal in the short-term is not to “win” an argument, but to change the frame of the argument.

Law school should be a multiple step game. First, you pick up the predictable gauntlet, but then you drop your own. You entice them – professors and student alike -- to pick up your gauntlet and play the game on your terms.

Students should be cautious about confusing non-reactivity with disengagement. Denying the formulaic premise of the game is a path towards independent creative thought, ignoring the premise, on the other hand, is a path to ignorance. The idea is to be aware of what you are doing when you argue within the terms of a discourse; to understand the game you're playing and how you're playing it. You can play games without them becoming your identity and your creed.