A Reflection on the Legal Education

-- By MeiqiangCui - 16 Feb 2012

A law school student lives in the casebook world. But wait, there are more facts to be considered!

Last December, when I was hurrying down the street to classes, I suddenly felt that I ran into a totally different world. There were patients waiting in front of a pharmacy store to get medicines, the elders walking slowly with their shopping carts, and young parents having briefcase in one arm and small child in the other. All of these seemed to have little to do with casebooks and outlines I buried myself into. I could not help asking myself: if there is the real life, then what I was studying for all these months?”

Disconnection to one’s surroundings and the society is a common problem for law school students. Our schedules are generally so tight that we claim to even lack the time to read newspapers. In the mean time, most professors train us by giving the facts that they deem legally important, and require us to assort them according to the elements of rules. Such training further reinforced the assumption that only facts that are “legally” relevant count. However, other factors, such as the social background when the dispute happens, the economic and psychological impact of a potential decision, and the specific litigants and judge handling the case all play a significant role in predicting the outcome of a lawsuit.

Individual differences influence the outcome of a lawsuit.

A trial lawyer usually will do everything he can to better understand the presiding judge, since the judge’s individual working style matters. During the years I worked at a Chinese firm, if we were assigned a judge we had never worked with, we would research all her speeches, publications and judicial opinions to have a general idea about her. We would also contact the lawyers who appeared before her to talk about their experiences. For example, the Civil Procedure Law provides that both parties have a 30-day evidence production period, and may move to extend for another 30 days as of right. Thereafter judges have discretion with respect to further extensions. If a judge tends to clear the cases out of her docket quickly, she may order the case to be dismissed; another judge, who would like to decide the cases based on merits, may allow it to proceed. If the client’s sole purpose is to keep the case alive so as to have more bargaining power at the negotiation table, knowledge about the individual judge would be crucial.

Similarly, a trial lawyer would collect information about her opponents. Different opposing counsels may adopt profoundly different strategies for similar disputes. For example, many senior patent examiners, after establishing the patent examination system in China and retired from the State Intellectual Property Office (“SIPO”), found their own patent agency firm. The firm enjoys a huge advantage in defending in patent invalidation disputes, as lawyers there are widely regarded as authoritative in interpreting the Examination Guidelines. Moreover, because SIPO uses a quasi master-apprentice system, and the Chinese culture emphasizes respect for one’s teacher, patent examiners feel considerable pressure when invalidating a patent prosecuted under their teachers’ names.

Social background of a dispute also counts.

How a case will come out also depends on the social background when the dispute happens, together with the external impact of the potential results. The impact of the social background is most obvious in constitutional disputes. The Supreme Court has constantly cited national consensus as an important reference for their opinions concerning same sex relationship, death penalty, and abortion etc. Another example would be People v Goetz, where the court ruled that the defendant’s conduct constituted self defense when he shot four armless black youths in a subway car, who asked him for five dollars. People v Goetz, 68 N.Y.2d. 96. The whole opinion, while it talked at length about the definition of “reasonable person” under the MPC and state penal code, does not make much sense until one reads the supplemental background information. The tragedy happened in 1984, when the crime rate among blacks was disproportionally high, and the New York City was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the States. Most likely, the court was influenced by the prevalent notion of racial discrimination, and the potential dissatisfaction against the court for failing to protect people’s safety should the case come out the other way.

A tentative approach to improve our legal education

Since the outcome of a lawsuit depends on multiple factors such as the specific counsels, the judge, and the social background, to name a few, law school students should develop their ability to integrate such facts to their legal arguments, and use them to shed light on facts that can directly fit into the elements of rules. Thus, I think we can start to improve out legal education from the following perspectives. First, it will be easier for 1Ls to understand the function of laws by giving them less court opinions but more materials about the economic, social and cultural background of the cases. Students will be able to better understand why law is said to be a weak social control and how it interacts with other forces to shape people's behavior. Second, the students cannot study law while isolating themselves from the society. Clinics, internships and externships should be more readily available, so that we can observe the actual operation of the rules, appreciate the consequences produced on people's lives, and learn to sense the subtle factors considered by courts but are not articulated in the opinions. Third, we need to change the solitary study mode to one involving more teamwork. While one may easily fall into the illusion that she is supposed to focus on the law and nothing else, three or four 1Ls together naturally draw from their life experiences to discuss the social meaning of a court opinion.

Word count (985)