The Paradox of Life in Law

-- By RubiRodriguez - 27 Apr 2022

What does justice mean to you?

“At the beginning of this course, I told you all to write down what justice means to you. I want you to go back and look at what you wrote. Law school will try to challenge that meaning every day. But I want you to hold on to it.” Those were, more or less, the words of Professor Bernard Harcourt at the conclusion of my Legal Methods class, my introduction to law school. After listening to him for about two weeks discuss things so esoteric for me to comprehend as a budding law student, a lingering thought bothered me: I hope law school does not strip me of my values that led me to choosing this profession. Here was a professor who was teaching us about the different legal schools of thought, very empathetically and without scorn, even those seemingly in contradiction to his philosophy of the law. And yet he did not hide that he is an abolitionist and believes our carceral state, protected heavily by the courts, is a continuation of slavery. How could someone be so strangely passionate about the law and still have an unwavering moral compass?

Rude Awakening

A lot of the negativity I have towards law school stems from my experience in Constitutional Law, which was taught by a right-libertarian and originalist professor who practiced law for only three years as an associate. My professor began his class by telling us that, in his view, the Bill of Rights was an afterthought simply added to the Constitution for the purpose of convincing the people to accept the social contract. Therefore, he would not be teaching a substantial portion of the Bill of Rights and most of the subsequent amendments to the Constitution. As a result, my class was deprived of learning about constitutional rights intended to promote racial, gender, and socioeconomic justice. To the few students like myself who came to law school with the motive to help advance the rights of those for whom the Constitution was not originally written, this was heartbreaking. I felt intellectually stifled, unable to challenge my professor’s notions knowing that he would try to change the subject, and sat through a semester listening to a very unpopular take on the Constitution. I guess this is what it means to be a law student, I thought. I often harkened back to what Professor Harcourt’s words and wondered if this was what he was trying to warn us about.

I doubt that Bernard had only or specifically the particular grotesque of Philip's Con Law. The idea that law school can't function without prohibiting first-year law students from choosing their instructors is patently ridiculous. The results are sometimes, as in your case, an acute sense of being cheated. You'd think that the collective partnership that together embarks on the responsibility of teaching students how to be lawyers would find a better way. But no matter what we do, the real inner conflict that Bernard was warning about—and that I try to teach about directly—is that the more we care about justice the more we must struggle with bullshit.

Balanced Contrast

Lawyers often have to reconcile the difference between what they believe is right and what their job requires of them. A solution to avoid this tension could be to pursue a fulfilling job, whatever that means to the individual. But in a capitalist society where employers control most of our lives, with limited room for us to make choices for ourselves, such solution seems perpetually unattainable. A younger version of myself would tell you that my dream job would be to be a public interest lawyer at a nonprofit organization that helps poor people. But after having worked in the legal nonprofit sector for several years, I learned that the tension lawyers have between what they believe is right and what their job requires of them does not go away. I saw it all the time with the attorneys with whom I worked. What’s more, for many legal nonprofits to keep running, sometimes it is necessary to accept thousands, if not millions, of dollars in donations from corporate donors who contribute to the societal problems said nonprofits are trying to eradicate. Additionally, big law firms’ much-touted pro bono work has helped the country’s most elite, but majorly short-staffed, public interest nonprofits like the ACLU take on major lawsuits. For these reasons, law school does a disservice to students who feel they must pick between public interest and corporate interest work. The two often work in tandem.

Yes. And it's good therefore also to recognize that our capitalism is also very hospitable to small businesses. So for those to whom it is the employment system itself that is the source of internal conflict, it's good to know how to build an independent practice, so that the source of the contrasts are decisions one makes oneself, rather than being at the will of employers or donors.

`From the perspective I offer in Planning Your Practice, non-profit or for-profit structuring of one or more organizations that together comprise your practice over time are just operational decisions. I have run a practice for almost 20 years now that is centered in a 501c3, but with a related-business entity that spun off into a commercial practice, an LLC of LLCs, and which has international affiliates of both kinds, and satellite 501c3 Delaware corps, and all sorts of stuff. But that's just plumbing, like a chain of dry cleaners' or something.

Bernard's exercise—keeping tangible the meaning of justice that lies outside the technicalities and the bullshit in which society wraps up and protects power—is valuable because it helps to keep constantly conscious, non-automatic, the appreciation of the large inevitable gap between what we are trying to do and what we can make happen in society using words.

Letting Go

Law school and the legal profession exposes you to the truth: there can be no good without any bad. This is demonstrated by my classmates and I learning of the injustice of eminent domain at an institution that has used eminent domain to displace many poor people of color.

Well, it is at least worth also remembering that the constitutionality of the university's employment of eminent domain went to the Supreme Court in the hands of very good lawyers: the university did not prevail without a struggle. The rather small number of tenants who lost their homes had much due process and excellent representation. They also were, in the end, substantially compensated for what were essentially treated as life-tenure leases.

This paradox in which I find myself is something I am learning to embrace. It is a great privilege to be among students who discuss aspects of the law while poor people a few blocks away are currently living through the injustices we read about in cases. Thus, while many of my peers obsess over learning the law to attain high grades and succumb to the myth that the smartest law students make the best lawyers, I take away what best serves me. My understanding of what is taught, shaped by my lived experiences and criticisms of our legal systems, is salient to how I develop as a lawyer. After seeing firsthand how oppressive laws and policies affect poor people, it is obvious to me that mastering the legal doctrine only goes so far. This is why the nature of 1L grades is meaningless to me. A sense of freedom comes when we let go of control over aspects of our academic lives that in-turn were controlling us.

Moving Forward

Despite all my criticisms of law school—from the professors with very little to no real-world experience, to the forced dichotomy between public interest and big law, to the arbitrary grades—I do not regret putting myself through this journey. It has made me more empathetic towards views different from my own, but it has radicalized me in my politics. Through rejecting much of the status quo, it has taught me to think for myself. And even if my performance looks subpar on a transcript, what I have gained from this experience goes beyond the superficiality construed by institutions that depend on it. I believe, and hope, that this is indicative of the type of lawyer I am shaping out to be.

I think it very likely that the implicit dichotomy between free-thinking and getting good grades will also turn out for you to be a false one. "Subpar" evaluation of someone who is a powerful learner (as everybody here is), who thinks hard and writes well—as you do—is flawed evaluation. Flawed evaluation occurs around here all the time, for a variety of reasons, but the mistakes made most often do not involve finding students like you "subpar."

Soon, at the end of your third term, you will see confirmed the basic principle of law school grades, which is that constant levels of effort yield over time higher levels of academic "achievement." Take care of the sense and the nouns will take care of themselves. Only the shaping matters.

You can make this draft a little better. Check every sentence for slacker words that aren't doing any job. Bring empathy even to Philip: your mere accurate description is satire sufficient without an adjective more. But one of your powers lies in your facility of drafting. A lawyer whose first drafts are excellent is specially gifted. Let us see what you will choose to make of that.

Hi Rubí, thank you for sharing this piece, as much of it resonated with me (despite not sharing the same disappointing Con Law professor). “There can be no good without any bad” is such a succinct summary of my thoughts after 1L and a few years of work in the legal field. My work experience is almost the flip side of yours: I worked at a big law firm where I did a significant amount of pro bono work. While my firm certainly helped nonprofits like the ACLU and Legal Aid Society, I also wanted to add that sometimes when our firm handled a case on its own, I felt like we really weren’t providing the best legal services to our clients. Another paralegal once told me that we had a bad reputation among immigration lawyers who felt that we often made mistakes in our immigration filings. Thus, just another example of how there is no good without some bad, but in the end, it’s better than nothing. Thank you again for sharing this and for making me feel less alone in this strange, paradoxical space. - Tasha

Hi Rubí. I can definitely relate to your experience. Law school will definitely expose you to many difference beliefs, systems, and ideologies. Law school also inevitably tried to label everyone and place them in a box (Big Law v PI, etc). Just because you are exposed to them does not mean you need to succumb to them. If anything, learning about those other beliefs can be great because you learn more and consider new ideas BUT they can also solidify your beliefs as you stated that you became more radicalized. Sometimes that exposure can cause a tweak in your beliefs or cause someone to completely change their mind. For me (as I am sure for others), half of the journey of law school is blocking out the chatter and white noise of other people's opinions and focusing on what I came here to do. Some of that chatter can be useful, so it's also filtering out what is helpful and what isn't. It's great that you have stayed true to your beliefs!- Morgan

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