ON A LEGAL EDUCATION

DISCLAIMER TO MY FELLOW CLASSMATES

This Wiki entry is an essay for a cause not for a grade.

As you should all have realized by now, this course has not been a typical law school course. It was actually quite enjoyable. You probably checked your gmail chats and Facebook page less in this class than in most of your others. Sticking with the atypical theme, I present you with an atypical law school essay. I hope reading this is also truly enjoyable. This may not be an essay that you expected to read during your law school experience but thanks to the advent of open forums like this wiki, I have the freedom to write this essay and share it with my fellow classmates. Likewise, you have the freedom to read it and comment on it as well, building it out into a tangible idea by collaborating with the original author. To me that is amazing and if it is not amazing enough to you then realize that I first started writing this in a downtown Manhattan coffee shop but then I left and signed back onto this Wiki. Everything is still here and I did not have to think twice about it being here. This essay exists. By now, I hope you are amazed.

In this course, I am not worried about my words being right or wrong. I just want them to be true. At this point, you may be able to tell that I am not concerned about my grade in this course (we will get to my thoughts on grades later). This essay is just an idea, or maybe it is just a bunch of thoughts that I needed to express. Either way, I hope it is something we can build upon together in the future. This wiki, this somewhat uncomfortable open space that allows us to actually share our thoughts and gives us the possibility of creating something of substance, is bigger than my grade or your grade. This space, or freedom, to think gives us an opportunity to fix a problem that we all see and speak about but never do anything to solve by bringing together thirty-eight great minds in a creative, rather than competitive, atmosphere.

AN AMBITIOUS ENDEAVOR

To those still reading, let me now say that I do not know if we have enough power to achieve my goal and turn my idea into a tangible object but I want us to collaborate in trying to change the legal education. If you are not interested, do one of two things: stop reading and go back to your email or ask yourself how many times you overheard someone within the walls of our law school talking about hating a class, or hating an assignment, or hating their entire their law school experience. We go to one of the top law schools in the world, we enjoy reading and thinking about the law. So what is it that you hate about the experience? After three years here, I believe it is obvious that it is the failed education system that is in place throughout most law schools in the country.

For the most part, the majority of law school courses don't ask us to think. They instruct us to read and then they test us on our reading comprehension skills. Rather than allowing us to think about what we learned and contribute to the legal field, we spit back a bunch of information that someone else understands better than us in hopes of the professor giving us a good grade. Those grades limit us as well and it never stops. When it is not a grade any longer, it will be a paycheck, or a car, or a house, or a personal space shuttle. I have no problems with competition per se, I have problems with competition without progress and that is the basis of our legal education. If you do not agree, you can have my A or B or C or D or F. Whichever one you want, just take it. I will at least think about working on the problem while you just accept it and go along for the ride.

In the past few months I have dug deep into my thoughts to understand my lack of concern for grades and to put these thoughts into coherent words (and yes, I realize that this is not yet coherence). This course has made me realize that true progress does not come from getting a check+ on a paper nor does it come from a check signed by a law firm. Those checks bring you little freedom and a lot of restraints. Those things are limitations on our intellectual capabilities. At this level, competing for grades is worthless for every single one of us. I do not want a grade to gain a competitive advantage over you in the job market. I do not want to be in that particular job market. You know, the one with the big checks and pinstriped suits (although I enjoy both of those things). I would rather use my legal education to create something useful with you.

When you have proven yourself by grades your entire life, there should come a day when you no longer need to compete for the top grade (just ask a law school in New Haven). But the school has to get us high paying jobs to keep up with the rankings and grades are their vetting us for the job market. It is not a grade that I have a problem with but a grade without meaning. Why can't our grades be derived from having thoughts and contributing to progress? It fails us to compete at this level and it fails society even more. A collaboration of our minds could create so much more and I am banking on that collaboration to build an alternative to the current legal education. This is not just a fleeting idea that will go away when the semester ends. This is a real opportunity to think and create.

A college recently opened in Providence that gives students credit when they have proven that they deserve credit. I propose a law school that does the same. I do not want a grade to show that I could understand the work that somebody else already did. I want a grade to show that I have taken that work and done work in my own mind. I want a grade to relate to my thoughts, not my recall memory. I want to give credit where credit is deserved.

MY PROPOSAL TO ALL READERS

Step outside of the current law school mold and you will be grateful for the free air that you breathe. You will realize that there is an open space to think, on your own or collectively. You will realize that you have the ability to create, on your own or collectively. So I ask you to knock down the walls of grades that we have each lived in for over two decades. I ask you to at least put the competition for high-paying jobs on hold. I ask you to just take a few moments and THINK. Think about how we can change things enough so that students are not walking through the halls hating, balding, and aging because of a grade and a due date.

If we fail with this idea, maybe you will be able to write about this on your restricted 1 page resume (if it fits and if the career counselor says that law firms will like it). If we fail, and you want it enough, I am sure you will find a high-paying job. If we succeed, we can delete the resume file from our computers and attach our names to something that actually matters. Instead of giving money to build a staircase in the JG lobby give an flexible intellectual platform for the next generation of law students to not only learn from but to build upon as well.

We are all intelligent. We were admitted into this school. Let us use the education we received here to actually change this system or at least to try and remove some of the bullshit that we are forced to put up with for a few years. Let's make use of our great minds and fix a real problem.

A CONCLUSION BUT REALLY A BEGINNING

Law school is supposed to be a tool used to better American society by allowing the interested student to build on laws of the past and apply concepts to the future. At one point in time, law school's purpose was to educate interested students in a way that achieved this purpose, teaching students the relevant skills needed to improve upon the world around them. But at some point law schools forgot about this purpose.

Instead of receiving an education, I was forcefully shoved into a nice little mold that law school created for me without even knowing my dimensions. Well, I could not fit into that mold no matter how hard I tried and I did try. At the end of the day, I want a big paycheck more than anyone but that paycheck waved in front of my face after my 1L summer was not big enough to squeeze me into the mold. It is important to realize that molds are not necessarily bad things but the molds we are talking about are only good if you are the "molder" and you want to maintain control over the "moldee" or if you are the "moldee" and you are willing to give up your own purpose for a comfortable ride in the passenger seat.

I am asking you something that I was never asked in law school. I am asking you to take a few minutes and just think if you are doing what you want to do. If not, let us use this wiki to do something about it.

Mark Twain once said, "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Although our addiction to oil and complex chemicals has shown that changing the weather is possible (maybe we will discuss this in another essay), the weather remains fairly difficult to change, or at least more difficult to change than this legal education system. Mark Twain did not have the internet to collaborate with thirty eight of the brightest minds in the classroom. We do. It is ours. Let us use it freely and properly. Let us share and let us create.

-- AlanDavidson - 08 Dec 2011