LETTER TO A YOUNG LAW STUDENT*
Professor Corinne Cooper +
I sit down today
to write you a letter to read before you start law school. I know that you are filled with grand
anticipation and a little dread. It's a
natural reaction. I hope that I will be
able to assuage some of your concern, and to help you get a good night's
sleep. Please know, however, that after
eighteen years (twenty-one if you count my years as a student) in law school, I
still cannot sleep the night before fall classes start. When that edge of anticipation is gone, I
suppose I'll know that it's time to retire.
I am hard
pressed to know where to begin in my advice to you. My perspective on the process of legal
education is skewed by the years I've spent immersed in it. Perhaps an outsider could explain the process
better. Perhaps I no longer remember what it is like to be a first-year
student. I may have very little of value
to offer you.
But I cannot
resist the temptation to pass along the insights that I have developed over the
years, however out of touch with your experience they may prove to be. Think of me as an anthropologist, reciting my
findings on a tribe I've observed for many years, of which I was once a member,
but whom I no longer fully live among.
What I know is what it is like to be a
first-year law professor. After watching
the process for many years, in many different places, I've observed that law school
involves three circles the education
that takes place within you, the education you share with your peers, and the
education you experience with the faculty.
I present them here in reverse order of importance.
I. The Faculty
You will come to law school expecting the
faculty to be the most important part of the education experience. We are not.
At most, the law faculty will help you to create a useful structure within
which self-teaching takes place. At
worst, the faculty will get in the way of your learning. Your job is to keep your eye on the ball: you
are in law school to learn to teach yourself the skills that you will need for
the rest of your professional career. Do
not assume that the faculty will teach you how to practice law. It is not our job, and we could not possibly
anticipate the substantive knowledge or skills you will need during the next
forty years (much of that law doesn't even exist yet). What the faculty will do is teach you a
language and a structure for your thinking, and some skills that you will
apply, both in law school and after, largely on your own.
Given the
intensity of the law school educational process, you may be tempted to spend
inordinate energy focusing on your professors: what they wear, how they act,
how much you hate them, whatever. But
this is largely a waste of your time.
Each of these people has something to offer you and you are there to
figure out what that is.
I am not talking
only about the obvious substantive subject matter that they convey; I am
talking about their communication skills (or absence thereof), their logic
(ditto), their linear or non-linear thinking.
They are members of the tribe you seek to join, its High Priests in
Charge of Initiation Rites. You are
there to observe and absorb these rites.
By definition, their quirks and rituals cannot be wholly irrelevant to
your quest. But unless you become a
professor, these relationships will not inform your future career. Observe them, learn from them, and do not let
them get to you.
At most,
one-third of what you learn in law school will be learned from your professors.
(I go up and down on this number; it bottoms out at twenty percent). So don't spend a lot of time getting into the
cult of personality. You are there to
learn what these people have to offer. Some will pass along the secrets of the
Temple, and you will not even know it until years later. The law professor who influenced me most
taught Securities Law, which I have never practiced. My least effective professor taught Contracts
(which I teach), yet he has had a profound impact on my teaching, as I learned
a great deal about bad technique from him.
Subject matter does not count for all that much in this part of the
learning process. I am best known as a
teacher and scholar of the Uniform Commercial Code; I took that class
pass-fail. I learned an enormous amount from a professor I fought with
constantly. He is now a colleague and
friend, and was instrumental in beginning my teaching career.
Although the
introduction that you get to substantive law in your classes is essential in
the short run, what is really important is the introduction and indoctrination
that you get in legal thinking. This
critical analysis process will remain with you long after your grasp of the
Rule against Perpetuities has faded. You
are learning to be a legal thinker, one who, in the long span of a career, will
be largely self-taught.
A. The Socratic Method
The rigor and
aggressiveness of the pedagogy is intimidating to some. Many modern teachers
have fallen away from the rigid, Kingsfieldian approach to the Socratic Method,
on the grounds that learning cannot take place in an atmosphere of abject
fear. I agree with this conclusion, but
only to a degree. First, I expect a
great deal of my students, and I want them to expect a great deal from
themselves. If I set the bar too low,
how will they learn the great accomplishments of which they are capable? Some, surely, will experience failure in this
environment, but everyone will achieve more than if the bar is set too
low. Anyway, failure is a necessary part
of the learning process for lawyers; losing is a regular part of professional
life.
Second, I
remember the words of Philip Levine a poet and teacher. He was asked once why
he had been described by a student as "the cruellest teacher
ever." He replied, "I am the
only person in the room paid to tell the truth." I feel that way too, and so I do not hold
back criticism of thinking that is shallow or lazy. This is not only for the benefit of the
student, but also on behalf of the profession, and the clients who will be
served by that future lawyer.
This is
different from disagreeing with opinions -- beware of teachers who try to
convince you of the correctness of their personal opinions. Respect a teacher who is willing to challenge
you intellectually in order to assure that real learning takes place.
B. The Ugly Little Secret
There is one
other thing that I hesitate to mention, but it is a fact of law school
life. Your professors are not trained to
be educators. We got here mostly by
being good law students, not because we have any background in higher education
theory. This is true of most of graduate
school, but it is even worse for law professors, because very few of us go
through the traditional doctoral level educational system where one apprentices
under a professor who may actually know something about education.
As a result,
most elementary school teachers have a stronger background in educational
theory than do law professors. This
means that our techniques may seem counterproductive, awkward, or ineffective
at times. Nevertheless, this system is oddly effective at producing the product
that the legal profession demands. If
you will, this initiation process is quite effective at delivering appropriate
members into the tribe. It rewards
people who are good at teaching themselves, since that is what most lawyers
spend their careers doing. It develops a
thick-skinned debating style, which makes lawyers both successful and
disparaged in their professional lives.
It makes being a lawyer seem hard and magical, and this helps to inflate
the value of the professional knowledge, both inside and outside the system.
II. The Students
Your most
important educational experience in law school will be with other
students. You will learn more from them
than from your teachers. Relationships
forged in law school are like those forged in war: what you share with these people
is unlike any experience any of you have had before.
Members of your
profession–your professors, but, more importantly, your classmates–are your
colleagues, and will be with you for the rest of your career. This is the beginning of your entire professional
life, and it will not end until the day that you retire. It is worth your while to spend some time
thinking about your professional life and how you wish to be perceived.
This is the
beginning of a life-long game, played throughout the profession, of "What
Goes Around, Comes Around." If you
dislike or distrust someone in law school, it will be hard to forget that
impression in later years. I do not
think that students fully understand this. [14]
Start off behaving in a manner that is consistent with the kind of
lawyer you hope to be.
It is important
to respect your colleagues for another reason: you will learn an enormous
amount from them. I learned more from my
peers in law school than I did from my professors, and that is not unusual.
You learn from
your classmates by listening to them in class, by observing their mistakes, by
arguing points with them. This is not
just in law school. The practice of law
involves an enormous amount of this kind of give and take among lawyers, those
on the same team and those across the table.
Students come to
law school from different backgrounds and experiences and some have a better
intuitive understanding of legal education.
These different perspectives will help to broaden yours, and to sharpen
your understanding of the analytic process that is taking place not only in
your mind, but in the minds of your colleagues and professors. Eventually, this will give you insight into
the thinking of your clients, your adversaries, the judge and jury. Effective persuasion requires that you have
insight into and respect for other opinions and perspectives.
In addition to
providing insight, your classmates are a ready-made educational think
tank. Gather people with whom you feel
comfortable and begin to study and review your classes together. How much of
this you can tolerate is a function of your stress level and your learning
style, but I always encourage my students to spend some time working in groups.
Someone should be challenging your thinking besides your professors.
B. Competition
One of the
hardest things to accept about law school is that everyone has been a good
student, or a success of some kind, before arriving. If law school were pass-fail, or if there
were no exams at all, then a new ranking of those students would not have to
take place, and everyone could leave law school with the same sense of
accomplishment that they have when they get the acceptance letter.
The job market
will not allow this, and so a hierarchy is created in law school. People who graduated near the top of their
undergraduate classes may find themselves planted firmly in the middle, and
that can be a painful experience.
Everyone cannot be at the top of the class, but you can take advantage of
the opportunities available to improve your chances in the job market.
How you react to
this competition is an important factor in how you will behave as a
lawyer. Let it motivate you, and spur
you on, as good athletic competition can.
Do not let it scare or anger you.
Each class develops its own sense of competition; some become very
supportive communities and others are schools of sharks. It only takes one or two people to set the
tone for the entire group.[20]
Cutthroat
competition is not good for anyone, and it leads to behaviour that degrades the
profession and makes practice a nightmare.
A cooperative attitude toward your peers can create a positive pattern
for the future. It is easy to say,
"I need this now, and later will be different." But everything you are doing now is a part of
your socialization process. Even if you
don't get caught up in the competition, you will need to address it when you
observe it in others.
To be
continued.................. You can also visit elflasu.blogspot.com for the
complete version but a paper copy of it would be made available in subsequent
meetings.
Equity like
nature does nothing in vain.
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