Juris-Prudence

Almost all pre-law students in this country are instructed by those who have gone before them to watch the movie "Paperchase." It's intended to scare the pants off you about what the next 3 years of your life will be like. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a synopsis: The main character (protagonist?) shows up late to his 1st day of law school having not done his 1st day assignment. Of course the professor calls on him and yells at him for being unprepared. The student claims he was unaware that there was a 1st day assignment (which means he was in a coma!). Of course our hero ends up meeting a girl (turns out to be the professor's daughter) who completely destracts him from his work. Most of the movie is this kid drinking, screwing his girlfriend, studying until all hours of the night, and being unprepared, hungover, or asleep in class. In the end though, he loves the professor & the girl and graduates from Harvard Law, blah blah blah.

As I said, this movie was supposed to scare me. When it was over, my reaction was: "If this lazy drunken whore of a loser can graduate from Harvard Law, the next 3 years of my life will be cake!!!"

Of course, law school is not cake, and it is nothing like Paperchase, it's even nothing like what anyone I talked to in real life told me. People always ask if law school is the hardest thing I've ever done. Absolutely not! Law school is not "hard." It's reading and writing and talking. It is a lot of it and it takes up a lot of time, and you need to be dedicated and organized, but it is not hard. Surviving cancer is hard, recovering from a natural disaster is hard, raising kids is hard. Law school is not hard. People who say it is are merely lacking perspective.

One thing about law school that is true is that it is a regression. The biggest lesson I have learned is that the old saying "If you treat them like children they will act like children" is true. VERY true. In the 1st year of law school we have lockers, we bring our lunches, we have assigned seats and homework every night, we have all our classes with the same people, and sometimes the same teachers for the whole year. It feels like middle school with laptops. In addition to these superficial similarities, there is also the aspect of information control. The administrators know what a mystery law school is to most students, and they like to keep it that way. You get your schedules, books, teachers, and assignments at the last possible moment. They teach you how to register the day before you need to. They tell you about the interview process as late as possible. The professors refuse to describe exams too early because they don't want you to worry about it (as if that is possible). What all this adds up to is distrust. We feel that the administration and faculty clearly don't trust us to handle information and so in turn we don't trust them (or each other). It is a very strange dynamic. Cliques are created among students, gossip is pervasive, things are stolen, books are hidden, and people are lied to. We act like juveniles because we are treated that way.

But what is more strange is that nothing ever changes. I'm quite sure that I am not the 1st student to make these observations, I'm positive that most that have gone before me have noticed these things as well. Yet, these students become administrators, professors, and lawyers and repeat history without changing it. Sure, the socratic method is slowly dying, and law schools are more diverse than they used to be, but essentially the rituals go unchanged. It's particularly odd because we all know that lawyers as a group have a high incidence of things like alcoholism and depression. I can't help but wonder, if we were educated in a more cooperative & trusting environment whether we may become healthier adults when we begin our careers.

The biggest impedus to change is that their are 186 ABA law schools and nobody wants to change unless they all do. For example, many law students complain about the fact that girls are expected to wear skirts to interviews. Legal Career Services offices generally tell students that they should wear skirts "just to be on the safe side" because it makes a difference sometimes. So, most girls wear skirts because we all want jobs, which then pressures other girls (who may vastly prefer pants) to wear skirts so they are on equal footing with all the other girls. Clearly, if the schools simply told the girls that it doesn't matter whether you wear a skirt or pants, then it wouldn't matter. Law firms would be forced to hire women in pants if they wanted to hire any women at all and soon the stereotype would be gone. Certainly no repuatble law firm would want to stop hiring women and risk the accusations that could result, so they would hire women in pants.

Some women say that they don't want to work for firms that care what they are wearing so they wear pants to help them screen out what they see as sexist law firms. However, you must bear in mind that the firms KNOW we are told to wear skirts. So they may see your defiance as a sign that you don't follow the rules (or pay any attention to advice), you don't really want the job, or you don't have an appropriate dress wardrobe. So the change really needs to come from the schools, not the students. However, no law school wants to be the 1st. They don't want their students to get hired less often because they dress less "professionally" than the students at other law schools. And so the cycle continues, as it does with all manner of things in this field.

So, to the pre-laws out there, you may as well rent Paperchase, buy some dark-colored drab (skirt) suits, and be prepared to be sheltered from the truth, because it appears unlikely that anything will change anytime soon, and it is quite possible that you, as a law student, will prefer it change at someone else's school 1st, so you don't have to be the guinea pig.