"Perhaps ironically," Krieger says, "research shows that the general distress and depression among law students is not mitigated by high grades, nor is dissatisfaction among lawyers mitigated by high salaries."
[...] He explains that the primary thrust of legal education — teaching students how to think like a lawyer — is so pervasive that students and lawyers alike find themselves analyzing everything in their lives, at the expense of relationships, values, and spirituality.
And when they feel the loss of things they used to hold dear, they typically keep their feelings bottled up. "There's a code of silence in the profession," Keeva says. "There's this fear of looking soft.
While the practice of law is about relationships, Floyd explains, legal education devalues relationships and other emotional matters. "It is not just that we fail to teach students about relationship skills," she says. "Legal education actually diminishes or eliminates the ability to form and sustain relationships that students possess when they begin law school."
The idea that lawyers help clients — real people with real problems — drops off the radar screen.
Professor Barbara Glessner Fines of the University of Missouri-Kansas City reports that some faculty members equate humanizing legal education with lowering standards. "If you talk about lowering expectations, they say you're coddling into the profession people who aren't cut out for it," she says. "They say, 'If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.' But why can't you put a fan in the kitchen?"
Even schools that attract the brightest legal minds in the nation could use a fan in the kitchen. A student essay in the Harvard Law Review in 1998 reported that by the second year, "a surprising number of Harvard Law students resemble 'the walking wounded': demoralized, dispirited, and profoundly disengaged from the law school experience. What's more, by third year, a disturbingly high number of students come to convey a strong sense of impotence and little inclination or enthusiasm for meeting the world's challenges head on." [...] "Students think they were wrong about what law is all about," she says. "They think their initial vision was naive, so they have to give it up." That leads to a deep sense of loss and a numbing resignation to the system.
"The older-school professors believed that first year should be like boot camp — tough as nails, and professors should never be nice to students," he says.
This involves close inspection of words and writing to look for defects in an adversary's position or which may create future problems for a client. It is fundamentally negative, critical, pessimistic, and depersonalizing.
So, in my view, it's not much of a loss to either society as a whole or me personally.
4) Thinking "like a lawyer": Defining people primarily according to their legal rights, and trying to understand, prevent and resolve problems by applying legal rules to those rights, usually in a zero-sum manner. This involves close inspection of words and writing to look for defects in an adversary's position or which may create future problems for a client. It is fundamentally negative, critical, pessimistic, and depersonalizing. This method of thinking is conveyed and understood in law schools as a new and superior way of thinking, not a strictly limited legal tool.
1) The top-ten percent tenet: The belief that success in law school is demonstrated solely by high grades, appointments to law review, etc. 2) The contingent-worth problem: The belief that one's personal worth, the opinions of teachers and potential employers, and therefore one's happiness and security in life depend on one's place in the academic hierarchy. Although academic rankings are present in all educational settings, in law school these considerations dominate collective thinking and become identified with personal worth. 3) The American dream: The belief that financial affluence, influence, recognition and other external symbols of achievement are what is good in life, and that academic success in law school will lead to these things. 4) Thinking "like a lawyer": Defining people primarily according to their legal rights, and trying to understand, prevent and resolve problems by applying legal rules to those rights, usually in a zero-sum manner. This involves close inspection of words and writing to look for defects in an adversary's position or which may create future problems for a client. It is fundamentally negative, critical, pessimistic, and depersonalizing. This method of thinking is conveyed and understood in law schools as a new and superior way of thinking, not a strictly limited legal tool. These beliefs and thought processes have an atomistic worldview and a zero-sum message about life. Nothing much matters beyond winning or losing, and there is always a loser for each winner. The message for law students is to work very, very hard; excel in the competition for grades and honors; to feel good about accomplishments; get the respect of peers and teachers; get a desirable job; and be successful. As a result, fatigue and anxiety replaces initial enthusiasm, particularly leading up to the point of the posting of first-term grades.
Quote4) Thinking "like a lawyer": Defining people primarily according to their legal rights, and trying to understand, prevent and resolve problems by applying legal rules to those rights, usually in a zero-sum manner. This involves close inspection of words and writing to look for defects in an adversary's position or which may create future problems for a client. It is fundamentally negative, critical, pessimistic, and depersonalizing. This method of thinking is conveyed and understood in law schools as a new and superior way of thinking, not a strictly limited legal tool. We call it thinking "like an ass".
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Topic: INSTITUTIONAL DENIAL ABOUT THE DARK SIDE OF LAW SCHOOL (Read 94359 times)
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