Legal Education in the U.S.

Chuck Newton previously shared this link in his post "Law School Musical" and with most things Chuck shares I agree it is well worth you time.  The You Tube video is probably a fair representation of how all of us felt once upon a time during our legal educational pursuits.  I have had reason to reflect on my experiences in law school over the past few years and this video gave me yet another reason to think about law school in general.  First things first, I enjoyed an overwhelming majority of law school.  I found it to be an enjoyable experience in my life where I learned a great deal and I made a number of great friends.  We filled our free time with fun and forgettable experiences.  Yet, one doesn’t readily think about how the law school education system changes them unless they gain some distance from the profession or have other good reason to withdraw from the lawyer mind games.  If you think that you are the same person as when you went in as a 1L I would have to disagree with you.  I neither think, write, nor talk like a non-lawyer anymore.  In fact, it frustrates countless people that I have known my entire life because analytics and logic must prevail for me to be satisfied.  I have not observed such a shift in other professions, even those involving advanced degrees such as science or medicine.  Medical doctors work a bunch of hours and they are in a very high stress position virtually every minute of every day.  However, I would say that their whole basis for logic and reasoning is not capsized during their educational or professional pursuits.  A doctor’s mission is to save lives.  To do that they have to know, understand and implement a number of theories, proofs, treatments, diagnosis, etc.  Are there occasions when the facts do not fit the protocol?  Absolutely.  But what if the methodology and protocol was based on years upon years of both statutory, administrative, and case law.  On top of that the law was based on logic, reasoning, analytics, customs, and socially accepted norms and mores.  We pride ourselves in our ability to take situations and boil them down to if A is true and B is true then C must me true.  We are wrapped into a tightly woven fabric of society and government that will never be obsolete.  Laws are not often black and white.  There will always be room for interpretation and debate.  Out very existence is promulgated on that idea.  Without uncertainty and disagreement in the rule of law, then lawyers would have no business being in business. 

This rant does not obscure the reality that is the law school experience in the U.S. legal education system.  I restrict my comments to that endeavor because I admittedly have no experience with the legal education system outside of the U.S.  What I do know is that I am a different person both emotionally and psychologically than I was before I enrolled in law school.   I wish I could pinpoint when exactly it was that the change occurred but unfortunately I cannot.  I had to be sometime in my first year of law school when I realized that academics where no laughing matter anymore.  To some degree I wish I had acknowledged this fact earlier in my academic career, but I would not change the hand that I was dealt so it is irrelevant.  I remember calling my dad, who is a lawyer and who graduated law school in the early 70’s, during my first year of law school.  One conversation that will always stick in my mind was in regards to my 1L legal writing and research class.  I was having a difficult time acclimating myself to the IRAC or CRAC legal writing style.  I felt it drained my creativity and forced me into a uniform writing style that limited my ability to effectively communicate my position.  At the time my dad’s response didn’t shock me as much as it does now, but he said simply, “That is just how attorneys write and that is what the judges expect.” 

I am not sure if everyone will agree with that, but I have to believe that the argument has some merit.  Otherwise, my legal education loses some value if the things they taught me are useless.  My point is that we all eventually accepted logic similar to that of my dad.  The problem is the logic is circular to some degree and it accepts as fact something that is not supported without asking why.  I am a Generation Xer.  I don’t like doing things a certain way just because that is how they have always been done.  If the "old school" process makes sense from an efficiency standpoint then I am more than happy to use it.  But what if it doesn't make sense?  Here I am in a profession that rarely pushes the envelope and is built on the concept of stare decisis and precedent, which by it very meaning purports that we will stand by previous decisions.  We live in the past and we reason through the present using the logic and reasoning outlined in precedent.  Is it any wonder why we are a relatively slow moving and non-innovational profession?  Change will happen.  I'd like to think that we can speed up the curve though to take the practice of law into the 21st century as quickly as possible.