lawyers and literature

Exercise 1-5: Making Yourself a Subject of Study

In law school you are expected to learn cases, doctrines, theories, definitions and do so in a way that places you, the learner, at the margins of law (the "subject" you have set about to learn). The law, in this view of learning, already exists; it is your lot in life to learn it, to know it. It's not clear, given this conception of learning where "you" might fit into the process.

Yet, ne might imagine a course of reading that places the learner central stage, a way of reading that make you, the learner, an active part of the studies that will make you a professional.

To make yourself a subject of study you must engage in reflection and introspection. We might begin by looking at these words introspection and reflection. Introspection derives from a Latin root meaning to look inside, to examine (one's own mind or its contents) reflexively, to engage in an examination of one's thought process and sensory experience. Reflection means the act of directing ones thoughts back upon oneself.

Introspective and reflexive explorations illuminate, in literary critic Robert Scholes's terms, "the nature of our own confinements and possibilities," the mess we are in and the ideals we pursue with the hold that the mess may be put behind us.

It is important to develop a sense of who you are as a person even as you struggle to become a lawyer and take on a Legal Mind. The effort to learn the law, solve legal problems, and utilize lawyering skills requires the development of a searching mind; attention to detail and form; perseverance and the desire to get things done right; detachment and objectivity; acquisition of performative skills; and finally a moral/ethical sensibility. From this rather short list it is possible to see that becoming a lawyer demands a great deal; can demand all one has to give; and in some cases it may demand too much.

In legal education the primary focus is on what you learn and your ability to perform certain kinds of skills: answering examination questions, legal analysis, brief writing, practicing the skills that lawyers use. While these skilled feats of mind are expected of a law student and form the basis of a professional identity and a competent professional, they may, ultimately be inadequate.

Being a student, a law student, engages more of who we are as persons than we would like to admit. The way a person expects to live out the lawyer story affects the way law is learned and lawyering will be practiced. Your values and beliefs, and the conflicts they create as you try to live them out, constitute a story that deserves attention.

In law school you embark upon an educational endeavor that turns out to be more than simply education, and by almost every account, more than what might crassly be called professional training. In short, legal education and professional life involve one's self in the most profound ways. It is difficult, if not impossible, to go through law school, to become a lawyer without confronting difficult and sometimes confusing questions:

What am I doing in law school?

What did I give up to come to this place?

Is it worth it?

Am I getting enough out of it to justify the sacrifices I am making?

What actually am I learning?

Will I be a good lawyer?

How does one learn to be a good lawyer?

Is this really what I am learning now?

Note: On Self Scrutiny as Fundamental to Jurisprudence

"In all matters that involve looking at and trying to influence aspects of the social process, the ultimate instrument of both observation and choice is--you, the individual personality or the self-system, those interactive elements that operate within a person and that influence perception and choice.

Two points are of major importance here. The first--involving vantage--is the need to view things not as a member of the group or the community you are observing but as someone disengaged and separate from it. This is, of course, a way of thinking, not an actual physical withdrawal. . . .

A second point of importance is the need to observe yourself as the instrument of observation and choice. All of us are subject to a variety of influences and conditionings which determine the way we view and choose and which have the potential for distorting both of those actions. There are three potential sources of distortion: (i) emotional and sometimes neurotic tendencies which exist in all human beings; (ii) parochial tendencies which are a result of acculturation within groups, nations and language systems and to which we are all prone; and, finally (iii) the distortions which derive from intense training within certain institutional settings, for example training in the law. For each of these, the responsible decisionmaker or appraiser should develop methods for scrutinizing the self-system and determining the extent to which emotional tendencies, sub-group parochialisms or institutional biases are distorting or skewing observation and choice." [W. Michael Reisman & Aaron M. Schreiber, Jurisprudence: Understanding and Shaping Law--Cases, Readings, Commentary (New Haven, Connecticut: New Haven Press, 1987)]

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