(1) Is it possible to see in your quest to become a lawyer and in your phantasies of what lawyers do, a contemporary form of the journey of the hero? What dangers do you see in employing this kind of imagination?

(2) Consider the following vignette:

It is a sunny afternoon in late August, and the courtroom is packed. . . .

In the press box reporters from every major newspaper in the country are waiting in eager anticipation. A prominent professional man in a large Midwestern city has been accused of the murder of his wife, and now he is facing trail to answer that charge. The crime was shrouded in mystery; rumors and speculations have been circulating for weeks, but now the moment of truth has arrived. The jury has finally been selected, the judge has taken his place on the bench. This tribunal will decide, after careful deliberation, whether the defendant is innocent or guilty.

Then suddenly, a hush falls on the courtroom. A man has risen from his table and is walking slowly toward the jury box. Everyone is silent; all eyes are upon this man as he begins to speak. He is the star performer in the drama about to be enacted. As he begins his opening address to the jury, all attention is focused on him . . . the attorney for the accused. . . . [William B. Nourse, So You Want to Be a Lawyer 17 (New York: Harper, 1959)]

(3) Dolphus Raymond, in To Kill a Mockingbird, tells Scout, Atticus Finch's daughter: "Miss Jean Louise, you don't know your pa's not a run-of-the-mill man, it'll take a few years for that to sink in--you haven't seen enough of the world yet." [Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird 204 (New York: Popular Library, 1960)]. Is Dolphus trying to tell Scout that Atticus is a hero?

(4) Robert Cover suggests that law is a bridge from the reality of the world (the world as it exists) to an imagined world-that-might be. [Robert Cover, The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction, 14 Cap. U.L. Rev. 179 (1985)]. Law, Cover reminds us, is one way of shaping the future. Law is a form of belief and a commitment to a particular vision of the future. This way of looking at law "is not a definition of law," Cover argues, "but a matter of social understanding, a form of committed social behavior that leads to the future." Consequently, "law can lay claim to only one perspective of the future, one which speaks to required behavior." Law is one social perspective among others. The nature of law remains, for Cover, a vital question and of continuing interest. "[T]he question of what is law and for whom is a question of fact about what certain communities believe and with what commitments to those beliefs." One of the reasons that law maintains its vitality is that our beliefs and commitments to law are, says Cover, constructed from "sacred narratives," from cultural experience "learned and expressed through sacred stories."

What possibilities for the lawyer hero do you find concealed in Cover's idea of law as a method of constructing a world, a self, and a life? How would one go about an education that fosters such imaginative possibilities?

1. See generally, Marvin W. Mindes & Alan C. Acock, Trickster, Hero, Helper: A Report on the Lawyer Image, 1982 Am. B. Found. Res. J. 177.

2. On Legal Education as Heroic Journey: Thomas C. Galligan, The Monomyth Goes to Law School, 66 St. John's L. Rev. 129 (1992).

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