A lot of times when I do presentations for high school or college students, people ask me what they should major in if they plan on going to law school. Most of the time I answer Religion or Philosophy for close-reading and logic reasons, but I recently decided to take a close look at my bar stats and see if I was right. I still think I am, but I would also advise students to minor in something that forces them to be creative.
According to my recent stats on students who fail the bar exam, the vast majority of students who fail majored in Political Science (35 percent) in undergrad, while the rest largely majored in Communications, Business, or Pre-Law. Granted, I was not looking at a particularly large group of students, and people who are interested in studying law in grad school probably gravitate to these majors as it is, but it did seem notable.
For new law students, one of the biggest things to get one's head around is the idea of a hypothetical exam where anything can happen and there is no absolute correct answer. I was an English and Creative Writing Major, and I've done my best to avoid learning anything practical like Business or Math, but in my limited understanding of what goes on in PolySci, Comm, Bus, or Pre-Law, I don't think students in those disciplines get too many chances to really flex their imaginative muscles, or at least not in the same way as someone trying to write a poem or a short story or compose music might.
When I work with struggling students, one of the most helpful things I work with them on is helping them learn to "deeply imagine" (a term I borrowed from Ethan Canin of the Iowa Writers' Workshop) legal situations that might be presented to them. For example, I ask them to imagine "So, you're in your office, and your client, a 15-year-old kid, has thrown a frozen turkey off an interstate bridge. He didn't realize frozen turkeys bounced, and the turkey bounced through a windshield and killed someone. He's in the chair directly in front of your desk, completely terrified. Mom is next to him crying. Dad is pacing back and forth, threatening to kill the kid himself. How would you explain what crime the kid might be guilty of?" When I can get them to see it that way, writing an answer in clear IRAC form, with counterarguments, without writing a prologue or wrap-up or spending too much time on some case they read in class, seems to change from an arbitrary writing tip to a completely sensible way to deal with the situation.
Although many commentators have blamed the drop in bar exam pass rates on ability, intelligence, grit, or gumption, it might really be a product of the failure of the imagination. In the modern era, "deeply imagining" practice is fairly hard to get. As a Gen Xer, I might have been part of the last generation who had daily "deep imagination" practice. If you are part of this generation or earlier, take a look at an old Atari 2600 game or a movie with any effects by Ray Harryhausen. My children (10 and 12) are boggled that my mind could turn blue dots into space ships or cheesy dolls into the Kraken. I've also never heard my children say they were bored — ever — even on car trips. They have their books, movies, cartoons on demand, and video games. They've never had to play car bingo or make something out of boxes to play with (unless they really, really wanted to). "Deeply imagining" anything is not really necessary for happiness or entertainment anymore.
This morning on the way to school, I told my kids how my junior high friends and I had once made a shot-for-shot remake of the movie Airplane! and convinced a good deal of the school to come to a toga party to celebrate (in retrospect, I have no idea why any of our parents agreed to a bunch of seventh graders reenacting a scene from Animal House, but 1980s Texas was a lot weirder than people give it credit for). My son kept asking me, "Were you a nerd or weirdo or something?" My answer was, "Not really. We roped almost everyone into it. As kids, we were all kind of bored, and we had to entertain ourselves somehow. That forced us to be creative."
When I went to law school, hypothetical questions seemed completely logical to me. Exams were pretty easy because I could "deeply imagine" and SEE everything — how the situation in the exam would look if it was happening to real people, and what I would need to say to them. That skill was invaluable in law school, and I've worked hard to try to pass it on to students who might not have had as much practice with it as I did. (Alex Ruskell)
