I have reached the age where I have a lot of "back in my day" thoughts. EDM makes my head hurt. Modern movies are terrible. I hate how connected people are with phones. I hate ball parks named after corporations. What was so wrong with the original pop tart that we had to fancy it up with the toaster strudel?
Law schools have had a few rough years in the popular press and imagination, and the struggles of law students seem to hit a blog or newspaper more or less every day. I read all of it. A criticism that bothers me is when someone says, "a law student who needs _____________ to be a lawyer shouldn't be a lawyer."
First, it's an easy, flip, and reductive statement. Second, the hubris of making such a flat declaration about someone else's talents or abilities based on one factor is stunning. Third, it's just another version of "back in my day," the implication being that the person making the statement became a lawyer (or entered some other profession) without that particular need.
Whenever a commentator questions certain things schools do to help law students, I think about "back in my day" and how I studied for the bar. I had to go all the way across Austin (on a mule, uphill both ways, in the snow, with an onion on my belt) and sit in a hot warehouse for several hours with a couple of hundred people and listen to live lectures. Although some of the lectures were O.K., many of the lectures were horrible from an easy-to-follow/easy-to-pay-attention/not-rather-be-eaten-by-rabid-weasels standpoint. One lecturer in particular had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of jokes involving America's Greatest Living Thespian Keanu Reeves. There is nothing wrong with jokes and I loved the original Point Break and My Own Private Idaho, but the jokes were not funny. It might have been a brilliant display of Kaufman-esque anti-humor, but I was too freaked out and tired by the looming bar exam to be more than put off by it.
Despite the Keanu jokes, without that forced structure of getting up, driving, and sitting there, I wonder how I would have done on the bar exam. Because of how brutal I found the entire thing, if I could have, I probably would have studied and watched lectures at Barton Springs pool. I'd probably have started every day at 11 and stopped at 5. Studying on Fridays would probably be out. I doubt I would have written out any practice questions or done any practice exams. I probably would have simply relied on my history of being very good at standardized exams to get me through.
When I actually sat for the exam, I had pneumonia and the woman sitting next to me cried the entire time (not because of my pneumonia). Without the enforced structure, I wonder if I would have passed under those circumstances. As it was, I had been forced to learn the bar material so well that I could have been on fire and still passed. However, I doubt I would have put myself in that position if I had been left to my own devices. I think I was "a law student who needs to be forced to sit in a warehouse and listen to Keanu jokes to be a lawyer" and, despite that need, I think I turned out to be a pretty good one.
I understand why some observers say that "a law student that needs _______ to be a lawyer shouldn't be a lawyer," but very few people can succeed in an endeavor without help. For 25-year-old me, I think I needed the help of that warehouse. For my students, it might be giving them extra help, handing them physical books, going over practice questions with them, etc., but I do not believe that needing a particular type of help is any kind of inherent disqualification to being a lawyer.
(Alex Ruskell)
