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The Everyman's Law School

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         The Law School Genre
         Transformation of the
           Law School Voice
         Grades
         Disenchantment with
           Law School
         Cold-Calling Experiences
 		 

THE EVERYMAN'S LAW SCHOOL
SUSAN GERMER 1


    In an age when there is an Idiot's Guide to everything, and the President, George W. Bush, is a well known average student, it is not surprising to find that narratives like Legally Blonde2 and Brush With The Law3 have come to replace The Paper Chase4 and One L5 as the popular narrative texts on the law school experience. These works demonstrate that the popular portrayal of law school has softened over the years, changing from an insurmountable torture to a conquerable formality. Perhaps this shift indicates that the institutions themselves have changed.
    Both The Paper Chase and One L depict law school as an institution of systematic self-destruction and, if you survive that, re-construction. For example, in The Paper Chase a student attempts suicide after being verbally abused by his Contracts professor and ultimately drops out of law school. Yet, the main character of One L, after undergoing a similar period of deconstruction, survives his first year because he learns how to rebuild himself as a legal automaton—establishing a rhythm to making comments in class and studying. These narrators seem to hold a common high-esteem for the law school institution— the characters always wanted to be lawyers (some of them are fourth generation Harvard law students) and their entire identities seem to rest on their success at bringing this dream into reality.
    In contrast, Legally Blonde and Brush With The Law, depict a new law student sensibility. First, Legally Blonde portrays the travails of an unlikely choice for the law school applicant—a blonde, highly social, fashion studies major who decides to attend Stanford Law School to win back her boyfriend. Similarly, the protagonists of Brush With The Law seem to have ulterior motives for going to law school—one of them states that he will go simply because he "has nothing else to do."6 Elle, in Legally Blonde, is ostracized by her peers, so that she seeks friends, and spends most of her free time, at the local beauty parlor. The protagonists of Brush With The Law also experience a social ostracism, albeit more self-imposed, so that they frequent casinos and crack houses instead of law school activities. Additionally, like Elle who uses law school as a means for another goal, one of Brush With The Law's narrators uses a job at a law firms to fund the less lucrative dream of being a bike messenger. Nobody in these stories seems to actually want to be in law school because of the law, whereas, the law seemed to be an exalted and life-long goal of the protagonists in One L and The Paper Chase.
    Does the irreverence for the law school experience as portrayed in these and other contemporary narratives such as Planet Law School and The Law School Trip, suggest that some elitist attributes of top tier law schools are dissolving or is it merely just a surfacing of previously suppressed, yet extant perceptions of the law experience? Perhaps the answer to this questions is suggested by the brushwiththelaw.com chat site on which a Yale Law student wrote: "I would caution you to be somewhat circumspect about what you write, whether or not it's true. You may find yourselves to be very clever, but the value of your degrees—and that of every one else's—may be affected by what you write."7 Perhaps the law school experience as portrayed in One L and The Paper Chase still exists, but now, instead of writers, law school graduates and professors trying to maintain its image as an impenetrable, competitive and intimidating institution, they produce works which depict it, perhaps in fantasy, as an egalitarian, approachable and almost easily survived impediment in one's progression through life. Now, law school is something to write a handbook about, a means to an end or a tangential narrative for the unsuspecting, imaginary or undeserving everyman.
    Below is a brief annotated biography of "the law school genre" followed by several brief quotes from the works on a variety of topics to provide a comparison of the law school experience articulated in each work.

The Law School Genre

  1. JOHN JAY OSBORN, JR., THE PAPER CHASE (1971). THE PAPER CHASE (20th Century Fox 1976). In what is regarded as the first seminal movie and book on the rigors of law school, this book seems to aim at dissuading the common person from attempting to conquer the law school institution. Undoubtedly, some of the central characters drop out before the end of their first year.
  2. SCOTT TUROW, ONE L (1977). This book has been credited as being a deterrent for even the stout of heart who wish to attend law school. It was the seminal book of the "1970s" and has since been disseminated by many law schools to matriculating One Ls, perhaps in an attempt to weed out unworthy One-Ls by scaring them the first year.
  3. RICHARD KAHLENBERG, BROKEN CONTRACT (1992). This novel details the life of a disenchanted Harvard law student whose public interest motives were dashed by the overwhelming self-interest of the greedy 80's. On the continuum of law school narratives, this one inhabits the middle area: law school resembles Turow's depiction, but it seems to have lost some of its sheen.
  4. WILLIAM R. KEATES, PROCEED WITH CAUTION (1997). Keates focuses his effort, in this personal narrative, on generalizing his monumental dissatisfaction with law school to everyone's known or unknown dissatisfaction. Ultimately, he provides a cautionary tale, but it lacks the bite of any all-inclusive survey although he has accomplished his goal of dissuading others of entering law schools based on certain testimonials.
  5. LAWRENCE DIEKER JR., LETTERS FROM LAW SCHOOL (2000). This novel illuminates the life choices set before a burgeoning Two L. Dieker's experience serves as a cautionary tale to everyone who thinks that going to law school guarantees employment and success.
  6. AMANDA BROWN, LEGALLY BLONDE (2001). LEGALLY BLONDE (MGM Pictures 2001). The book and movie portray law school in a comical and whimsical light. It reiterates the common adages: "never judge a book by its cover" and "if you want something badly enough, you will get it" (marriage in this case).
  7. ROBERT EBERT BYRNES & JAIME MARQUART, BRUSH WITH THE LAW (2001). www.brushwiththelaw.com. This website includes a two chapter download from the book Brush with the Law. Included, among the various links on the page, are book reviews, a schedule of the co-authors tour and a chat room. The book itself has been deemed "highly irreverent" to the law school process and "a world apart from One L and the Paper Chase." The first line serves as a succinct paraphrase for the book itself which is: "Dumb people really do go to Harvard Law School."
  8. ANDREW J. MCCLURG, THE LAW SCHOOL TRIP ( THE INSIDER'S GUIDE TO LAW SCHOOL) (2001). This book is less informative and more entertaining. Written by a law professor, this account of the law school experience showcases all of the rudimentary cases and course studies in an hilarious fashion.
Transformation of the Law School Voice

WHY I WENT TO LAW SCHOOL:
"You are twenty-six or twenty-two, it makes little difference. Either way you have a stake. You have given up a job, a career, to do this. Or you have wanted to be a lawyer all your life … You've studied hours on a case that is a half page long."

-- SCOTT TUROW, ONE L 24 (1977).

"Why go to law school in the first place? A lot of reasons for me:
  1. Got in.
  2. Needed a change.
  3. Nothing better to do.
  4. California.
  5. Live off loans.
  6. Bought the myth.
  7. Told hometown, "I'm going to law school."
  8. College girlfriend said, "Go."
  9. Chain of fate: A happened so B happened, then C and D and, therefore, law school happened."

-- ROBERT EBERT BYRNES & JAIME MARQUART, BRUSH WITH THE LAW 21 (2001).

"It was decided around 3:00 AM that Elle would go to law school and beat Warner at his own game. Decided, maybe, after one too many pink margaritas. Tequila-induced or not, the idea struck. If Warner was going to Stanford Law school to find someone "serious," he was going to find one serious Elle Woods."

-- AMANDA BROWN, LEGALLY BLONDE 5 (2001).

"… Osborne and Turow may have missed the more profound story. The Paper Chase and One L both end before the second year and thereby ignore the essential paradox of HLS: how is it that o many students can enter law school determined to use law to promote liberal ideals and leave three years later to counsel the least socially progressive elements of our society? We came to law school talking about using the law as a vehicle for social change…"

-- RICHARD KAHLENBERG, BROKEN CONTRACT 5 (1992).
GRADES:
"All that stuff you hear about grades is true. You've got to work like hell and look good, otherwise you won't get a job."

-- JOHN JAY OSBORN, JR., THE PAPER CHASE 18 (1971).

"I tried to be philosophical: they were just grades. But there was something deeper going on, which went not only to my future but to my very identity. The thing that made us special, that got us into one of the top law schools in the country, was our grades. And now Harvard Law's Darwinian system had taken that away from most of us."

-- RICHARD KAHLENBERG, BROKEN CONTRACT 55 (1992).

[After not attending many classes, memorizing past test answers, and doing crack all year, Byrnes gets a 3.3 GPA…] "That was that. First-year grades are what law students travel into the job world with. Mine put me in a position to get probably 95% of the available law firm jobs. I was in the middle, which at Stanford Law School meant an abundance of job security for life, if that's what you wanted."

-- ROBERT EBERT BYRNES & JAIME MARQUART, BRUSH WITH THE LAW 211 (2001).
DISENCHANTMENT WITH LAW SCHOOL:
"What really happens [in law school] has been happening for ever so long. People kill themselves. They hang themselves, jump out of windows, turn on the gas. Sometimes they blow their brains out with guns."

-- JOHN JAY OSBORN, JR., THE PAPER CHASE 23 (1971).

"Elle had been sure that at this very time, her world would revolve around planning her wedding. She thought that deciding such things as whether she would have tulle or silk organza for the skirt of her wedding dress and if Versace would be her best choice of china would be her biggest concerns … instead, she found herself in the monastic solitude of a law school dorm. Elle trembled at the sight. She had brought this upon herself."

-- AMANDA BROWN, LEGALLY BLONDE 13 (2001).

" 'Look to your left and look to your right, because by the time you graduate, there'll be no Left left.' The tale of fierce academic competition has become a much more telling and damning tale of greed."

-- RICHARD KAHLENBERG, BROKEN CONTRACT 2 (1992).
COLD-CALLING EXPERIENCES:
"One [cold-calling story] concerns a boy who did a particularly bad job. His professor called him to the podium, gave the student a dime and said, loudly:
'Go call your mother, and tell her you'll never be a lawyer.'"

-- JOHN JAY OSBORN, JR., THE PAPER CHASE 3 (1971).

"Check out The Paper Chase. Professor Kingsfield inspired more fear and awe than the Great and Powerful Oz. By contrast, I hadn't seen my own real life Contracts professor since early September. Law school wasn't quite matching its movie mythology…"

-- ROBERT EBERT BYRNES & JAIME MRQUART, BRUSH WITH THE LAW 102 (2001).

" 'You without the power book or the name card … What do you think of subrogation?'
Elle wondered if this professor had a feminist theme too, like Kiki Slaugter-Haus.
'Well, it's endemic in our society. Especially the subjugation of women'
The class fell apart in laughter, leaving Elle to wonder alone what was so funny…
'Thank you, Ms. Woods. Let's turn to somebody who's done the reading.'"

-- AMANDA BROWN, LEGALLY BLONDE 22 (2001).

"My mind started racing and I started blurting out answers without really thinking. Disapproving murmurs circulated around the room. Hands shot up-vicious hands trying to capitalize on my mistake."

-- RICHARD KAHLENBERG, BROKEN CONTRACT 13 (1992).