Law in Contemporary Society

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DavidGoldinFirstPaper 16 - 13 Jan 2012 - Main.IanSullivan
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  I took a different approach to this paper while trying to explore the same overall theme. My attempts at generalization were failing for obvious reasons, so instead I focused on myself and my own internal issues. My guess is that some people have similar fears that guide their decisions, though some don't. Hopefully examining a few of my own internal issues and a discussion of a few potential steps forward will be helpful.

Fear


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 15 - 11 Jul 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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I took a different approach to this paper while trying to explore the same overall theme. My attempts at generalization were failing for obvious reasons, so instead I focused on myself and my own internal issues. My guess is that some people have similar fears that guide their decisions, though some don't. Hopefully examining a few of my own internal issues and a discussion of a few potential steps forward will be helpful.
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 With regards to allaying my fears, developing a niche will hopefully give me more stability and will create demand for my services so I will no longer fear both a lack of success and a lack of money. People who are particularly knowledgeable in an area are in demand. I have personally witnessed this - when working at a large firm that was downsizing, the people who stayed were the ones who had expertise in specific areas and the first to go were the generalists. Having some sort of expertise, and continually working to increase and develop this, will hopefully help me overcome some of my fears.
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At the same time, specialization can make it more possible to use my license to do good as opposed to bad. While it would be nice to be able to solve all of the world's problems, it is easier and arguably more effective to focus on improving one specific area - be it pharmaceutical drug policy (my interest), animal rights issues or anything else. Many great movements have started with focuses on individual issues. This too will assist me in dealing with my fear of failure.
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At the same time, specialization can make it more possible to use my license to do good as opposed to bad. While it would be nice to be able to solve all of the world's problems, it is easier and arguably more effective to focus on improving one specific area - be it pharmaceutical drug policy (my interest), animal rights issues or anything else. Many great movements have started when the organizers focused on individual issues. This too will assist me in dealing with my fear of failure.
 
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This is just a beginning. I may struggle to develop sufficient expertise to develop a niche. This likely won't work for everyone - some people have gotten over their fears, and others have no plans to do so. But hopefully recognizing this will at least allow me to start moving in the direction of developing a career using my license to do something positive.
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This is just a beginning. I will likely struggle to develop sufficient expertise to carve out a niche. This likely won't work for everyone - some people have gotten over their fears, and others have no plans to do so. But hopefully recognizing this will at least allow me to start moving in the direction of developing a career using my license to do something positive.
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DavidGoldinFirstPaper 14 - 10 Jul 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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Making Ourselves Uncomfortable

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I took a different approach to this paper while trying to explore the same overall theme. My attempts at generalization were failing for obvious reasons, so instead I focused on myself and my own internal issues. My guess is that some people have similar fears that guide their decisions, though some don't. Hopefully examining a few of my own internal issues and a discussion of a few potential steps forward will be helpful.
 
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Fear

 
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-- By DavidGoldin - 12 May 2010
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-- By DavidGoldin - 10 Jul 2010
 
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The Role of The Lawyer

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Looking Inside

 
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There are a lot of problems in the world. This is clear. Every time I turn on the news, or open the newspaper, I read about another one. There are also a lot of people working to solve some of these problems. Unfortunately, however, there is a disconnect. Many of the people who could potentially play a significant role in coming up with innovative solutions and helping the people who need it the most are not doing so. These people include lawyers.

Having a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many graduates from the nation's most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses". The question then becomes why so many people do this. Some will say money - but this is only a partial explanation. True, receiving $160,000 a year sounds appealing. But given the amount that will go to taxes and the number of hours that we will need to work to get this, the money really isn't that great. In this paper, I will argue that another important reason is a fear of risk-taking.

Being Afraid

One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desperately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses? This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.

But learning to think of yourself as running your own practice doesn't necessarily mean practicing by yourself, and it certainly doesn't mean having no ways to share or diversify your risk. The law firm imposes risks too, in case you hadn't noticed. And you're not allowed to diversify those at all. Maybe a risk-averse person who wasn't also a conformist would be more worried about the risk of borrowing a great deal of money in order to become utterly financially dependent on a job provided by some lawyers who themselves work in a large law firm whose business model is being disrupted not so much by "the bad economy" as by the twenty-first century. Maybe that means accepting a whole lot of risk that you can't lay off anywhere. And firm jobs don't suit you to run your own practice in any sense at all: they're more learned helplessness.

Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse, but why are so many lawyers like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor mistake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.

You think that lawyers who are entrepreneurial about how they build their practices are therefore also risk-loving people who don't practice carefully? That's wrong, for one thing. But it also exemplifies the problem with this sort of unifactorial explanation based on some (I guess) immutable character trait that people either have or don't have. Judging human beings in practice this way (either they have goodness or badness, smartness or stupidness, honesty or dishonesty, timidity or rashness, etc.) works very poorly in real life, and it's probably not going to pay off in a context like this.

Granted, this description doesn't apply to all lawyers. Many lawyers have taken huge risks in their careers, and many of these individuals have had significant impacts on the world. During Legal Methods, our professor brought in a number of his colleagues. The vast majority of them were risk-takers with regards to career decisions. They hadn't gone straight from law school to X & Y LLP, where they worked 2500 hours a year for 9 years and made partner. They had taken winding paths in their careers, accepting work that interested them as opposed to just "safe" work. The one thing that unified them is that (at least outwardly) all were satisfied with their careers.

So what does this anecdote demonstrate? People who don't do one particular thing, namely go to work at a firm and stay there, are "risk-takers with regard to career decisions"? Nothing here supports that inference. It's the proposition you're supposed to be testing dematerialized into an implicit assumption, where it rules your thought without you're being able to know it's there.

This brings us to the real heart of the problem, which isn't something called "risk-aversion." It's fear. Fear is an emotion we learn to regulate, cope with, and use. "Risk-aversion" is some sort of property, like left-handedness or the ability to roll your tongue lengthwise, that I'm supposed to believe you got issued in your genome, and are merely going to act out for the rest of your life from one unchosen situation to another. Being afraid of the future, being afraid you can't make your practice support you, being afraid of mistakes and bad choices are all part of the process of learning to be a lawyer. We recognize our fears, we talk about them with the people who help us learn, we do things in the world that allow us to measure ourselves against the demands of the real world, and we grow. But if we allowed our fears to prevent us from growing, how would that be "safe"?

The Next Steps

So where do we go from here? As I sit here, writing about how the fear of taking risks is holding me back, I am afraid. My first year of law school is over, and I don't know how much I've gained from it. I don't have any useful skills - I can barely do legal research and if someone came to me with a legal problem, I'd probably have a panic attack. If I have learned a third of what I'm going to learn in law school, I'm in bad shape.

This would be some kind of problem if learning were linear, which it isn't. You've done what every lawyer who has been educated in this society for the past hundred thirty years has done. It may well be imperfect, or even becoming more outmoded by the day. But your problem isn't the exterior system of education; it's your fear.

The next step, then, is to figure out a better system of preparing lawyers.

No. It isn't the next step in your education to change the system of education. It's your next step in your education to change yourself. This, like "risk-aversion" is a defensive digression, unconsciously designed to avoid the internal conflict that comes from internal change.

This again seems pretty self-evident. We have had a number of class discussions about it. People have thrown out a variety of ideas. We need better professors who know how to teach us. We need better classes which will actually prepare us to be lawyers. Law school should be less expensive, so the vast majority of us don't graduate with huge amounts of debt hanging over our heads. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.

I do not believe that people are inherently risk-averse or risk-loving. Granted, people have different risk thresholds and this is in part based on nature. But most of it is nurture. People are taught to either take risks or not to. Our current legal education system tends to teach us not to. In some respects, this is good - we don't want lawyers running around using their licenses recklessly. But at the same time, it inhibits many of us from using our licenses to solve the problems and make the changes that desperately need to be made. Perhaps, if we were taught the values of risk taking, as Eben has endeavored to do, and were educated in a way that would enable us to be lawyers without coddling, we'd be able to do so.

Endeavored to do but failed to do because of your inherent "risk-aversion," you mean? Perhaps you haven't yet fully applied yourself to the lesson.
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One of the things that interests me about the legal profession is the fact that many graduates from the most prestigious law schools don't end up working where they are needed most - instead, many end up in the "pawn shops." This isn't true for everyone. Some people in my class will go on to do amazing things with their Columbia degrees, and will use them to effect the change that we need. But even in this economy, with jobs at large law firms disappearing, many of my classmates will still follow the "traditional" path. So what is causing this? I can't speak for everyone, or generalize about our entire class, but I know about some of the factors driving my decisions about the future, and hopefully discussing them will shed some light on the issues facing many people in similar positions.
 
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I have always thought of myself as a risk averse person. This doesn't need much of an explanation. Perhaps this is why I chose law school - law has traditionally been seen as a stable career where one can plod along for decades making good, but not great money, without having to worry about layoffs or tough business decisions. Behind this risk aversion is a general sense of fear. I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of not having enough money. I'm afraid of wasting my one shot at life. This may seem abstract, but it plays a huge role in guiding the decisions I have made and that I am making for my future.
 
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My reasons to be afraid are likely different from others members of our class who are driven by fear. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunities that I have and feel like an "ambassador" of sorts for my community. I don't want to fail them or be a disgrace. I don't have much family with money to fall back on if I am unable to find a job. I have older family members depending on me and my financial success. Looking at the broader world picture, these concerns are piddling. Many people are living day to day, afraid that they won't have enough food or water. But I am still afraid and this fear is shaping many of the decisions that I make.
 
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Afraid

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Looking Outward

 
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Looking Inside

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In many ways, my first year of law school has exacerbated these fears, especially the fear of failure. This is justified in some cases. Lawyers can wield a lot of power, and it is important not to misuse it. A lawyer's misplaced words or even misunderstood words can have serious consequences. Additionally, our legal system operates under systems of rules, and not knowing these rules can lessen a lawyer's effectiveness. For example, a missed deadline can be destroy an important case. Playing into my underlying fear of failure is helpful in this arena, in that it will force me to be more careful and try and prevent problems that will compromise my ability to use my license effectively.
 
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Looking Outside

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At the same time, however, I feel like my fears have been exacerbated in a negative way as well. There are a number of reasons for this. One is money - law school is expensive, and having a large amount of debt hanging over my head scares me. Another is the consistent focus on sending graduates to "jobs" as opposed to careers. During the first two months alone, we had two "mandatory" meetings where we were told about the importance of getting good grades and of finding summer jobs. Not having a "job" was portrayed as the ultimate failure.

Granted, different people react to these meetings differently. But being someone who is guided by fear of failure, it is understandable why so many people go to "pawn shops" as opposed to the places where they can do work that is actually needs them.

 

Looking Forward

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Where do I go from here? This is a highly personal decision. My goal is to use law school and internships to gain expertise in a specific area, a niche. This will do a couple of things - it will lessen my fears and it will allow me to develop the ties that will allow me to effect the type of change that I want with my law degree.

With regards to allaying my fears, developing a niche will hopefully give me more stability and will create demand for my services so I will no longer fear both a lack of success and a lack of money. People who are particularly knowledgeable in an area are in demand. I have personally witnessed this - when working at a large firm that was downsizing, the people who stayed were the ones who had expertise in specific areas and the first to go were the generalists. Having some sort of expertise, and continually working to increase and develop this, will hopefully help me overcome some of my fears.

At the same time, specialization can make it more possible to use my license to do good as opposed to bad. While it would be nice to be able to solve all of the world's problems, it is easier and arguably more effective to focus on improving one specific area - be it pharmaceutical drug policy (my interest), animal rights issues or anything else. Many great movements have started with focuses on individual issues. This too will assist me in dealing with my fear of failure.

This is just a beginning. I may struggle to develop sufficient expertise to develop a niche. This likely won't work for everyone - some people have gotten over their fears, and others have no plans to do so. But hopefully recognizing this will at least allow me to start moving in the direction of developing a career using my license to do something positive.


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 13 - 07 Jul 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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Making Ourselves Uncomfortable

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Afraid

Looking Inside

Looking Outside

Looking Forward


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 12 - 28 Jun 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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  failed to do because of your inherent "risk-aversion," you mean? Perhaps you haven't yet fully applied yourself to the lesson.
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So I took a different approach to this paper. I still think that many lawyers are holding themselves back from doing good. I have decided to focus, however, on a different reason - the unwillingness to take risks. In my earlier paper, I used the unwillingness to speak openly as a proxy for this, but apparently, it wasn't an effective way of getting my point across. As always, I'd be happy to hear any comments or see any suggestions that you have. Many thanks, -David

David - I cleaned up a few grammatical errors and misspellings. Two other issues I noticed:

1) I think one issue you might want to consider is that the law attracts a self-selecting pool of risk averse people. While law school may play a role in making us even more risk averse, I have a feeling that most people who come to law school are not very interested in taking risks. If they were, they wouldn't need to come to law school, because they would start up their own business. They say people who go to business school are risk takers and people who go to law school are risk averse. Definitely true in my family - my older brother went to B school and created his own start-up after graduation, and I came to law school. Maybe also check out Abi's paper about risk aversion.

2) Another area you might want to consider is our conversation about clinics and any other currently existing opportunities to learn real lawyering skills in law school. Is it possible for someone who is really focused on getting practical experience to do so at CLS as it currently exists? I'm not sure, but you might want to explore that question a little more.

Nos vemos luego. Que te vaya bien durante del verano.

Nate - Your first point is a completely valid one. My assertion, however, is that law school need to account for this. Many people who go to law school are risk averse. So the schools are working with a difficult population. But by focusing on the negative elements of risk taking, schools are creating even more risk averse people, which will inhibit their effectiveness as lawyers.

The clinics issue is an interesting one. I didn't apply for any for this upcoming semester. Hopefully I will be in one at some point in my law school career, and will be able to explore this issue a bit more. But as of right now, I don't think I have enough knowledge to discuss the issue in depth.

Thanks again for the thought you've put into these comments, and best wishes for an interesting and exciting summer.

Cuidate.


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 11 - 28 Jun 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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 One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desperately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses? This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
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But learning to think of yourself as running your own practice doesn't necessarily mean practicing by yourself, and it certainly doesn't mean having no ways to share or diversify your risk. The law firm imposes risks too, in case you hadn't noticed. And you're not allowed to diversify those at all. Maybe a risk-averse person who wasn't also a conformist would be more worried about the risk of borrowing a great deal of money in order to become utterly financially dependent on a job provided by some lawyers who themselves work in a large law firm whose business model is being disrupted not so much by "the bad economy" as by the twenty-first century. Maybe that means accepting a whole lot of risk that you can't lay off anywhere. And firm jobs don't suit you to run your own practice in any sense at all: they're more learned helplessness.
 Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse, but why are so many lawyers like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor mistake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.
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You think that lawyers who are entrepreneurial about how they build their practices are therefore also risk-loving people who don't practice carefully? That's wrong, for one thing. But it also exemplifies the problem with this sort of unifactorial explanation based on some (I guess) immutable character trait that people either have or don't have. Judging human beings in practice this way (either they have goodness or badness, smartness or stupidness, honesty or dishonesty, timidity or rashness, etc.) works very poorly in real life, and it's probably not going to pay off in a context like this.
 Granted, this description doesn't apply to all lawyers. Many lawyers have taken huge risks in their careers, and many of these individuals have had significant impacts on the world. During Legal Methods, our professor brought in a number of his colleagues. The vast majority of them were risk-takers with regards to career decisions. They hadn't gone straight from law school to X & Y LLP, where they worked 2500 hours a year for 9 years and made partner. They had taken winding paths in their careers, accepting work that interested them as opposed to just "safe" work. The one thing that unified them is that (at least outwardly) all were satisfied with their careers.
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So what does this anecdote demonstrate? People who don't do one particular thing, namely go to work at a firm and stay there, are "risk-takers with regard to career decisions"? Nothing here supports that inference. It's the proposition you're supposed to be testing dematerialized into an implicit assumption, where it rules your thought without you're being able to know it's there.

This brings us to the real heart of the problem, which isn't something called "risk-aversion." It's fear. Fear is an emotion we learn to regulate, cope with, and use. "Risk-aversion" is some sort of property, like left-handedness or the ability to roll your tongue lengthwise, that I'm supposed to believe you got issued in your genome, and are merely going to act out for the rest of your life from one unchosen situation to another. Being afraid of the future, being afraid you can't make your practice support you, being afraid of mistakes and bad choices are all part of the process of learning to be a lawyer. We recognize our fears, we talk about them with the people who help us learn, we do things in the world that allow us to measure ourselves against the demands of the real world, and we grow. But if we allowed our fears to prevent us from growing, how would that be "safe"?

 

The Next Steps

So where do we go from here? As I sit here, writing about how the fear of taking risks is holding me back, I am afraid. My first year of law school is over, and I don't know how much I've gained from it. I don't have any useful skills - I can barely do legal research and if someone came to me with a legal problem, I'd probably have a panic attack. If I have learned a third of what I'm going to learn in law school, I'm in bad shape.

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The next step, then, is to figure out a better system of preparing lawyers. This again seems pretty self-evident. We have had a number of class discussions about it. People have thrown out a variety of ideas. We need better professors who know how to teach us. We need better classes which will actually prepare us to be lawyers. Law school should be less expensive, so the vast majority of us don't graduate with huge amounts of debt hanging over our heads. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.
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This would be some kind of problem if learning were linear, which it isn't. You've done what every lawyer who has been educated in this society for the past hundred thirty years has done. It may well be imperfect, or even becoming more outmoded by the day. But your problem isn't the exterior system of education; it's your fear.

The next step, then, is to figure out a better system of preparing lawyers.

No. It isn't the next step in your education to change the system of education. It's your next step in your education to change yourself. This, like "risk-aversion" is a defensive digression, unconsciously designed to avoid the internal conflict that comes from internal change.

This again seems pretty self-evident. We have had a number of class discussions about it. People have thrown out a variety of ideas. We need better professors who know how to teach us. We need better classes which will actually prepare us to be lawyers. Law school should be less expensive, so the vast majority of us don't graduate with huge amounts of debt hanging over our heads. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.

 I do not believe that people are inherently risk-averse or risk-loving. Granted, people have different risk thresholds and this is in part based on nature. But most of it is nurture. People are taught to either take risks or not to. Our current legal education system tends to teach us not to. In some respects, this is good - we don't want lawyers running around using their licenses recklessly. But at the same time, it inhibits many of us from using our licenses to solve the problems and make the changes that desperately need to be made. Perhaps, if we were taught the values of risk taking, as Eben has endeavored to do, and were educated in a way that would enable us to be lawyers without coddling, we'd be able to do so.
Added:
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Endeavored to do but failed to do because of your inherent "risk-aversion," you mean? Perhaps you haven't yet fully applied yourself to the lesson.
  So I took a different approach to this paper. I still think that many lawyers are holding themselves back from doing good. I have decided to focus, however, on a different reason - the unwillingness to take risks. In my earlier paper, I used the unwillingness to speak openly as a proxy for this, but apparently, it wasn't an effective way of getting my point across. As always, I'd be happy to hear any comments or see any suggestions that you have. Many thanks, -David

David - I cleaned up a few grammatical errors and misspellings. Two other issues I noticed:


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 10 - 05 Jun 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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Being Afraid

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One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desparately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses? This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
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One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desperately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses? This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
 Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse, but why are so many lawyers like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor mistake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.
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 2) Another area you might want to consider is our conversation about clinics and any other currently existing opportunities to learn real lawyering skills in law school. Is it possible for someone who is really focused on getting practical experience to do so at CLS as it currently exists? I'm not sure, but you might want to explore that question a little more.

Nos vemos luego. Que te vaya bien durante del verano.

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Nate - Your first point is a completely valid one. My assertion, however, is that law school need to account for this. Many people who go to law school are risk averse. So the schools are working with a difficult population. But by focusing on the negative elements of risk taking, schools are creating even more risk averse people, which will inhibit their effectiveness as lawyers.

The clinics issue is an interesting one. I didn't apply for any for this upcoming semester. Hopefully I will be in one at some point in my law school career, and will be able to explore this issue a bit more. But as of right now, I don't think I have enough knowledge to discuss the issue in depth.

Thanks again for the thought you've put into these comments, and best wishes for an interesting and exciting summer.

Cuidate.

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DavidGoldinFirstPaper 9 - 24 May 2010 - Main.NathanStopper
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Being Afraid

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One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desparately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses. This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
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One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desparately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses? This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
 
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Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse. Why so many lawyers are like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor msitake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.
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Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse, but why are so many lawyers like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor mistake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.
 Granted, this description doesn't apply to all lawyers. Many lawyers have taken huge risks in their careers, and many of these individuals have had significant impacts on the world. During Legal Methods, our professor brought in a number of his colleagues. The vast majority of them were risk-takers with regards to career decisions. They hadn't gone straight from law school to X & Y LLP, where they worked 2500 hours a year for 9 years and made partner. They had taken winding paths in their careers, accepting work that interested them as opposed to just "safe" work. The one thing that unified them is that (at least outwardly) all were satisfied with their careers.

The Next Steps

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So where do we go from here? As I sit here, writing about how the fear of taking risks is holding me back, I am afraid. My first year of law school is over, and I don't how much I've gained from it. I don't have any useful skills - I can barely do legal research and if someone came to me with a legal problem, I'd probably have a panic attack. If I have learned a third of what I'm going to learn in law school, I'm in pretty bad shape.
>
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So where do we go from here? As I sit here, writing about how the fear of taking risks is holding me back, I am afraid. My first year of law school is over, and I don't know how much I've gained from it. I don't have any useful skills - I can barely do legal research and if someone came to me with a legal problem, I'd probably have a panic attack. If I have learned a third of what I'm going to learn in law school, I'm in bad shape.
 The next step, then, is to figure out a better system of preparing lawyers. This again seems pretty self-evident. We have had a number of class discussions about it. People have thrown out a variety of ideas. We need better professors who know how to teach us. We need better classes which will actually prepare us to be lawyers. Law school should be less expensive, so the vast majority of us don't graduate with huge amounts of debt hanging over our heads. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.

I do not believe that people are inherently risk-averse or risk-loving. Granted, people have different risk thresholds and this is in part based on nature. But most of it is nurture. People are taught to either take risks or not to. Our current legal education system tends to teach us not to. In some respects, this is good - we don't want lawyers running around using their licenses recklessly. But at the same time, it inhibits many of us from using our licenses to solve the problems and make the changes that desperately need to be made. Perhaps, if we were taught the values of risk taking, as Eben has endeavored to do, and were educated in a way that would enable us to be lawyers without coddling, we'd be able to do so.

So I took a different approach to this paper. I still think that many lawyers are holding themselves back from doing good. I have decided to focus, however, on a different reason - the unwillingness to take risks. In my earlier paper, I used the unwillingness to speak openly as a proxy for this, but apparently, it wasn't an effective way of getting my point across. As always, I'd be happy to hear any comments or see any suggestions that you have. Many thanks, -David

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David - I cleaned up a few grammatical errors and misspellings. Two other issues I noticed:

1) I think one issue you might want to consider is that the law attracts a self-selecting pool of risk averse people. While law school may play a role in making us even more risk averse, I have a feeling that most people who come to law school are not very interested in taking risks. If they were, they wouldn't need to come to law school, because they would start up their own business. They say people who go to business school are risk takers and people who go to law school are risk averse. Definitely true in my family - my older brother went to B school and created his own start-up after graduation, and I came to law school. Maybe also check out Abi's paper about risk aversion.

2) Another area you might want to consider is our conversation about clinics and any other currently existing opportunities to learn real lawyering skills in law school. Is it possible for someone who is really focused on getting practical experience to do so at CLS as it currently exists? I'm not sure, but you might want to explore that question a little more.

Nos vemos luego. Que te vaya bien durante del verano.


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 8 - 12 May 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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Making Ourselves Uncomfortable

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The Unique Role of the Lawyer

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Having a license to practice law gives one an immense number of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many graduates from the nation's most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses".
 
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It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer has the tools to go to court and initiate a lawsuit. A lawyer can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt the lives of and cause great expense to a large number of people. Receiving a letter from a lawyer often can cause one anxiety or fear. Thus, having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others, both in good and bad ways. Despite the harm that some lawyers do, many lawyers use the power granted by their licenses to try and do good. Unfortunately, some of these lawyers are severely restricted in their ability to do so because they are too "lawyerly".
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The Role of The Lawyer

 
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"Being Lawyerly"

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There are a lot of problems in the world. This is clear. Every time I turn on the news, or open the newspaper, I read about another one. There are also a lot of people working to solve some of these problems. Unfortunately, however, there is a disconnect. Many of the people who could potentially play a significant role in coming up with innovative solutions and helping the people who need it the most are not doing so. These people include lawyers.
 
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What exactly is "being lawyerly"? It is consistently using vague and evasive language. It is giving the narrowest answers possible to important questions. And most of all, it is being too polite and politically correct to directly address injustices and problems in the world. Instead of making direct statements about controversial issues, many lawyers will step around them as much as possible. Instead of giving a full answer to a question, some lawyers will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible. They will go to great lengths to be painstakingly politically correct.
>
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Having a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many graduates from the nation's most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses". The question then becomes why so many people do this. Some will say money - but this is only a partial explanation. True, receiving $160,000 a year sounds appealing. But given the amount that will go to taxes and the number of hours that we will need to work to get this, the money really isn't that great. In this paper, I will argue that another important reason is a fear of risk-taking.
 
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Judges do this as well. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Judges will try to avoid going out on limbs as well. They are "being lawyerly".
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Being Afraid

 
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There is certainly virtue in caution. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the unique role of the lawyer, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and cause great harm. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers. That said, this caution must not be used excessively. Taking unpopular stances when necessary, addressing tough issues directly, and giving full answers to questions are incredibly important traits. There are a multitude of problems in society today which lawyers can have a role in solving, and politeness and being "lawyerly" shouldn't be impediments to effecting change.
>
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One of the anecdotes Eben gave us in class is a good illustration of this. He mentioned a young, out-of-work lawyer who was desparately looking for a job. She hadn't had much success, and was getting quite worried. Eben suggested that she start taking on clients and developing a practice. Whenever the topic, of going it alone, was mentioned in class, we would talk about why we couldn't do it. We don't have the training. Taking on their own clients is scary - we could mess up. What happened if we don't get enough clients and can't successfully cover our expenses. This illustrates a larger issue with the profession: many of us are downright terrified of taking risks.
 
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A Balance

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Lawyers have a reputation for being risk-averse. Why so many lawyers are like this? One reason is that we are trained to be this way. We hear stories where a seemingly minor msitake by a lawyer causes significant problems. We learn about estoppel in our Legal Methods class during the first week of school, and that often, once we say something as lawyers, we can't take it back. We are told to be careful, and that if we mess up, it can destroy our lives. These are likely significant factors in our collective fear of risk.
 
Changed:
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Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in making assertions. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most, even if doing so makes them unpopular. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are incredibly lucky enough to have the access that their position affords them, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that these issues won't be addressed at all.

Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are words to avoid and bad situations to bring up controversial issues. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully learning about issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements and suffering the consequences. No one wants to be remembered for making an improper comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice and skirting the difficult issues for fear of being offensive. I would much rather make progress, even if it involves a few bumps and bruises along the way, than get nowhere at all.

>
>
Granted, this description doesn't apply to all lawyers. Many lawyers have taken huge risks in their careers, and many of these individuals have had significant impacts on the world. During Legal Methods, our professor brought in a number of his colleagues. The vast majority of them were risk-takers with regards to career decisions. They hadn't gone straight from law school to X & Y LLP, where they worked 2500 hours a year for 9 years and made partner. They had taken winding paths in their careers, accepting work that interested them as opposed to just "safe" work. The one thing that unified them is that (at least outwardly) all were satisfied with their careers.
 

The Next Steps

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Getting lawyers to speak openly and frankly about difficult issues is a hard task. Few people enjoy the uncomfortable situations that will necessarily result from this. There are a few steps, however, that lawyers can take. The first is dispensing with excessive political correctness. It is important that we not say hurtful things for the purpose of being hurtful, but at the same time, lawyers can't limit themselves because they feel the need to be too polite. There is no good way to discuss the income gap without referring to the poor. We can't discuss segregation or disparate impact of drug laws, for example, without discussing race. If we as lawyers can't even discuss problems openly, how are we going to play a role in solving them?
>
>
So where do we go from here? As I sit here, writing about how the fear of taking risks is holding me back, I am afraid. My first year of law school is over, and I don't how much I've gained from it. I don't have any useful skills - I can barely do legal research and if someone came to me with a legal problem, I'd probably have a panic attack. If I have learned a third of what I'm going to learn in law school, I'm in pretty bad shape.

The next step, then, is to figure out a better system of preparing lawyers. This again seems pretty self-evident. We have had a number of class discussions about it. People have thrown out a variety of ideas. We need better professors who know how to teach us. We need better classes which will actually prepare us to be lawyers. Law school should be less expensive, so the vast majority of us don't graduate with huge amounts of debt hanging over our heads. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.

 
Changed:
<
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These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice. This will certainly be difficult for me to do. I have been trained to be politically correct, and it has been reinforced throughout my education and work experience. Furthermore, I am by nature risk averse, something many lawyers purport to be. But to truly effect change, lawyers and law students must be willing to step out of our comfort zones and use the power that our licenses and educations give us to directly address problems and work on solving them. Recognizing the value of being uncomfortable in some situations is the first step.
>
>
I do not believe that people are inherently risk-averse or risk-loving. Granted, people have different risk thresholds and this is in part based on nature. But most of it is nurture. People are taught to either take risks or not to. Our current legal education system tends to teach us not to. In some respects, this is good - we don't want lawyers running around using their licenses recklessly. But at the same time, it inhibits many of us from using our licenses to solve the problems and make the changes that desperately need to be made. Perhaps, if we were taught the values of risk taking, as Eben has endeavored to do, and were educated in a way that would enable us to be lawyers without coddling, we'd be able to do so.
 
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This is not convincingly argued. No evidence is offered in support of the original implication that it is "being lawyerly" that reduces the effectiveness of lawyers. The argument is puzzlingly divided, without acknowledgment of the division. "Lawyerly" communication is first said to irritate others and then proposed as the motivation, or at least the reason, for individual lawyers' neutrality in the face of injustice.

No reason to believe either of these propositions, and they're far from self-evident. That lawyers are detested for being too polite or too cautious is not my experience, and I doubt it's the experience of anyone who's held a license for a decade, two, or three. Lawyers, almost always other peoples' lawyers, are disliked for being arrogant, opinionated, pushy, and—in their own opinions—entitled. This stereotype may be no more accurate than the one you present, but it could hardly be more different.

That lawyers are motivated not to interfere with injustice by "political correctness," here defined as though it were a reluctance to offend, also seems to me unestablished, to put it mildly. The most important reason lawyers don't interfere with injustice is that injustice pays them to work for it, which they happily and contentedly, or at least unhappily and guiltily, do. The next most important reasons are all the same ones that keep laymen from working against injustice: habit, fear, indifference, dissociation, and various forms of lack of good will. By any standard of measurement, I know a large number of lawyers, and I can't think of any who are restrained from doing good primarily by an excess of verbal timidity.

The concept of "striking a balance" strikes me as nonsense. Though I sometimes use impoliteness or vulgarity in my work, there's nothing whatever that requires resort to particular verbal tactics in order to deal with injustice at any level, nor does the employment of verbally aggressive tactics in any way necessitate or excuse irresponsible legal imprecision. The suggestion that the primary difficulty in making a commitment to moral engagement in one's practice is gauging the degree of social offense one is willing to impose through one's words rings hollow for me: I can think of many heroic lawyers, particularly African-Americans practicing in hostile jurisdictions under constant threat from the powers of white supremacy, who have spent entire careers in constant struggle for social justice without ever making an undignified, let alone an offensive, statement.

Then there's the peculiar use of "political correctness," to which I've already referred. That phrase is usually employed on the American Right, where it seems to me to express the linguistic equivalent of white skin privilege: resentment at the "sudden" discovery that the traditional vernacular taught by the WASP Ascendancy or permitted by it to the white working class is fraught with white supremacy, patriarchal misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, anti-atheism, and many other bigotries. Two positions develop as a result of this "shock" and "resentment," as previously-marginalized people gain recognition of their dignity and equality. Newly empowered, these people begin to demand relief from the constant repetition of these bigotries with which they feel literally assailed. At the same time, groups afraid of the loss of economic and social advantage begin to insist on their freedom to offend, maintaining—Arnold would say—precisely the least inclusionary of their creeds in order to maintain cohesion in a shrinking group feeling the threat of being overwhelmed or dissolved. (Virulent nationalisms of various kinds boil up in dissolving multinational empires for this same reason.)

None of this has anything to do with your actual subject, for which "political correctness" thus seems to me a poorly-chosen analogue rather than the mot juste. You are talking about inhibitions against expressing dissent from the actual dogma of power. Those who disparage political correctness are unhappy with stigmatization of those who want to call women c***ts or black people n*****s; it is another sort of conformism altogether that silences the expression of doubts about capitalism, or the hostility of the rich to the needs of the poor, or the sham of democracy enacted in an empire under aristocratic control. Efforts against bigotry may be resisted as thought control, and while I admit to being unsympathetic to the enterprise, it won't help to confuse all forms of social control over speech without regard to their generality or context.

In the end, I think it would be helpful to go back to the outline and ask what the real subject of the essay is. If it is an essay about what prevents lawyers from achieving their potential in agitating for social change, a shift of emphasis from language to action, downward from the verbal superstructure to the material base (to risk an idiom), might be helpful. If it is an essay about lawyers' talk, a further reading in Lawyerland might prove a useful corrective.
>
>
So I took a different approach to this paper. I still think that many lawyers are holding themselves back from doing good. I have decided to focus, however, on a different reason - the unwillingness to take risks. In my earlier paper, I used the unwillingness to speak openly as a proxy for this, but apparently, it wasn't an effective way of getting my point across. As always, I'd be happy to hear any comments or see any suggestions that you have. Many thanks, -David

DavidGoldinFirstPaper 7 - 12 May 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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Making Ourselves Uncomfortable


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 6 - 23 Mar 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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 These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice. This will certainly be difficult for me to do. I have been trained to be politically correct, and it has been reinforced throughout my education and work experience. Furthermore, I am by nature risk averse, something many lawyers purport to be. But to truly effect change, lawyers and law students must be willing to step out of our comfort zones and use the power that our licenses and educations give us to directly address problems and work on solving them. Recognizing the value of being uncomfortable in some situations is the first step.
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# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, DavidGoldin

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This is not convincingly argued. No evidence is offered in support of the original implication that it is "being lawyerly" that reduces the effectiveness of lawyers. The argument is puzzlingly divided, without acknowledgment of the division. "Lawyerly" communication is first said to irritate others and then proposed as the motivation, or at least the reason, for individual lawyers' neutrality in the face of injustice.

No reason to believe either of these propositions, and they're far from self-evident. That lawyers are detested for being too polite or too cautious is not my experience, and I doubt it's the experience of anyone who's held a license for a decade, two, or three. Lawyers, almost always other peoples' lawyers, are disliked for being arrogant, opinionated, pushy, and—in their own opinions—entitled. This stereotype may be no more accurate than the one you present, but it could hardly be more different.

That lawyers are motivated not to interfere with injustice by "political correctness," here defined as though it were a reluctance to offend, also seems to me unestablished, to put it mildly. The most important reason lawyers don't interfere with injustice is that injustice pays them to work for it, which they happily and contentedly, or at least unhappily and guiltily, do. The next most important reasons are all the same ones that keep laymen from working against injustice: habit, fear, indifference, dissociation, and various forms of lack of good will. By any standard of measurement, I know a large number of lawyers, and I can't think of any who are restrained from doing good primarily by an excess of verbal timidity.

The concept of "striking a balance" strikes me as nonsense. Though I sometimes use impoliteness or vulgarity in my work, there's nothing whatever that requires resort to particular verbal tactics in order to deal with injustice at any level, nor does the employment of verbally aggressive tactics in any way necessitate or excuse irresponsible legal imprecision. The suggestion that the primary difficulty in making a commitment to moral engagement in one's practice is gauging the degree of social offense one is willing to impose through one's words rings hollow for me: I can think of many heroic lawyers, particularly African-Americans practicing in hostile jurisdictions under constant threat from the powers of white supremacy, who have spent entire careers in constant struggle for social justice without ever making an undignified, let alone an offensive, statement.

Then there's the peculiar use of "political correctness," to which I've already referred. That phrase is usually employed on the American Right, where it seems to me to express the linguistic equivalent of white skin privilege: resentment at the "sudden" discovery that the traditional vernacular taught by the WASP Ascendancy or permitted by it to the white working class is fraught with white supremacy, patriarchal misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, anti-atheism, and many other bigotries. Two positions develop as a result of this "shock" and "resentment," as previously-marginalized people gain recognition of their dignity and equality. Newly empowered, these people begin to demand relief from the constant repetition of these bigotries with which they feel literally assailed. At the same time, groups afraid of the loss of economic and social advantage begin to insist on their freedom to offend, maintaining—Arnold would say—precisely the least inclusionary of their creeds in order to maintain cohesion in a shrinking group feeling the threat of being overwhelmed or dissolved. (Virulent nationalisms of various kinds boil up in dissolving multinational empires for this same reason.)

None of this has anything to do with your actual subject, for which "political correctness" thus seems to me a poorly-chosen analogue rather than the mot juste. You are talking about inhibitions against expressing dissent from the actual dogma of power. Those who disparage political correctness are unhappy with stigmatization of those who want to call women c***ts or black people n*****s; it is another sort of conformism altogether that silences the expression of doubts about capitalism, or the hostility of the rich to the needs of the poor, or the sham of democracy enacted in an empire under aristocratic control. Efforts against bigotry may be resisted as thought control, and while I admit to being unsympathetic to the enterprise, it won't help to confuse all forms of social control over speech without regard to their generality or context.

In the end, I think it would be helpful to go back to the outline and ask what the real subject of the essay is. If it is an essay about what prevents lawyers from achieving their potential in agitating for social change, a shift of emphasis from language to action, downward from the verbal superstructure to the material base (to risk an idiom), might be helpful. If it is an essay about lawyers' talk, a further reading in Lawyerland might prove a useful corrective.
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Making Ourselves Uncomfortable

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-- By DavidGoldin - 21 Feb 2010
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-- By DavidGoldin - 26 Feb 2010
 

The Unique Role of the Lawyer

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Having a license to practice law gives one an immense number of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many of graduates from the most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses".
>
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Having a license to practice law gives one an immense number of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many graduates from the nation's most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses".
 
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It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer has the tools to go to court and initiate a lawsuit. A lawyer can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt and cause great expense a large number of people. Even a letter from a lawyer often causes the ordinary person anxiety or fear. Thus, having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others, both in good and bad ways. Despite the harm that lawyers can do, many lawyers use the power granted by their licenses to try and do good. Unfortunately, many of these lawyers are severely restricted in their ability to do so because they are too "lawyerly".
>
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It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer has the tools to go to court and initiate a lawsuit. A lawyer can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt the lives of and cause great expense to a large number of people. Receiving a letter from a lawyer often can cause one anxiety or fear. Thus, having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others, both in good and bad ways. Despite the harm that some lawyers do, many lawyers use the power granted by their licenses to try and do good. Unfortunately, some of these lawyers are severely restricted in their ability to do so because they are too "lawyerly".
 

"Being Lawyerly"

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What exactly is "being lawyerly"? It is consistently using vague and evasive language. It is giving the narrowest answers possible to important questions. And most of all, it is being too polite and politically correct to directly address injustices and problems in the world. Instead of making direct statements about controversial issues, most lawyers will step around them as much as possible. Instead of giving a full answer to a question, many lawyers will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible. They will go to great lengths to be painstakingly politically correct.
>
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What exactly is "being lawyerly"? It is consistently using vague and evasive language. It is giving the narrowest answers possible to important questions. And most of all, it is being too polite and politically correct to directly address injustices and problems in the world. Instead of making direct statements about controversial issues, many lawyers will step around them as much as possible. Instead of giving a full answer to a question, some lawyers will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible. They will go to great lengths to be painstakingly politically correct.
 
Changed:
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Judges do this as well. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Judges will try to avoid going out on limbs as well. They are "being lawyerly".
>
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Judges do this as well. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Judges will try to avoid going out on limbs as well. They are "being lawyerly".
 
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There is certainly virtue in caution. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the unique role of the lawyer, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and cause great harm. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers. That said, this caution must not be used excessively. Taking unpopular stances when necessary, addressing tough issues directly, and giving full answers to questions are incredibly important traits. There are a lot of problems in society today which lawyers can have a role in improving, and politeness and being "lawyerly" shouldn't be impediments to effecting change.
>
>
There is certainly virtue in caution. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the unique role of the lawyer, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and cause great harm. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers. That said, this caution must not be used excessively. Taking unpopular stances when necessary, addressing tough issues directly, and giving full answers to questions are incredibly important traits. There are a multitude of problems in society today which lawyers can have a role in solving, and politeness and being "lawyerly" shouldn't be impediments to effecting change.
 

A Balance

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Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in making assertions. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most, even if unpopular. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are incredibly lucky enough to have the access that their position affords them, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that change will not take place.
>
>
Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in making assertions. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most, even if doing so makes them unpopular. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are incredibly lucky enough to have the access that their position affords them, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that these issues won't be addressed at all.
 
Changed:
<
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Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are words to avoid and bad situations to bring up controversial issues. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully researching issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements, and suffering the consequences. No one wants to be remembered for making an inappropriate comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice and skirt the difficult issues for fear of being offensive. I would much rather make progress, even if it involves a few bumps and bruises along the way, than get nowhere at all.
>
>
Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are words to avoid and bad situations to bring up controversial issues. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully learning about issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements and suffering the consequences. No one wants to be remembered for making an improper comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice and skirting the difficult issues for fear of being offensive. I would much rather make progress, even if it involves a few bumps and bruises along the way, than get nowhere at all.
 

The Next Steps

Getting lawyers to speak openly and frankly about difficult issues is a hard task. Few people enjoy the uncomfortable situations that will necessarily result from this. There are a few steps, however, that lawyers can take. The first is dispensing with excessive political correctness. It is important that we not say hurtful things for the purpose of being hurtful, but at the same time, lawyers can't limit themselves because they feel the need to be too polite. There is no good way to discuss the income gap without referring to the poor. We can't discuss segregation or disparate impact of drug laws, for example, without discussing race. If we as lawyers can't even discuss problems openly, how are we going to play a role in solving them?

Changed:
<
<
These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice. On a personal level, this will certainly be difficult for to do. I have been trained to be politically correct, and it has been reinforced throughout my education and work experience. Furthermore, I am by nature risk averse, something many lawyers purport to be. But to truly effect change, most lawyers, including me, must be willing to step out of our comfort zones and use the power that their licenses give them to directly address problems to lead to eventual change. Recognizing the value of being uncomfortable in some situations is the first step.
>
>
These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice. This will certainly be difficult for me to do. I have been trained to be politically correct, and it has been reinforced throughout my education and work experience. Furthermore, I am by nature risk averse, something many lawyers purport to be. But to truly effect change, lawyers and law students must be willing to step out of our comfort zones and use the power that our licenses and educations give us to directly address problems and work on solving them. Recognizing the value of being uncomfortable in some situations is the first step.
 

DavidGoldinFirstPaper 4 - 26 Feb 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
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META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"
Changed:
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DRAFT - STILL CUTTING DOWN/EDITING

-Consider other cases -Shorten first part -Expand later on -Personal reflection

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DRAFT - STILL CUTTING DOWN/EDITING
 
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The Unique Role of the Lawyer

Changed:
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Having a license to practice law means gives one a lot of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law gives one a unique position of power in that he has access to institutions which have a large amount of power, the courts. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many of the most talented graduates from law school "pawn their licenses".

It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer can go to court and initiate a lawsuit, something that can be difficult for an ordinary citizen. She can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt and potentially embarrass a large number of people. Even a letter from a lawyer often causes the ordinary person great fear. Having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others.

>
>
Having a license to practice law gives one an immense number of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law grants its holder access to many of the institutions and people who have the power to effect changes in today's world. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many of graduates from the most prestigious law schools "pawn their licenses".
 
Changed:
<
<
But lawyers don't only use the power that their licenses give them to do bad things. They do good things as well. Lawyers regularly fight on behalf of individuals whose rights need protection. They work at organizations that work to uphold the rights of citizens of the US, of the detained and of people abroad. The power can be used for good as well. Lawyers have a unique role, in that their professional role allows them to affect a huge number of people, both in good ways and in bad ways.
>
>
It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer has the tools to go to court and initiate a lawsuit. A lawyer can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt and cause great expense a large number of people. Even a letter from a lawyer often causes the ordinary person anxiety or fear. Thus, having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others, both in good and bad ways. Despite the harm that lawyers can do, many lawyers use the power granted by their licenses to try and do good. Unfortunately, many of these lawyers are severely restricted in their ability to do so because they are too "lawyerly".
 

"Being Lawyerly"

Changed:
<
<
This role has led to a phenomenon among lawyers, however, that I will term "being lawyerly". This is a common phrase. Lawyers know that what they say and write has the potential to have a significant impact and shape their careers in the future, so they often use vague and evasive language. Instead of making a direct statement about a controversial issue, they will step around it as much as possible. Instead of answering a question in a broad, easy to understand way, they will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible.
>
>
What exactly is "being lawyerly"? It is consistently using vague and evasive language. It is giving the narrowest answers possible to important questions. And most of all, it is being too polite and politically correct to directly address injustices and problems in the world. Instead of making direct statements about controversial issues, most lawyers will step around them as much as possible. Instead of giving a full answer to a question, many lawyers will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible. They will go to great lengths to be painstakingly politically correct.
 
Changed:
<
<
This is true in both day to day lawyering and in judicial opinions. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Lawyers all too often shy away from taking bold stances. Instead, they evade as much as possible. They are very politically correct. They are "being lawyerly".
>
>
Judges do this as well. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Judges will try to avoid going out on limbs as well. They are "being lawyerly".
 
Changed:
<
<
There is certainly virtue in this approach. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the power of lawyers, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and lead to overwhelmingly negative results. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers.

That said, lawyers often go too far in the direction of caution and in doing so, avoid tough subjects. They are uncomfortable discussing hard topics in a direct way. They won't address issues like the impact of racial profiling, unfairly discriminatory drug laws and ongoing de facto segregation in our schools directly. All too often, they will hint at what is wrong, but few will make the bold assertions necessary to expose the extent of these problems and their prevalence in society today. They are polite and "lawyerly".

>
>
There is certainly virtue in caution. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the unique role of the lawyer, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and cause great harm. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers. That said, this caution must not be used excessively. Taking unpopular stances when necessary, addressing tough issues directly, and giving full answers to questions are incredibly important traits. There are a lot of problems in society today which lawyers can have a role in improving, and politeness and being "lawyerly" shouldn't be impediments to effecting change.
 

A Balance

Changed:
<
<
Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in choosing their words and making assertions. Baseless assertions about a perceived wrong can lead to highly negative consequences. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are lucky enough to be in a position of power, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make big changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that they will be ignored.
>
>
Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in making assertions. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most, even if unpopular. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are incredibly lucky enough to have the access that their position affords them, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that change will not take place.
 
Changed:
<
<
Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are good situations to bring up controversial issues, and there are bad times. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully researching issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements, and suffering the consequences. This is difficult, as the vast majority of lawyers value their professional reputations highly. No one wants to be remembered for making an inappropriate comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice.
>
>
Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are words to avoid and bad situations to bring up controversial issues. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully researching issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements, and suffering the consequences. No one wants to be remembered for making an inappropriate comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice and skirt the difficult issues for fear of being offensive. I would much rather make progress, even if it involves a few bumps and bruises along the way, than get nowhere at all.
 

The Next Steps

Changed:
<
<
Getting lawyers to speak openly about injustices so as to effect change to remedy them is a hard task. It is not something that can be learned overnight. That said, there are a few steps that lawyers can take. The first is dispensing with excessive political correctness. It is important that we not say hurtful things for the purpose of being hurtful, but at the same time, lawyers can't limit themselves because they feel the need to be too polite. There is no good way to discuss the income gap without referring to the poor. We can't discuss segregation or disparate impact of drug laws, for example, without discussing race. These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice.

At the same time, it is important that judges do the same. They must address sensitive issues directly and give answers. Tiptoeing around tough problems is like putting a band-aid on a wound that requires 30 stitches - it may stop the bleeding for 3 minutes, but the bleeding will return. As a general rule, people prefer comfort. Lawyers take this to an extreme. But to truly effect change, lawyers must be willing to step out of their comfort zones and use the power that their licenses give them to directly address problems to lead to eventual change.

>
>
Getting lawyers to speak openly and frankly about difficult issues is a hard task. Few people enjoy the uncomfortable situations that will necessarily result from this. There are a few steps, however, that lawyers can take. The first is dispensing with excessive political correctness. It is important that we not say hurtful things for the purpose of being hurtful, but at the same time, lawyers can't limit themselves because they feel the need to be too polite. There is no good way to discuss the income gap without referring to the poor. We can't discuss segregation or disparate impact of drug laws, for example, without discussing race. If we as lawyers can't even discuss problems openly, how are we going to play a role in solving them?
 
Added:
>
>
These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice. On a personal level, this will certainly be difficult for to do. I have been trained to be politically correct, and it has been reinforced throughout my education and work experience. Furthermore, I am by nature risk averse, something many lawyers purport to be. But to truly effect change, most lawyers, including me, must be willing to step out of our comfort zones and use the power that their licenses give them to directly address problems to lead to eventual change. Recognizing the value of being uncomfortable in some situations is the first step.
 
Deleted:
<
<
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line:
 # * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, DavidGoldin
Deleted:
<
<
Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list

DavidGoldinFirstPaper 3 - 26 Feb 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"
DRAFT - STILL CUTTING DOWN/EDITING
Added:
>
>
-Consider other cases -Shorten first part -Expand later on -Personal reflection
 

Making Ourselves Uncomfortable


DavidGoldinFirstPaper 2 - 25 Feb 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"
Added:
>
>
DRAFT - STILL CUTTING DOWN/EDITING
 
Deleted:
<
<
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
 
Changed:
<
<

Paper Title

>
>

Making Ourselves Uncomfortable

 -- By DavidGoldin - 21 Feb 2010
Changed:
<
<

Section I

>
>

The Unique Role of the Lawyer

Having a license to practice law means gives one a lot of opportunities. Specifically, a license to practice law gives one a unique position of power in that he has access to institutions which have a large amount of power, the courts. This is not to be taken lightly, and is one of the reasons that it is so upsetting to see many of the most talented graduates from law school "pawn their licenses".

It is also one of the reasons that so many people despise lawyers. A lawyer can go to court and initiate a lawsuit, something that can be difficult for an ordinary citizen. She can order massive discovery in an abusive way and can disrupt and potentially embarrass a large number of people. Even a letter from a lawyer often causes the ordinary person great fear. Having a license to practice law gives one a lot of power to affect the lives of others.

 
Changed:
<
<

Subsection A

>
>
But lawyers don't only use the power that their licenses give them to do bad things. They do good things as well. Lawyers regularly fight on behalf of individuals whose rights need protection. They work at organizations that work to uphold the rights of citizens of the US, of the detained and of people abroad. The power can be used for good as well. Lawyers have a unique role, in that their professional role allows them to affect a huge number of people, both in good ways and in bad ways.
 
Added:
>
>

"Being Lawyerly"

 
Changed:
<
<

Subsub 1

>
>
This role has led to a phenomenon among lawyers, however, that I will term "being lawyerly". This is a common phrase. Lawyers know that what they say and write has the potential to have a significant impact and shape their careers in the future, so they often use vague and evasive language. Instead of making a direct statement about a controversial issue, they will step around it as much as possible. Instead of answering a question in a broad, easy to understand way, they will give the narrowest and most carefully crafted answer possible.
 
Deleted:
<
<

Subsection B

 
Added:
>
>
This is true in both day to day lawyering and in judicial opinions. Justice Jackson, in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer commented that "court decisions are indecisive because of the judicial practice of dealing with the largest questions in the most narrow way". Lawyers all too often shy away from taking bold stances. Instead, they evade as much as possible. They are very politically correct. They are "being lawyerly".
 
Changed:
<
<

Subsub 1

>
>
There is certainly virtue in this approach. No one wants to concede a point in an overly broad assertion that will later be used against them. Furthermore, given the power of lawyers, the words coming out of a lawyer's mouth can be misconstrued and lead to overwhelmingly negative results. Caution is thus admirable and a necessary trait for lawyers.
 
Added:
>
>
That said, lawyers often go too far in the direction of caution and in doing so, avoid tough subjects. They are uncomfortable discussing hard topics in a direct way. They won't address issues like the impact of racial profiling, unfairly discriminatory drug laws and ongoing de facto segregation in our schools directly. All too often, they will hint at what is wrong, but few will make the bold assertions necessary to expose the extent of these problems and their prevalence in society today. They are polite and "lawyerly".
 
Changed:
<
<

Subsub 2

>
>

A Balance

 
Added:
>
>
Because of the power that words have, especially those coming from one with a license to practice law, lawyers must learn to strike a balance. They must be judicious in choosing their words and making assertions. Baseless assertions about a perceived wrong can lead to highly negative consequences. At the same time, they must advocate for those who need it most. They cannot be polite and "lawyerly" all of the time. They are lucky enough to be in a position of power, and must take advantage of this. People who have the ability to make big changes, including judges, legislators, CEOs and university presidents, to name a few, listen to them. If they do not address uncomfortable issues directly, there is a good chance that they will be ignored.
 
Added:
>
>
Finding the balance is a difficult feat. Part of it is using common sense - there are good situations to bring up controversial issues, and there are bad times. Part of it is scrupulous research - fully researching issues before making assertions about them. And part of it is being burned - making inappropriate statements, and suffering the consequences. This is difficult, as the vast majority of lawyers value their professional reputations highly. No one wants to be remembered for making an inappropriate comment. But very few people have effected real change by being so careful they refuse to call out when they see injustice.
 
Changed:
<
<

Section II

>
>

The Next Steps

 
Changed:
<
<

Subsection A

>
>
Getting lawyers to speak openly about injustices so as to effect change to remedy them is a hard task. It is not something that can be learned overnight. That said, there are a few steps that lawyers can take. The first is dispensing with excessive political correctness. It is important that we not say hurtful things for the purpose of being hurtful, but at the same time, lawyers can't limit themselves because they feel the need to be too polite. There is no good way to discuss the income gap without referring to the poor. We can't discuss segregation or disparate impact of drug laws, for example, without discussing race. These may be sensitive topics, and no one wants to be known as being insensitive, but we must encourage direct dialogue, both in law schools and in real life practice.
 
Changed:
<
<

Subsection B

>
>
At the same time, it is important that judges do the same. They must address sensitive issues directly and give answers. Tiptoeing around tough problems is like putting a band-aid on a wound that requires 30 stitches - it may stop the bleeding for 3 minutes, but the bleeding will return. As a general rule, people prefer comfort. Lawyers take this to an extreme. But to truly effect change, lawyers must be willing to step out of their comfort zones and use the power that their licenses give them to directly address problems to lead to eventual change.
 



DavidGoldinFirstPaper 1 - 21 Feb 2010 - Main.DavidGoldin
Line: 1 to 1
Added:
>
>
META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"

It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

Paper Title

-- By DavidGoldin - 21 Feb 2010

Section I

Subsection A

Subsub 1

Subsection B

Subsub 1

Subsub 2

Section II

Subsection A

Subsection B


You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line:

# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, DavidGoldin

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list


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