| | I found this campaign (http://firmlyrefuse.tumblr.com) at Harvard to get students to think about why they are choosing to work for firms to be interesting, particularly given the themes of this course and our conversation today about grades.
Grades for me have served to stand-in for concerted thought as to what I'm actually doing here. I have convinced myself that if my grades are good enough, I'll have options because a strong transcript resonates across different realms of employment (this is essentially the point Ben made today about the fear of having paths foreclosed). No matter what it is actually decide I want to do with my practice, I consoled myself that having a strong strong transcript wouldn't be a detriment. Probably that's true, at least in bureaucratic employment fields where such factors matter, but focusing on grades has meant that I've spent little time thinking about my purpose in earning this license. This makes it more likely that I'll funnel into EIP, because it's easy and because I haven't really thought about what I would do instead. Grades aren't the only reason I haven't set about designing an alternative, but they are a part of it. | | | Agnes- Coming to law school, I wasn't aware of the prevalence of firms and actually thought that most students did not end up working at firms upon graduation. Although I hear your first point about people selling out at a firm for the training and then trying to transition to public interest, I question how far fetched this thinking is. Early in this course we talked about where the belief of needing to go to a firm first comes from. Some may say, the fact that students do not receive the training they need while in law school makes students take up work at a firm. Unfortunately, I do not think this idea is completely far-flung. There is the practical standpoint that many public interest employers take in regards to limited resources. To train a budding lawyer often requires time and money. Time and money are often limited resources for public interest employers. The few public interest attorneys that I have spoken with have actually suggested going to a firm first to gain experience and skills. But perhaps this is also a question of being able to cover one's nut? Similar to Jacqueline's point, perhaps it is possible to find a lesser known public interest gig that will pay less but is willing to invest in you- but I'd imagine those are hard extremely hard to come by. | |
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< | Are our institutions of higher education cognizant of this disconnect? I believe they are well aware. Professor Moglen's comment today about the nonsensical structure of our curriculum perhaps gives credence to this point. By structuring the curriculum in a way in which courses build off of one another, and by providing students with opportunities to perfect the art of lawyering (rather than perfecting the arbitrary art of taking a law school exam), law schools would be producing lawyers who are better equipped to practice soon after graduation (which I assumed was what we were paying for). But by not providing or limiting these opportunities and basing the curriculum on the convenience of the faculty (ie torts in the second semester, property in the first), students continue to need to sell their time to the private sector so that law schools have a packaged product to offer firms and US World News Report- canned meatballs if you prefer. -- AbiolaFasehun - 17 Apr 2012 | >
> | Are our institutions of higher education cognizant of this disconnect? I believe they are well aware. Professor Moglen's comment today about the nonsensical structure of our curriculum perhaps gives credence to this point. By structuring the curriculum in a way in which courses build off of one another, and by providing students with opportunities to perfect the art of lawyering (rather than perfecting the arbitrary art of taking a law school exam), law schools would be producing lawyers who are better equipped to practice soon after graduation (which I assumed was what we were paying for). But by not providing or limiting these opportunities and basing the curriculum on the convenience of the faculty (ie torts in the second semester, property in the first), students continue to need to sell their time to the private sector so that law schools have a packaged product to offer firms and US World News Report- canned meatballs if you prefer. -- AbiolaFasehun - 17 Apr 2012
Are our institutions of higher education cognizant of this disconnect? I believe they are well aware. Professor Moglen's comment today about the nonsensical structure of our curriculum perhaps gives credence to this point. By structuring the curriculum in a way in which courses build off of one another, and by providing students with opportunities to perfect the art of lawyering (rather than perfecting the arbitrary art of taking a law school exam), law schools would be producing lawyers who are better equipped to practice soon after graduation (which I assumed was what we were paying for). But by not providing or limiting these opportunities and basing the curriculum on the convenience of the faculty (ie torts in the second semester, property in the first), students continue to need to sell their time to the private sector so that law schools have a packaged product to offer firms and US World News Report- canned meat balls if you prefer. -- AbiolaFasehun - 17 Apr 2012
| | | Jessica, I just wanted to second Agnes and say thank you for sharing the campaign - it's fantastic!
I agree with many of you that grades act as a security blanket and as Ben discussed in class today, a way to keep as many potential career options on the table as possible. But I find it interesting that there seemed to be an undertone in the conversation, in class and now, that good grades equal EIP. I think they are two separate issues, both of which are completely engrained in Columbia and obviously other law schools as well. | | | I complete agree with you, Jessica. For the longest, grades represented the freedom of options to me – something very important when one grows up in a community where there are so few options. That was much true in my case, and I’m sure that resonates with many others as well. It was common for most kids in my neighboring high schools to either drop out for the sake of dropping out or to have babies or to help support a family. I was fortunate enough to attend to a magnet school, which was marginally better than the public schools in my area, and I was convinced that getting good grades would help me not end up like them. This sounds horrible, I know. But I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way, so I’ll move on. Anyway, grades certainly brought plenty of options my way when selecting colleges. The doors my grades open was so satisfying that I was almost set on this path that would’ve watered down my educational experience to just some means to an end. But I was fortunate enough to go to a really small liberal arts college where learning for the sake of wanting to learn was really the focus. What made this true is the really small classes I took (my biggest class had 20 students, but I know a biology 101 class had about 90 students) and the relationships with my professors. The contrast between my relationship with my college professors and here is like night and day. In college, there was no way anyone could hide from a professor when there were only 15 to 20 students in a class, so a student-teacher relationship was formed without much effort. For me, it was quite normal to see my professors on a regular basis outside of class. I’d often see them at the local coffee shop and would not think twice about sitting down for a quick chat. My classmates and I would have dinners with a few of them. To be sure, grades were still important for me, but they really took on a different meaning back then. In my classes, I felt part of an ongoing, important conversation such that grades were pushed to the background. I didn’t think about them so much during the semester but it only became relevant come finals. However, at the law school, grades are at the forefront of our minds from our first day in class. Students (and this certainly cuts both ways) also don’t value as much building a relationship with professors. I remember telling someone early on in the semester that I was planning to visit a few professors during office hours, and he looked at me with this puzzled face, as if saying: “Why? It’s not even close to finals yet.” For me, getting to know my professors was just so ingrained in my behavior as a student from my undergrad years that I thought it was not really something anyone would question. And it was also interesting that the first thing that came to my friend’s mind was that my conversation had to do with exams. It didn’t, and I don’t think is the only reasons students should visit professors at all. Anyway, I soon had to accept that fact that I couldn’t expect to replicate the relationships I built with my professors in undergrad (even with putting great effort on my part, I don't think this school's structure is really conducive to fostering these relationships), and it’s a real shame, but I am certainly grateful for knowing what a fruitful student-teacher relationship it like because it’s really powerful one.
-- LizzieGomez - 17 Apr 2012 | |
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> | My main issue with grades is that we spend so much time focusing on the exam and doing well on the exam, that we miss out on doing what we should be doing: i.e. learning how to be good lawyers. There's a reason why we hear all the stories about students (especially at CLS) not caring about classes as 2Ls, and definitely not as 3Ls; from the first year of law school, it becomes ingrained in us that the only real value to grades is getting a job at EIP. To many of us, the only thing that matters with respect to classes is getting the highest grades possible. And since the only thing that affects our grade is how well we do on the exam, there's a focus on doing well on the exam and not necessarily learning and retaining anything valuable from the class. Think about it - how much Civ Pro, Contracts and Property (or Torts) do you remember from last semester? After EIP, if we're all fortunate enough to have jobs, many of us will care significantly less about our grades than we did as 1Ls.
But this may not be a bad thing. If we don't care about grades, and we have the opportunity to pick our own classes, clinics, seminars, etc, then maybe we will have the opportunity to get the experience we SHOULD be getting out of law school. Maybe we'll be able to focus on doing the work we want to do and learning the things we want to learn. That's what I'm HOPING will happen to me as a 2L and 3L, but I know that pressure to take courses like Corporations, Admin Law, Taxation, etc will crowd out a lot of room for studying what I really want to study, and I may just end up in classes that I don't care about. Hopefully we will all be able to strike a balance.
-- JasonPyke - 17 Apr 2012 |
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