Law in Contemporary Society

View   r5  >  r4  ...
ManuelLorenzoSecondPaper 5 - 31 Jul 2012 - Main.EbenMoglen
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="SecondPaper"
Line: 18 to 18
 

How We Use It

Despite the reputation of lawyers as risk averse individuals, courage is a necessary tool for being an effective attorney. Throughout our lives we will be forced to make choices that test our ability to stick to the moral and ideological values that made us choose this career path in the first place. We will be tempted to use our licenses in ways that go against our beliefs. It is during these times that our courage will be most essential. We must be brave enough to adhere to our values and perform work that we truly feel is worthwhile. We should use the law in a manner that betters society, helping to provide legal services for the clients we choose to help. We should not be afraid to take risks, especially if we know that what we are doing is right. We should not let money be the sole decision maker that guides our career. We must be courageous enough to take a leap into uncharted waters, acknowledging the possibility of failure. While I am not advocating that everyone do as John Brown and take the law into their own hands, I do believe that we need to find the bit of John Brown inside of us and use that courage to help others who have not yet found their own.
Added:
>
>

This draft seems to me to concentrate too much on superficials (the dictionary definition of courage, for example), and too little on a central idea of your own about courage, whichever one you mean to put forward. Sentences such as "The most important thing is that we not lose sight of how important it is to have courage not only as lawyers, but as individuals in general," are generalized rhetoric, not the close pursuit of an idea. Sentences like "Without [courage], we risk falling numb to the ills of society and traveling down a path in life that will leave behind no meaningful social impact," seem more confusing still: is "courage" a general synonym here for all forms of social consciousness?

Probably the best way forward is to start from a single-sentence formulation of your idea about courage. Free it from rhetoric, don't worry about what it sounds like, just ask yourself what the idea is. Write it simply, at the beginning of an introductory paragraph, and then develop it. Your development makes a new conclusion apparent. The result will surprise you.

 (I would like to continue working on this essay during the summer)

Revision 5r5 - 31 Jul 2012 - 18:37:42 - EbenMoglen
Revision 4r4 - 10 May 2012 - 20:28:08 - ManuelLorenzo
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM