A Retrospective On A Time in Law School, Now That There Is a Pandemic

-- By JoeBruner - 20 Nov 2020

Me, Four Years Ago

Four years ago, I was a 1L at Columbia Law School. My best friend and I had, two weeks prior, drank heavily and hugged with and cried with upperclassmen we didn't know and whose names I never learned after Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States. I was afraid. Coming into law school, I was utterly confident in Martin Luther King's statement that "though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends towards justice." I thought that the slow progress towards a more just and equitable society, where I saw my friends finally able to marry and tens of millions more get health coverage, was the way of the 21st century. It was, of course, far from enough to achieve a real measure of justice and equality, but it was better than the America I was born into, and I expected this slow progress would continue, and my legal career would be some mix of making a lot of money and getting recognized for being a smart and prestigious person, and helping to fire the engine of this train of social progress and push it along a little faster, so the disenfranchised don't have to wait quite as long for justice.

I was, of course, naive. Most 1Ls I have met have been. I was overwhelmed and demoralized by the idea that, at best, I might be fighting a rear-guard action to keep what is worthwhile about America from evaporating completely in the face of a proto-fascist government, a negligent response to ecological catastrophe, a Supreme Court disembowling our voting rights protections and leaving them to rot and attract flies in the fields of the South, where I grew up. And, of course, a determination to hold the line against the imposition of a system where health care is not allocated based on ability to pay. As a law student I felt a deep undercurrent of depression, not only because those things were happening but also because I could not do enough about them. And I felt torn between the part of me that wanted to be a warrior for virtue and focus on solving these problems, and the part of myself that wanted to win at academics and be the greatest student at Columbia Law School in the conventional way and make large amounts of money. There was (and perhaps still is, albeit smaller), a shard of me that was resentful that because I had foregone the routes into high finance that were once open to me, some people my age were making far more money than me, and even though I knew on some level that a lack of money was not the cause of my malaise, I felt as if I needed it to confirm something about myself being worthwhile.

Law school was emotionally difficult for me in ways I was never able to fully and articulately express at the time. But many of my happiest moments in law school involved this course and Professor Moglen. I did not bother walking at graduation to say goodbye to Columbia Law School, but I did have to stop in to office hours and say goodbye to him. Professor Moglen taught me that if I stopped isolating myself, opened my eyes, and looked beyond the hegemonic culture of Columbia Law School and the only twenty law firms most of my classmates wanted to work for, some of which are complicit in the attempted theft of an election, among many other things I am not at liberty to discuss, I could invent a life for myself and make some justice for people. I talked about that aspiration in the below essay. I am still only beginning - even if you take every litigation class you can, Columbia Law School leaves out quite a lot about litigating, and drafting statutes and pitching them to Congress or the state legislature is a whole separate matter - but I achieved a goal I dreamed of back them where I could obtain stable employment for adequate pay while practicing meaningful law, to set up a home base for myself to grow into the kind of lawyer and kind of human being I hoped to become.

Me, Now

If I had not taken this course I think there is a high probability I would have fumbled my way into a job at a large law firm and been miserable, and at the current time I would be questioning my life choices and feeling as though I was not making any justice, but feel powerless or conflicted about where else to go to actually make some. Maybe I would have been the guy who got laid off. I am still uncertain about some of my future plans, but I learned quite a lot from this course which influenced the choices I did make. I should probably have followed Eben's advice and not attended EIP at all, but when I did not like what I got, his advice to wait until the Late Interview Program or find another path that suited me gave me some hope. And, very late in my law school career, in May of 3L, I ended up taking a public interest fellowship to go to a place I had never been and try to fight monopoly and exploitation in the United States health care system. I considered how to move forward, and then the pandemic came. Eben's advice to not ignore the billboard addressed to me - to respond when the draft board writes a letter to my heart - convinced me that rather than trying to go elsewhere, I should take up the fight to stop private corporations from bankrupting Americans or denying them health care through consolidation and abuse of United States's Intellectual Property laws. After a reasonable amount of effort, I became a Deputy Attorney General of Healthcare Rights and Access for the State of California. There is a streak of southern honor within me that will be proud to stand up and say what I did during the pandemic.

While I still have much to learn to become the truly great lawyer or renowned public intellectual I imagined being in the below essay, my last 1000 word essay for Eben's 1L course that some of you may now be considering, I do not feel as though I am drowning, as I sometimes felt in law school. I do miss a lot of the good times in law school, especially now during the isolation of the pandemic, and hope to connect more in the following year or two with people looking to think about the law creatively to try and get at solutions to the emerging crises of capitalism - mass surveillance, totalitarianism, tribalism in politics, ecological collapse, and for-profit healthcare. In the heat of litigation, I do sometimes miss thinking like a law and philosophy student and want to maintain that capacity.

You

If you are still on the fence about taking this course (I was, and explain in the below essay I only chose it second), I would say that one of the most important and useful things Eben ever taught me was that all people are multiple. We are an amalgamation of different personalities, mentalities, defense mechanisms, and and patterns of associational thinking that we have developed as our genetics intermingle with the different persons and environments in our lives. If you have a part of yourself that wonders - "What is the purpose of my life? What do I really aim to accomplish with my law degree? What kind of person do I want to become? What do I actually care about?", I think it would serve you well to honor that part of yourself and take this course now, to avoid finding yourself in a position where you no longer feel safe recognizing that part of you without breaking.

This was the best course I ever took. I am proud that I have been at least somewhat able to do justice to the person it brought out in me, and I am eager to do more to become the person it helped me know I want to be. But it is no longer about me. If you take it, it will be about you. And I hope some of the thoughts in this section, and other coursewikis composed by myself and my former classmates and those who came before me are useful to you as you invent a life for yourself in a circumstance both no one and everyone expected. Many terrible things are happening, but you are not alone, you are not the only one who cares, and it will not make you more practical, or interesting, and maybe not even happier to ignore how you really feel about them.

The Art of Remembering You're Not Drowning

-- By JoeBruner - 08 Jun 2017

Finding Safe Harbors

I enjoyed the first semester of law school. Having a single-minded focus on a defined area of knowledge is a modality in which I have always been comfortable. I was not sure what I wanted to do and I was jarred by how little feedback I was receiving - whatever the faults of the Oxford system, intense, weekly, direct feedback in everything is something I have come to love and depend upon. However, two people made the first semester of law school remarkably more comfortable. Alexandra and I had a similar sort of interest in the material. Our outlooks overlapped enough for us to relate to one another while being different enough to provoke real thought , despite our surface-level personalities in law school being quite different. I did not have a faculty rabbi assigned, but I secured one. Vince Blasi and I did not discuss Torts hardly at all when I used more than half of the office hours he allocated for the first semester. We discussed freedom. I wanted to be a lawyer who had some kind of practice involving human freedom, even if I also were to be a law professor.

When I didn’t get Blasi’s First Amendment elective, I looked into my second choice. Eben was the only professor here who had videos online advocating his position and explaining concepts he cared about to an audience of people other than law students and professors. I read the material on his webpage. Something appealed to me. After the first two days of class, I found his definition of lawyering - making change happen in society using words.

This definition reminded me of who I was. I came to law school because I thought practicing law was most enjoyable and best way to earn a living while also making inroads towards being able to influence the world. I love counseling people and researching, developing, and presenting arguments well. I taught the latter for four years. However, in the Indian English sense, I never wanted to practice law only. Sean Farhang’s Civil Procedure taught me the power of courts to change the world is limited, worse in bad times. I do not know if politics would suit me - I would have to change - but my dream of being a public intellectual who can speak to the world and be listened to and change things outside of the legal process is a real one. In a future where the poor of Nairobi and Hyderabad,will be connected to a telecommunications network capable of receiving audio and video from anywhere in the world, the potential to be such a person must be higher than ever before if one can figure out how not to get lost in the noise and reach people.

Sailing When The Wind Is Against You

I like to single-mindedly focus because I am paralyzed when allocating effort between multiple objectives. I have only ever found balance by eschewing balance. No more. I now have two objectives. My first objective is to find a practice I can enjoy and make a good living with. My second objective is to become a public intellectual who can make change happen in society by directing words towards large swathes of people.

Anyone who does not think these objectives are realistic can fuck themselves. When I left North Carolina to go to Oxford, I was told it was unrealistic. I knew it was realistic. People had done it. Louis Brandeis and B.R. Ambedkar both did it. They practiced law and found forms of influencing society widely using words. Having goals other than being an associate, working for the government, or working for a public interest outfit fighting oppression on the retail level is considered an arrogant and subversive act in law school. I suppressed my real goals, but I refuse to give them up. It is pointless to keep suppressing them. I am not going to magically transform into a milquetoast married husband who does antitrust litigation at an M&A firm to send his kids to private school. I am not going to lie to myself and pretend I have metamorphosized into that person successfully like I have seen so many people do. Refusing to be miserable in the first year and refusing to consign yourself to one of the allowed outcomes are subversive acts in law school. I did not adequately succeed in doing the former. I am currently working on the latter.

The Saltwater Won't Kill You

I have begun working at Eben's practice. An old mentor I had once told me I am very strongly, potentially self-destructively, motivated by a deep desire not to disappoint anyone. Until last Friday, I had forgotten how much I could let it get to me. I erred by trying too hard to be someone who quietly gets things done without asking the obvious questions, and as a result, spent a lot of time working hard to create things that will probably not be very useful. It is my desire to become a lawyer who can be cautious, avoiding arrogance and rashness, while also avoiding cowardice and timidity. Becoming a timid lawyer is incompatible with my goals.

I have big dreams, perhaps unreasonable, but for some reason I never find anyone except myself who is afraid of me failing.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

I haven't forgotten the sea. I'll learn how to build the ship. It is hard right now, but I am pushing myself to become the kind of lawyer who does those things because they are necessary, not one overwhelmed by their fear of sinking. Besides, the only times I don't enjoy it all are the times I'm busy being afraid. I should make sure to play the right song before going to work tomorrow.

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-- JoeBruner - 20 Nov 2020