Based on my question in class today regarding the applicability of Arnold's analysis of organizations to our experience in law school and Eben's subsequent answer that law school is likely no different from other organizations in society in that it coheres because of shared creeds and ceremonies, I thought it might be interesting if we as a group collaboratively brought to light some practices and ideas where we think we see the Columbia Law School creed manifest. If a business organization's creed is "rational business judgment" then what is ours? I think such a discussion is valuable because one of our (or maybe not, but my) goals in law school is to do some creative thinking while I am here, and awareness of the way our law school sustains itself might enable more creative thinking then if we engage the law school institution as if it was a "person" to which we can rationally appeal. So what does everyone think? What is our creed? What are some of our ceremonies? And how do they inform who we become as law students and how we go about practicing law in the future?

Arnold makes the argument that organizations take on personalities, the content of which depends both on accident and environment. The accidental features of CLS's personality will depend mostly on the personality of those who first assume control, after which the personality is very difficult to change because the same type of person succeeds prior leaders. In what ways do people find themselves influenced by the personalities of their professors either through personal interaction with them or through the way/style/bent in which they introduce legal concepts in class? One of the ways I see this happening is when professors cut off certain lines of analysis in classroom discussions. In my contracts class, in a dialogue between a student and the professor, the student articulated argument for why courts should compensate defendants for breach of contract on fairness grounds, to which the professor responded that it in his class, "fairness" is a "bad word" and that we should not use it when we construct arguments. He also interestingly noted that this was a rule that his contracts professor enforced when he went to law school. This seems to highlight Arnold's point that personalities, once entrenched, are difficult to remove because the individuals in power are succeeded by people with like personalities.

Another example is the way that law school rewards certain modes of analysis over others when we take exams. In the small sample of people I have talked to about what grades they received first semester and what approaches people took in writing their exams, it seems like there is a correlation between good grades and sheer volume of writing in exam answers. Does this suggest a reward system that engenders a practice of maximizing breadth of analysis over depth, a practice that continues to be rewarded upon our graduation by law firms that champion volume of billable hours over quality of work? Perhaps this undermines opposition to the dominant ideals in law school since superficial analysis lends itself more towards mere regurgitation then qualitatively superior analysis that goes beyond what has already been said. That is, it is almost axiomatically true that if law school exams are graded by an accumulation of "checks," then depth of analysis loses out and conformity wins the day.

In any case I hope that everyone contributes to the discussion because I think it will be beneficial for everyone to see how other people have seen law school as an organization draws its boundaries and excludes contradictory ideals to sustain itself. Certainly it might alleviate the grip that law school as a hostile occupier has on us as the occupied. Perhaps people might start by thinking about our ceremonies since my analysis focuses primarily on ways of thinking. For example, what do people think about Harry's point about pizza lunches? Apologies for any spelling/grammar errors I wanted to put this up while it was still fresh in my head.

P.S. Maybe people could pick different font colors or sign what they write so we can keep track of who is saying what.

-- PrashantRai - 21 Feb 2012

I think the case method has to stand out as a ritual in law school with no "rational" purpose per se. It's based, it seems to me, on the idea that the best way to learn law is imputing logical principles from judicial decisions. Most of us (and most professors, I think) know that cases, especially when our treatment of them is confined to a heavily edited appellate decisions, are a really clumsy way of figuring out how courts are going to act. But cases tend to be the lens through which view the vast majority of law, at least in the first year. This is particularly frustrating, I think, in an area like Constitutional Law. We'll spend a lot of time combing through the logic of New Deal economic power cases, desperately trying to create logical standards which make as many cases fit as possible. At the same time, we know that the political composition of the Supreme Court has way more to do the outcome of these cases than the logical veneer of their official decisions. And yet we're going to spend hours discussing cases for, literally, every second spend talking about, say, the nomination process.

The deeper question, obviously, is what sort of creed does such an anachronistic pedagogical method serve? Can't say I've figured that one out yet. But I think it has to do with lawyers still liking to pretend that we are scientists of a coherent logical body. --- Josh Divine