I was thinking about what Eben said in class last week about how one dimension of Thauraud and Carriere's relationship was a state of mutual economic dependence. Eben paralleled their relationship to that of Skadden and Wachtell in the 70's and 80's -- Skadden represented major companies in hostile takeovers and Wachtell represented the smaller ones.

No. That's not what I said, and it isn't close to right. I said that Skadden represented buyers in hostile takeovers. I said that Wachtel, Lipton represented incumbent managements seeking to prevent takeovers by preventive measures or to defend themselves against immediate hostile acquisition.

My thought was that mutual dependence also in some sense informs our relationship with CLS. The curve coerces us into participating in the norms of law school learning (reading beyond the optimal point of fatigue, reading for volume as opposed to for memory) only because we treat the curve as a Prisoner's Dilemma -- If we collectively refused then the system would lose its potency as a form of control. The law school's influence depends therefore on our continued participation.

Refused what? To do the work assigned to you? How would that deprive the law school of influence? You need to be clear about the argument here.

But the flip side of the coin is that we too depend on the law school. The legitimacy of a CLS degree in the job search (the oft quoted line that one can hear in the hallways on a semi-daily basis "and a degree from CLS certainly won't hurt haha wink" or whatever the chosen phrasing) and the reliance of 2Ls on EIP for finding a job are two examples of ways in which CLS students buy into (and therefore reinforce) the co-dependence.

Why isn't it sufficient to say that buyers and sellers of anything, including educational services, are mutually dependent? Isn't it evident that reciprocities of this kind exist between adversary counsel who sell complementary services to parties in dispute? As it would be evident in suppliers of complementary materials to competing businesses.

But this doesn't have to be the case. There is a difference between the type of dependence the law school has on us and the dependence we have on it. The curve, by it's very nature, in fact relies on us falling for the fallacy. But our dependence is self-imposed and is therefore voluntary. As Eben says in class, EIP is not the end all be all for the job search. The name "Columbia Law School" on one's degree is not necessary for a creative law student to find ways to meaningfully impact the lives of others with his/her legal knowledge or make money for that matter. Anyone who has been to any of the presentations put on by Law Students for Social Enterprise know this to be true. Skills and drive are necessary; pedigree is not. What do people think?

Meaning that you could be a fine lawyer and also have a successful career without a degree from this law school? Of course. Surely that's uncontroversial. The value of the law school to you lies in the network it helps you establish to support your practice. This, not the availability of a local interface to the employee recruitment structures for private law firms and non-profit practices, is the major advantage that the law school offers you in the initial phase of your practice.

Try, as a perceptual exercise, to imagine that the end of your work here isn't a job, but a law practice. Your practice is signified by your license, which entitles you to have and solicit clients. You drive your practice, so that it produces the mix of social benefit and material reward that you define as necessary, changing and evolving throughout your life so that your investment in your license returns to you the life you want to have, and of which you are the party in control.

One way of driving your practice is to pawn your license to someone else, who will decide what hours you should work, on behalf of which client, on which matter, in which fashion. Also, therefore, what your family life will be like, what the balance of social benefit and material reward will be, and what skills you will build up to add value to the license in pawn.

Another way of driving your practice is to collaborate with others on individually-negotiated economic and professional terms, building your practice by developing high-expertise specialties you can sell, marketing those services through the network of contacts you establish in and through the Law School.

Choosing the first path is still possible. Choosing the second is better, under twenty-first century conditions. This point is not yet well-appreciated, and for this reason more timid students, who probably should not undertake entrepreneurial practice under any circumstances anyway, will overwhelmingly take the first road. But thoughtful, adventurous people, who can see that there are many things amiss about the system that is dying—which made a few people wealthy, lots of people miserable, and society very little better off—will not only entertain but will actively seek out the road to a more humane, thoughtful, independent, socially fulfilling way of using a law license. They will discover that Columbia is doing them enormous good, because it enables them to build, while here and after leaving, a network of lawyers who are potentially collaborators, sources of referred clients, instructing counsel, international correspondents, etc. In twenty-first century practice, it's the global strength of your network that counts, and from the time you arrive here, our network is yours to build from.

-- PrashantRai - 04 Apr 2012