Last March I wrote an opinion piece for the first issue of the Hastings Herald. Here is a slightly changed version of it, the footnote format is alittle off, my apologies:
Humanizing Law School
Most people tell me that humanizing law school is impossible. Well, don’t lose hope, students of Hastings, change is in the air. There has been a surprising amount of movement on the issue in the law school industry. Recently, a mass of critical scholarly articles and books have been published calling for systemic and cultural reforms that would re-invent law school and the experience of its students. Some schools have started conducting pilot programs, and the top schools have abolished oppressive grading systems.
And it is about time. Rates of clinically significant levels of depression in law school can range as high as HALF of the student body. 1. Medical school, with its similar workload, has nowhere near the depression rates of law school. 1. This pain arises from the hyper-competition and excessive conformity that law school generates in otherwise happy and healthy people. 1. Put simply, this suffering is caused by the design of law school. 1. You know something is wrong with a pedagogical method when half the students who are subjected to it become mentally ill.
The culture of competition and conformity is the specter that stunts our school’s community and traumatizes our peers. 2. Students feel compelled to abandon their ideals and principles, to abandon their sense of self so they can fit into the “lawyer” mold. 2. I know I have been told over and over again that I will have to do things as a lawyer that violate my personal beliefs. Thinking like a lawyer is the primary objective, other pursuits need to fall away because if you aren’t thinking in that specific way, you won’t make the grade. This pressure to conform stifles creative thought and amounts to an all-out assault on our person-hood. 2. People literally lose themselves to law school, losing their self-identity to an institution-generated standard replacement identity. 2.
Identity is deeply intertwined with what motivates us. 2. Law school tends to quash our internal motivations (such as helping others or working for a cause) in favor of external motivations like grades, high profile internships, and high paying jobs after law school. 3. This happens to such an extent that students feel compelled to travel down a very uniform, risk-averse track and make choices that do not reflect their original reasons for going to law school. 2. The compulsion to avoid risks prevents students from taking innovative classes and pushing themselves to make the most of the opportunities afforded by law school. 2. But, I think what is worse is that the pedagogical style of law school conditions us to become insecure, anxious and unhappy. 3. All of this transfers into the legal profession as well, as the trauma of law school has a lasting impact on the psyche of lawyers as well as the practice of law in this country. 3.
By causing the loss of personal principles, self-identity, and purpose, law school emotionally scars its students. 4. All this pain disrupts our personal lives, but more importantly for the school, it hurts our ability to learn, retain and apply knowledge. 5. The policies and pedagogy of law school undermine the entire purpose of school.
Needless to say, when I read about all this, I was quite disturbed. I have noticed the effect law school has had on me, and it has been both scary and enraging. I am sure some people will respond with, “if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, this is bigger than just me, this problem affects the entire legal profession. 1. My own brief research has just scratched the surface of these issues, but it seems apparent that humanizing law school is the inevitable path that Hastings must take. Indeed, Hastings has already implemented programs meant to help students and address these problems (like the fantastic Academic Support Program). But further change in the policies, pedagogy and culture of law school is necessary, and to have that we must have a campus-wide discussion. To further that discussion, here are some questions:
What changes can we implement to address these problems?
What would a humanized law school look like?
What specific skills do you wish law school would teach?
Which classes were the most effective at teaching and why?
What are the aspects of law school that you love?
I want to hear your opinions, send in letters to the editor or shoot me an email at pasleyw@uchastings.edu.
Footnotes:
1. Peterson, Todd; Peterson, Elizabeth Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn from the Science of Positive Psychology. Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, Issue 2 (2009) (http://www.abajournal.com/uploads/2010/06/PetersonArticle.pdf) Sadly this link no longer works. I have a PDF copy if you want to read it, just shoot me an email.
2. Sturm , Susan; Guinier, Lani; The Law School Matrix: Reforming Legal Education in a Culture ofCompetition and Conformity, Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, p. 515, 2007 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1018085)
3. Sheldon, Kennon; Krieger, Lawrence , Does Legal Education have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 22: 261–286 (2004) (http://web.missouri.edu/~sheldonk/pdfarticles/BSL04.pdf)
4. Krieger, Lawrence, Human Nature as a New Guiding Philosophy for Legal Education and the Profession. Washburn Law Journal, Vol. 47, 247-312, 2008 (http://washburnlaw.edu/wlj/47-2/articles/krieger-lawrence.pdf)
5. Fines, Barbara, Fundamental Principles and Challenges of Humanizing Legal Education. Washburn Law Journal, Vol. 47, 313-326, 2008 (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/profiles/glesnerfines/humanizing.pdf)
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