The Messages of Legal Education
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Description
I am always pleased when people I like and respect decide to go to law school. The study and practice of law can illuminate our understanding of the collective arrangements that define our individual and social life. Legal training enables people to support themselves doing work that includes rich human relationships and intellectual challenge. Legal skills can help realize our visions of a just society. Although these possibilities make the study and practice of law attractive, the reality of practice is often different. Most lawyers report that they are unhappy with their work. Many work for the relatively privileged to preserve a status quo in which material wealth and political power are distributed unfairly and everyone is oppressed by hierarchical and alienated relationships. One fact, more than any other, influences the personal and professional choices facing lawyers and law students today and the collective choices that we face as a society. It is that we live in a world in which there are gross disparities in the distribution of money, political power, and personal opportunity for significant life choices. In the United States, the richest fifth of the population receives 40 percent of the personal income, whereas the poorest fifth receives 5 percent of the personal income. On a world scale the disparities are greater still. Unearned wealth, political power, and personal power over important life choices are distributed even more unevenly than income. Government policies of the 1980s and 1990s have increased the wealth of the rich and insecurity of the majority. Despite the gross disparities in the distribution of resources and opportunities, Americans, and increasingly the world, share a common culture. We all see the same ads urging us to buy the same products. We all have similar desires to have those things that we believe will make life more beautiful and comfortable. We share common desires for interesting, creative, and useful work for ourselves and our children. Because we share a common culture, we feel the disparities in wealth, power, and opportunity acutely. Gross inequality in the distribution of material resources produces a situation of insecurity for everyone. People at the bottom are the most insecure; they face the daily uncertainty of not knowing where the next meal will come from or whether they can keep a roof over their children's heads. Any unexpected expense is a disaster. Most “middle-income” Americans also face economic uncertainty. Jobs that were once secure and well-paying are now disappearing as multinational corporations seek the highest profits, without regard to the consequences for jobs or communities. In 1993, almost one-fifth of Americans under age sixty-five had no health insurance. In 1995, that number was increased dramatically when Congress slashed the Medicaid program for the poor and Medicare for the aged. The disparity is growing wider: A typical chief executive of a large American company earns 120 times more than a typical manufacturing worker, compared to a mere 35 times more in 1974. Even the rich are insecure. God forbid that you should not make it to the top. Or that, having made it to the top, you should somehow make a misstep that will cause you to slip from a position of privilege. The disparity in the distribution of wealth and power, particularly in a time of deep economic insecurity, is a major factor motivating people to go to law school. These disparities also pose a central challenge to our social and legal arrangements. Are democracy, equality, personal security, self-actualization, or solidarity possible in a world in which material goods and political power are distributed in such a wildly uneven way? Are these disparities the inevitable cost of material growth, progress, and innovation? Unfortunately, thought about the legal profession and legal education often mystifies rather than illuminates our understanding of these social relations, and increases, rather than decreases, perceptions of personal insecurity. This can be illustrated by examining, first, the way in which legal education is organized, particularly in the first year of law school; second, the intellectual content of the law itself; and third, the lessons of legal ethics for a lawyer's choice of life work and for the attorney-client relationship.
Source Publication
Looking at Law School: A Student Guide From the Society of American Law Teachers
Source Editors/Authors
Stephen Gillers
Publication Date
1997
Edition
Rev. and expanded 4
Recommended Citation
Law, Sylvia A., "The Messages of Legal Education" (1997). Faculty Chapters. 1286.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1286
