A colleague recently sent me an article titled “Making Docile Lawyers: An Essay on the Pacification of Law Students” (you can find a copy here). In summary, it describes the “re-socialization” process that Harvard Law students undergo during their legal education. The focus is on the “pacification” of these students: transforming them from high achievers with specific ideals and goals – often oriented towards social justice – to students resigned to a B grading curve and relieved by any job offer (usually from a corporate recruiter). It may be of interest to current or future law students, particularly those who have decided to invest in a legal education for the purpose of social justice.
The author’s observations are applicable not only to Harvard Law, but also McGill’s Faculty of Law, and I assume many other law schools. I found that this article raised three key questions: (i) How does the “socialization” process in law school affect the way one advocates for social justice?; (ii) To what extent can one integrate field placements or work in social justice outside the Law Faculty into our legal studies?; (iii) How does one maintain a notion of “self” within the rigid institutional structure of law school, particularly during the first year?
The first question pertains to the lens in which we view the law. During the first year of law school, I think most students were told that legal analysis requires putting aside emotions and gut reactions and applying reasoned, structured legal analysis to a problem. Intervening in class with the notion that something was “unjust” or “unfair” (even if this is at the heart of a judge’s reasoning and directly informs the Court’s holding and the law generally) was not welcome. As a lawyer, we would be expected to – similarly – advocate on behalf of a client by using established legal reasoning tools. The message of fairness and justice would have to be implicit. The issue of reconciling this “neutral” framework with one’s desire to advocate more tangibly for change is at the heart of this question.
The second question asks whether there is a way to marry the experiences one has outside the classroom with those in the classroom. One quickly learns that the law – at least the way it is taught in classrooms – is highly abstract. A majority of professors tend to prefer it remains this way. Field placements, on the other hand, often require dealing with administrative and technical challenges one never faces in the classroom. For example, if you are working in a country where the legal system is highly corrupt and dysfunctional, can you really draw on your legal reasoning abilities to advocate for a client? Is advocacy through the legal system even an option? Field placements also often provide an opportunity to develop highly specialized knowledge about a specific issue or region. However, to what extent is the institution flexible enough to allow you to develop this knowledge into a report or briefing paper rather than an essay based on a more theoretical abstraction?
The third question addresses the structure of law school itself. As the author points out, it is largely a return to high school: you are surrounded by the same colleagues, you have a permanent space (locker), there are set timetables and assigned professors, and one may be expected to attend a number of social activities. There is also a structured trajectory: after completing your second year, you begin the recruitment process for firms in Québec or common-law provinces. There are organized on-campus recruitment drives for summer positions with corporate firms and the occasional government position. Clerkship applications begin in the Winter semester of your third year. Much of what happens at the Faculty is organized around a fairly fixed notion of what the institution believes a law graduate becomes: a first year associate at a firm. Of course, there are a number of opportunities while in school that permit you to explore your interests including summer clinic positions, a human rights internship program, research centres, legal journals and a variety of student groups to engage with. However, none of these bodies provide the same type of professional and financial security after graduation in the way that corporate law firms do. In other words, other trajectories aren’t facilitated or encouraged to the same degree and it is distinctly more difficult to find your own “niche” outside these formal systems.