The lab experiment that is law school

One of the things that worries me about law school is that it feeds my habit of seeking external validation to determine to self-worth. First of all, even if you try to judge a class on your own assessment of what you've learned, there's a huge emphasis on grades: getting good grades is SO IMPORTANT - or so everyone keeps telling you - that it's hard not to couple sense of success with GPA. And the thing is, for certain purposes, law school grades ARE important. (Caveat: by saying that, I don't mean that other kinds of grades aren’t important. Granted, in my own grad school experience, grades actually weren't that important because everyone got pretty much the same grades. But other settings are different, of course.) Firms/judges "prefer" students ranked in the top 30%, 20%, or 15%. If you’re in the top 10% of the class, you get a boost for getting onto law review (as well as scholarships and so on). Heck, law school grades on a curve. If your grades are above a certain level, you get ranked. If grades weren’t so important, why the school would put so much effort into measuring where yours stand in comparison to everyone else’s?

And then there are all the other external measures of success: Law review. Moot court. Competitions galore. Getting the right internships. Getting the right jobs. The way law school is structured, it feels like sometimes there’s something new to apply for ALL THE TIME. First year? Law review. Mock trial. Second year? Moot court. Law review board. Summer job. Internships, new ones each semester.

What I find hard is that I feed off the successes, and I’m having enough of them that it simply encourages me to continue to find this validation through what others think of me. I still get a rush when someone wants to interview me; I still congratulate myself and preen myself for how transparently awesome I am. It still feels like getting an AHA interview, every time.

What’s stupid about this is that at some point, it has to stop. School - training - is geared to create hoops and make you jump through them. Jumping through hoops well is an adaptive mechanism while in school, but much less important once your training is complete. And if you measure your self-worth by your hoop-jumping skills? You're bound to be a bit lost once those hoops go away.

I suppose there probably is a way to go through law school minimizing some of the external validation stuff: for instance, be in a clinic. Success is about how well you do, of course, but it’s about what you do (and what you can do) for your client. It’s not some number slapped on a piece of paper that represents you sitting and thinking for 3 hours one day in December.

And really, the whole "base your grade one exam" is such a poor way of evaluting someone's performance - especially given the common disjuncture between the effort you put in and the grade you get - that you'd think it would encourage you to focus on personal satisfaction rather than external validation. But it kind of makes me think of those experiments they've done with rats: if a rat presses a button, and gets food every second press, say, or every third press - something consistent - then the rat will learn what it has to do to get food, and do that. And if a rat presses a button, and never gets food, it quickly learns to give up. But if the rat sometimes gets food and sometimes doesn't, but in no consistent pattern, so it can't learn where to put its energy, it'll sit and press that little button forever.

Sometimes, law school makes me feel like that little rat.

Comments

[Anjali]

I felt EXACTLY the same way when I was in law school. I just hated it.

In fact, when I finally got out to practice, I was amazed at how much I really enjoyed law, since I had hated law school so much.

It really is such a rat race, and for no good reason.

[idwsj]

It's hard. It's stressful. It wears you down.

But if you can find a way to detach yourself from all these accolades that we are supposed to fiend after and just focus on the experience, law school isn't that bad.

It's just hard to actually do that when everyone around you is obsessed with the accolades.

[Huma]

Totally with Skinny Jeans up there. I despise law school to teh extent that it's hard to remember that I actually like learning the law. Mostly because everyone has his/her nose the grindstone, and the news of what's waiting for us after graduation isn't all that rosy.

Great post, btw.

[Seeking Solace]

I actually liked law school. I was able to detach myself from all the craziness. I think having a grad assistantship in another field helped.

I don't think law school really preps you for the reality of being a practitioner. The best professor are the ones who give you the real time experieince and reality.

And, it doesn't really prep you for the bar exam either. :(

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Thanks, all! The thing is, I actually like law school fine - I like the school part (I mean, I've been in school since forever, I can handle that), the people at my school are cool, and I like my classes and my profs. And I like what practice-y stuff I've gotten to do so far.

Problem is, I also *like* all the rat race stuff. I'm not winning, but I'm coming close enough that it's working out for me so far. And I do not like thinking that the rat race actually means something. But I also really like getting that little piece of food when I press that button.