Alienated Law Students After Law School

The continuing story of alienated students; what do they do after law school? How do they survive in an alienating profession? I will tell my own story. I actually found something of a niche, even during law school. Some of the time, I worked in the law library. But I also found work clerking for legal services, APPALRED (Appalachian Research and Defense, a Legal Services organization that had a branch office opposite the University of Kentucky School of Law, just for legal research, and many branch offices all over eastern Kentucky. I worked there from my first summer of law school, even as I took my first classes of Library School.

* Warning: Boring private details *

My first job after Law School was as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Law Fellow, an honor and much-sought position from Legal Services Corporation now no longer offered. They funded you for one year, and if your legal services office turned in a good report, would renew you for a second year. The Reggies, as they were called, were supposed to be both diversity feeders for Legal Services and shock troops to create change. Training varied hugely from year to year, and some people were more radical and accomplished more than others. I followed a woman who two Reggies before me had tied up all the resources of my legal services office in a huge piece of litigation against the prison system. The office was fully committed, and no new big project could be picked up. So we carried on with her project and did little bits and pieces. Still, it was pretty cool, and I learned a lot. I actually ran a jury trial, and won it -- I did amazingly well, but boy, it took a lot out of me! I needed to have some sort of staff at home to take care of me. I also had an Court of Appeals case that I won. Yay!

The problem for me was that my legal services office, Central Kentucky Legal Services, was also very committed to representing parents in retrieving their children from the state in cases of abuse and neglect. Every case like this I was required to take tore me apart. I hated all the domestic relations work, but that abuse and neglect stuff in particular was terrible for me. If I could have just focused on consumer law, I think I could have been a happy legal services lawyer for ever. But when my Reggie fellowship ran out, Central Kentucky had no slots to hire me, and my husband begged me not to move to take a job at another legal services. I could not bear thinking about taking up another kind of legal work ... So it was time to go back and finish library school. What a happy thing for me, as it turned out!

So, I popped out as a law librarian at the age of 32. I spent 10 years at St. Louis University, in a a middle-management position. I am only just now realizing how incredibly fortunate I was as a library school student. I was offered first a Research Assistantship in Government Documents where the Head of Government Documents at the University of Kentucky worked us so hard teaching us all about federal, state and U.N. documents and I also learned a lot about maps! I learned more in that Assistantship than in any of my classes, I think, and Sandy McAninch poured herself into teaching us. Thank you, Sandy! Don't think I am not grateful! Then before that year was up, I was offered a second deal, even better, to run a single person library for the Kentucky Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection. They let me count it as a full time job, and supervise a library school student assistant (who was so kind to me, as I got unexpectedly pregnant at the end of this year! -- Thank you, Gary Snyder, wherever you are! I hope things worked out well for you and your family!). So all of those things let me step from library school into a middle manager position (to my slight terror).

* End of boring private details *

Here is where the alienation kicks in. All these years, I looked on the outside like a pretty quiet, unassuming librarian, who worked very hard to take care of business. And I do think that has been true on many levels. But let me get up here in Boston, and get tenure and get settled, and BOOM! all Hell starts breaking loose! I start blogging and letting it all hang out. I think there was a raging radical librarian just lurking beneath the surface, like a Loch Ness monster. Occasionally somebody might catch a glimpse, but mostly, I guess I looked pretty bland and safe. Surprise, Suffolk!

Here is a cute story: Among the first papers I published, based on a paper I wrote in Library School is a book chapter titled "The Feminist Attack on Pornography," chapter in Libraries, Erotica and Pornography, Martha Cornog, ed. (Oryx Press, 1990). (This collection of essays won the Eli M. Oboler Award for best publication of the year on issues of Freedom of Speech from the American Library Association). When I was at St. Louis University, one of the professors there kidded me about the title, but it was not a big deal. But the dean who hired me here at Suffolk had not noticed this on my resume. Shortly after I came, somebody at the university had the bright idea of having each dean bring their new faculty and introduce them at an event. My dean read the introduction for me that he was handed. He stopped, he stumbled, he stopped and cleared his throat. The poor man! He had no idea that he had hired the Porn Queen of St. Louis U. to come run his library! He got over it though, but I don't think they ever did these introductions again.

Tulane Law School Unscathed?

Law Professor John K. Eason reports today on TaxProf Blog: Eason on The Impact of Katrina on Tulane Law School:

Overall, the University suffered about $200-$250 million in physical damage and an approximate $150 million operating loss. The physical damage will ultimately be covered by insurance, and some creative financing has spread the operating hit out over several years, leaving the endowment in tact. Needless to say, the University has taken a serious look at its core mission and made some strategic decisions. The law school has fortunately emerged from this strategic restructuring virtually unscathed. The administration has even restored our faculty-wide discretionary book and travel allowance for the Spring semester. Although we like to think that these and similar lagniappes resulted from the law school’s longstanding status as an effective and efficient operating unit within the University’s business model, we certainly didn’t mind loaning Dean Ponoroff to the University President for a few months to help guide these decision. [Emphasis added.]

Law Student Alienation

Was Sartre right? Is Hell other people? Or is it just law school? We had an interesting colloquium speaker today, Prof. Kate Day, here at Suffolk University Law School. She was speaking specifically on the topic of the alienating experience of law school for women law students. She had a stack of studies about the lack of change in that basic fact despite the change in numbers of female law students (now hovering around 50% at most law schools) from decades past. In the 1940s, and 50's you could count the women law students on the fingers of one hand at most schools. Some of those, under the intense pressure of a highly patriarchal system where they were barely tolerated, if at all, dropped out before graduation. The few who finished had few job choices. The story is well-known that Sandra Day O'Connor was told that she could be a secretary at a law firm.

During the 1960's the numbers of women law students rose slightly, and by the late 1970's when I began law school, we had one-third women in my class at University of Kentucky. We still felt quite the minority, but not nearly so embattled as earlier generations. We were living during the rise of feminist theory, and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution (it failed for lack of the requisite number of states to endorse it). But much of what Prof. Day spoke about resonated with me. Perhaps the feelings of isolation and alienation are not really limited to women law students, but just perceived differently and dealt with differently.

I have often compared the first year of law school to a boot camp. In many ways the two enterprises aim at the same outcome. They both aim to strip the incoming draftees of their original affiliations and ways of thinking. They do it through challenging and in some ways, even law school, humiliating, them for their "naive" or "wrong-headed" ways of thinking and doing things. Breaking down their old ways of thinking, and inducting them into a pre-existing brotherhood with its own code of behavior and belonging is the final goal of both. Individuals who refuse to buy it are deeply alienated and isolated, even if, on the surface, they "go along, to get along." Perhaps that actually increases the alienation and isolation.

In law school, the tools, the sticks to force compliance, are grades, peer pressure and professorial pressure -- humiliation in front of an entire class during the socratic method interrogation. These make the resistance a pretty high stakes matter. Very few students hold out openly in law school. There tend to be sub rosa groups that chat secretly, and support each other, or lone wolves who simply pass through the system, trying to maintain their integrity. A few of these alienated individuals find faculty members or librarians who are sympathetic or supportive, but many are too gun shy to even share that much, I suspect. No wonder law school reunions are sparsely attended! Do we know how to create a Hell on earth or what?!

Why Law Schools Are Like Vultures

When times are bad, law schools admissions go up. New minted college graduates look around at the bad employment opportunities and say to themselves, "Wow! If I take another degree, I'll be a lot more employable, and maybe when I come out of that school, economic times won't be so bad." So they flood into law school, B-schools and even graduate schools. But law schools are hot! For a while, we called it the "LA Law Effect" because of the television show that started it all. Students who had watched the actors portraying high-powered lawyers dressed in designer suits, having sex and playing power games had serious misconceptions about the practice of law. But they really, really wanted in! No Perry Mason staid guys any more.

Similarly, when the economy picks up, law school admissions begin to drop. We start to see just the folks who really want to be lawyers after all. As the undertaker sighed, gee business is looking awfully healthy. This image of a Nubian Vulture is from good ole Wikipedia where they try to provide images in the public domain or licensed for use under the Creative Commons. Here is a nice link to read more about Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Frequently_asked_questions_.28FAQ.29

Das Book - Why German, French, and British companies are devouring American publishers. By Daniel Gross

Today in Slate, Daniel Gross considers why German, French, and British companies are devouring American publishers:

Time Warner earlier this week agreed to sell its publishing arm—with imprints such as Little, Brown and Warner Books—to Lagardère, a French media company, for about $537 million.

In some ways, it's a natural fit. Like the French, book editors enjoy languorous lunches and batting ideas around. Like the French, some U.S. publishers and editors (viz. l'affaire Frey) seem to have adopted Derrida-esque attitudes toward the nature of truth. The French work 35-hour weeks. Ditto for publishers. France is a one-time giant that, having lost its status in the world, is fighting a rear-guard action against 21^st-century capitalism. Check....

But there's something else going on. Random House, the largest U.S. publisher, is a division of Germany's Bertelsmann. Germany's Holtzbrinck owns the venerable Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Henry Holt, along with the not-so-venerable St. Martin's. Britain's Pearson owns the sprawling Penguin Group, which includes American imprints Viking, Riverhead, and Putnam. And Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (OK, he's an American citizen and the company is based in New York, but both are of Australian extraction) owns a lot of American publishers, too, including Harper Collins and William Morrow & Co.

---

Why do foreign media firms find American publishers attractive even as U.S. media conglomerates look to dump them?

Publishing, alas for all the authors among us, is a small business in the scheme of things. Time Warner may be the fifth-largest book publisher in the United States, but the unit accounts for only a tiny sliver of the company's revenues and profits. Time Warner has a market capitalization of about $85 billion. At $537 million, the publishing arm accounts for only six-tenths of 1 percent of the company's total value....

For American companies, book publishing is a slow-growth niche business. For the Europeans, it's something quite different. These foreign companies that now own U.S. publishers generally lack the scale of U.S. media conglomerates. Pearson and Lagardère have market capitalizations of about $10 billion and $11 billion, respectively. And French and German companies operate in home markets that lack much in the way of organic growth. To them, a near-stagnant U.S. market represents a rich, comparatively rapidly growing market. For a French or German manager, a business that grows by 2.5 percent a year is handily beating the pace of domestic economic growth....

Book publishing may turn out to be another one of those industries that diversified, hypercompetitive, publicly held American companies can't afford to be in. (Independents like John Wiley & Sons or Scholastic can probably stick it out.) We've seen this process happen before. In manufacturing businesses, when margins plummet and the prospects for profitable growth decrease, Americans tend to abandon them and move on to the next thing. For IBM, the personal-computer business had evolved into low-margin manufacturing competing in a saturated, mature market. Its shareholders were happy for Big Blue to get rid of it and focus on higher-margin software and services businesses. But for the buyer—China's Lenovo—it represented an opportunity to acquire a brand name and an entree to a potentially lucrative market. Where you stand on the merits of a business depends on where you sit.

Sen. Rip van Winkle Had No Comment

Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities - New York Times:
"Democrats are heading into this year's elections in a position weaker than they had hoped for, party leaders say, stirring concern that they are letting pass an opportunity to exploit what they see as widespread Republican vulnerabilities."
Read more here.

Honey I Do

We are in what the Catholic Church is pleased to call the Octave of St. Valentine’s Day. So, here is my Valentine’s note, for you!

Honey, I Do!

I offer you my favorite tip for long-lasting relationships. I flatter myself I have some room to talk, since my husband and I will be celebrating our 28th anniversary this May. Whether we’re talking marriage or something less formal, the magic for long term stability is found in those two little words from the marriage ceremony: I Do. As in, “Honey, I do love the way you make that pot roast!” Or, “Dear, I do appreciate you taking out the trash!” How about, “Sweetheart, I do like having a lunch date with you each week!”

Nobody likes to be taken for granted, and “I do” is the magic phrase to practice noticing the little things your sweetie pie does every day. The grand gestures of romance, like expensive restaurants, flowers and dancing will only take you so far. For the long term, you have to notice and appreciate the little everyday things, and say so. It’s an easy thing to overlook, especially while you’re a tad busy with law or library school, children, career or life in general. But it’s a worthwhile habit to cultivate; you’re never going to be less busy than you are now. Life just keeps going faster!

If you can’t think what to say “I do” about, just try this law school style hypothetical. What if your sweetie suddenly weren’t there? What would not get done? Is it the dishes being washed? Laundry sorted, washed or folded? How about sweeping floors, or meeting you at the train? Watching children, taking them to the doctor, meeting teachers? Taking the car for tune-ups and gassing it up? I guarantee, you’ll think of a quick list of little every day chores to be grateful for.

So, when you pick up a valentine card for your honey this year, or even when you send a note to a friend or relative, add a little “Honey, I do” note, and sign it with a kiss or a hug. It takes practice to make “I do” last through the year, but it’s a worthwhile investment.

Procrastination - an evil habit

Procrastination is an evil habit in students. As a professor, I see it too often. It all too often is really the result of the student not coming to grips with some other problem. He or she is overwhelmed with classes, or learning disability problems or personal issues, and is not going to the Dean of Students to ask for help (or coming to me to tell me they have problems, either!). And so, they dawdle along, not turning in the paper, and the class ticks away until I have no alternative in fairness to other students but to award the procrastinator an F. I really hate that!

A student who does not learn to deal with habits of procrastination in school obviously is a walking time-bomb as an attorney. I would not want to have such a person as a lawyer or as a partner or associate! It is only a matter of time before they lose a case for failure to timely plead and/or suffer a malpractice suit because of the malfeasance.

I wish I were better equipped to help chronic procrastinators deal with what is a true and deep problem. All universities have campus counselling centers. The problem is two-fold: 1) They are often overwhelmed with undergraduates; and
2) Law students are loath to go outside the law school.

Here are some possible websites that might be helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination#Resources
Wikipedia has a lengthy article all about procrastination and its causes and outcomes. But this helpful section lists resources -- books, organizations and websites. Go here first. Then, look at these other links if you don't like Wiki's.

http://www.procrastinators-anonymous.org/
Appears to be a true self-help organization. Has a number of web-based self-assesments and chats for support. Lots of information. Appears to fly off a living organization based in New York City.

http://p214.ezboard.com/bprocrastinationsupport
Appears to be a chat community support group. The core is a chat community but it has a library of helpful tips and messages, mottos and a section on video game addiction, which could certainly be a source of a lot of procrastination. I tootled around a bit and it loaded very slowly into the subsections. It has a section "Just for Students" and another "UK Discussion" which might be of interest to overseas readers of this blog. This website appears to just be threads of chat, though; understand before you go; seems kind of young to me.

http://allpoetry.com/group/2188
Here is a chat group that asks you to certify that you are at least 18 to join, and focuses on student, but is open to others with procrastination problems. Not just for poets.


http://www.closerlook.com/perspective/art_procrastinators_anon.php
This is either a review or a disguised advertisement for a software package designed for palmpilot OS to help you manage your time better. It actually might be helpful for procrastinators, if you like this sort of technology.

There may be more places to go as well. I just put off looking. Sorry -- I couldn't resist. Forgive the terrible joke!

Remembering watershed moment as a student

When I was a student, through high school, collge, and most of law school, I mostly performed to the specifications of the teacher/professor of the moment. I did what I thought they wanted or needed me to do. I aimed to please them, and mostly succeeded pretty well. I was a pretty good student.

There was a brief interlude, though, between college and law school, when I was considering studying linguistics. I actually was accepted to graduate school in Chicago, but for personal reasons, was reluctant to relocate. So, I tried to find courses at the local university that would take me to the kind of thinking I wanted to do, anyway. Unfortunately, the course of study didn't pan out, but I did take some interesting classes along the way. One of them was an art class.

We were working on linoleum cuts. This was difficult work; you had to carve away all the background from your image. I worked away until my hands were very tired. I showed the professor what I had accomplished and asked if it was good enough. She astonished me by replying, "Are you satisfied?" I had never been asked such a question by a teacher before. I had never, never been asked to decide for myself if my work was to my own satisfaction, in all the years I had attended school! What a concept! I was just stunned.

To some extent, this is something I try to do for my own students. Very soon, they will be professionals. They will need to judge this for themselves every day. I want them to decide for themselves if a worksheet is good enough. I grade the larger papers in the class; I have to assign a grade somehow. But the day-to-day discussion in the class is based on their worksheets; notes they make upon examining the materials for the week, guided by my questions. I am thrilled when students comment that they went back after class discussion to test something that came up, or look at something they missed. So many of my students are so far ahead of where I was at their point in life!

Check This Out! Episode 014: Tulane Law Library

Episode 014: Sunday, February 5, 2006
Playing time: 56:57
The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina may have receded from the national headlines and the public consciousness, but for those affected the story is not yet over. Tulane University recently released its renewal plan, eliminating several programs and laying off 230 faculty members, 65 of whom are tenured. Among those let go are several members of the Tulane Law Library. This week I talk with Lance Query, University Librarian and Interim Director of the Law Library. I also talk with Ray Lytle, former Head of Public Services at Tulane Law Library.
Tonight's Links:

• Brian Williams, A Word About Our Katrina Coverage
• Body and Soul: Flood
• ABC News: State of the Union Address Angers New Orleans
• Law Librarian Blog
  • On the Current (and Future) State of the Tulane Law Library
  • Damage Control at Tulane Law Library
• Out of the Jungle
  • Can Tulane Law Library Survive?
  • More on Tulane Law Library
  • Response on Tulane

Wrap-up:

• Nina Cascio is the winner of the Logo Contest.
  

• Music: Tamara Nile, Get Together
• Blog: http://cto.libsyn.com
• Email: jim.milles@gmail.com
• Comment line: (716) 989-4422