Law School: A “Maddening” Experience?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today (6/8/07) of a study just published by the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Entitled “Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test of Self-Determination Theory,” the study, by University of Missouri psychologist Kennon M. Sheldon and Florida State law professor Lawrence S. Krieger, examined the corrosive effect on well-being of the modern law school culture. The authors argue for a law school environment that enhances student “autonomy.” By “autonomy”, the authors mean that students need to have an opportunity to do what they enjoy, or at least believe in. It might be thought of as having immunity from an arbitrary exercise of authority, having the freedom to act independently.

Professors Sheldon and Krieger have produced a creative and insightful study about the consequences of bad institutional culture in the modern American law school world. They correctly found it to be a place where, too often, it overvalues arcane, abstract, theoretical scholarship, while undervaluing teaching. They challenged law school teaching and testing methods as unsound. Law school culture can force students to suppress their own values and moral compass, undermining their identity and self-confidence. The result can be law student cynicism, which speaks loudly of an institutional failure in law school design and culture.

The authors argue for a law school experience that encourages and develops competence, promotes personal choices in line with personal values and beliefs, and contributes to a worthwhile connectedness to other people in the community. I couldn’t agree more.

As you contemplate a future law school for yourself, or if you are reflecting on your dissatisfaction with your current law school, consider these points:

o Don’t hand over your happiness to a law school. Don’t let a law school define your mental state.

o Demand that law school professors respond to interesting, current, real-world disputes, cases and law-related events. They will happen every day of your law school career. Law school by all rights should provide you as a student with valuable insights from experienced lawyers and professors about the conflicts, issues and challenges of the day.

o Does your law school promote student interests and priorities?

o Does your law school enhance good teaching by systematically challenging its professors in teaching skills seminars?

o How does the law school reward excellence in teaching? Is student satisfaction with teaching performance measured? Responded to?

o Does your law school offer practical skills training?

o Is the work of the theory professors well integrated with the teaching of the practical skills professors?

o How does the law school work to assist students with stress and mental health concerns?

o How does the law school work to assist its students in passing the Multistate Bar Exam and the bar exam(s) taken by its graduates? Are they transparent with all passage rate statistics?

o How does the law school measure success?

o Seek out and contribute to the best values in law school: kindness, civility, compassion, truth, clear thinking, excellence, modesty, and loyalty. Use the law school environment for good. Participate. Lead in the areas of your passion. Personify the law school you want your law school to be.

o Give feedback about poor teaching to the law school’s senior leadership.

o Law school should be a fertile ground for personal and professional growth, with many interesting, creative, value-enhancing choices for students. Does your current (or proposed) law school measure up?

o Don’t let the law school experience dent your self-image. Absorb and apply what is genuinely constructive and positive. Toss the nonsense over the side.

o Law schools do need to teach you to think in a whole new way, but don’t let the law school detach you from your common sense.

o “Fire” a bad school. Win a transfer to (or at least a visiting year at) another law school, one that is a better fit for your needs.

For more information about my work for law school applicants and transfer applicants, please see my website www.PrelawAdvisor.com or send an e-mail to BradDobeck@aol.com .