Coda to ONE HELL:
At the end of nine
long months
at Catholic University's law school,
some advice for others
- by Alice Marie Beard
(Ms. Beard went on to earn her J.D. from George Mason U.)
Advice for the returning homemaker |
Before
you decide which offer of admission to accept, find out
how the law school handles returning homemakers. If you
have been a homemaker away from both the academic world
and the employment market for any length of time, you
will be a minority in law school. Find out EXACTLY how
the law school with the seat to sell for from ten to
twenty-five thousand dollars a year intends to meet YOUR
needs.
Ask for names and contact information
of current students who began law school after several
years as "only" homemakers. Ask for names of
such students who left the program without degrees. Ask
WHY? Realize that you will be part of a tiny minority.
Get the law school to put in writing a guarantee that you
will not be placed in a section where you are the only
dramatically older student unless there is NO other older
student in the incoming class. If your requests are
refused or met with confusion and disbelief that you
would make such demands, take your money elsewhere.
The information in #1 and #2
below -- the first from a law journal article, the second
from a policy statement -- should be mandatory reading
for every law school that willingly admits older
students, but then forgets that they are a unique
population with their own needs. One cannot
treat a 50-year-old like a 23-year-old and pretend that
the treatment was "equal." If the treatment
helps the 23-year-old student but hurts the 50-year-old,
the older student was not treated equally.
[#1] The Best and
the Brightest?
It is a law journal article by U. of British Columbia law
professor W. Wesley Pue and Dawna Tong, a lawyer working
on a Ph.D. in Anthropology/Sociology at the U. of British
Columbia. The article was published in the 1999 Osgoode
Hall Law Journal (37 Osgoode Hall L.J. 843-876).
The authors quote a 1977 study that found that older
law students did less well than younger ones, and that
students who applied to law school with the minimum
education required seemed to perform the best. Pue and
Tong write,
"These
troubling findings imply that the most immature,
least educated, least experienced students do
best at law school even though -- one presumes --
they are least able to assume the
responsibilities of a lawyer." |
They write, "The first year of law
school requires adjustment to a peculiar academic culture
(e.g., teaching style, evaluation methods, and 'case law'
method of thinking) and to the law school's social
environment (e.g., 'fitting in,' proto-professional
ethos, intensity of student interactions, density and
narrowness of culture). For many students -- especially,
perhaps, those from non-traditional backgrounds --
intellectual ability and professional skills may not be
accurately reflected in their first, 'settling in,'
year."
On the topic of "uninspired pedagogy," they
say, "Students who are pre-adapted to immediate
success in programs as currently constructed are, of
course, exactly what educational institutions (and, let
it be admitted, the teachers who staff them) want.
Undemanding and largely self-educating, such students are
a delight to teach. Admissions policies that serve
teachers' convenience so well relieve [law professors] of
responsibility to think more creatively about such
matters as curriculum, pedagogy, and modes of course
delivery."
The authors quote U. of Dayton law professor Vernellia
R. Randall commenting on legal education in America:
"[The] one-size-fits-all approach to student
learning has historically disadvantaged nontraditional
groups." Randall argues that, since law schools
"admit a student population that is diverse in its
learning styles," law schools "have an ethical,
if not a legal, responsibility to those students right
now to today provide them with a pedagogically-sound
legal education."
Pue and Tong argue, "First-year performance may
not be the most accurate test of professional abilities.
It would be an odd legal practice that approached
professional services in the way first-year law implies
-- oriented exclusively to appellate litigation,
restricted to common law fields entirely unsullied by
statute, employing doctrinal analysis and examinable
knowledge as the key work skills, with little use for
deep thought, sharp human perception, sound judgment, or
writing ability! Not surprisingly, many practitioners
look back on first-year law (or even all three years of
law school) as 'irrelevant' to their day-to-day practice
and often criticize their legal education for failing to
adequately prepare them for their professional work. All told, continued reliance on
first-year law average as the sole indicator of academic
success and as a predictor of future professional success
seems absurd."
[#2] Policy
on Mature Age Postgraduates
The quotes below are from a group at the University of
Melbourne, a university where mature age students are
classified as a special needs group. It is not related
specifically to law students, but it deals with a
reality: Older law students can find themselves dealing
with a hostile campus climate. When that happens, the
student can think, "Is it just me? WHY am I feeling
this way?" The quotes below, from the other side of
the world, indicate that such feelings are not unique:
"Students who take on
postgraduate studies in their more senior years are
sometimes faced with discriminatory behaviour."
"Mature age students are often isolated in
postgraduate environments where their student peer group
is significantly younger and cannot relate to their
difficulties and where the academic group even though
comparable to their age group are reticent to support the
mature age students."
"Supervisors are uncomfortable with students who
are of comparable age or older. Mature age students
present different challenges for supervisors by virtue
that older students have skills and experiences or
difficulties in settling into postgraduate studies
because of flagging confidence or other issues."
"[We] support mentoring for mature age students
by academic staff/students of a similar age to support
the students concerns which relate to being mature age
and a student."
[The quotes are from a policy statement
developed by the 1998 Postgraduate Women's Committee of
the University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association. The
statement was adopted by the University of Melbourne
Postgraduate Association Council, Sept. 1998.]
Advice for older law school grads |
Dealing with age discrimination
does not end once the mature law student becomes the
mature new lawyer. A study by Boston attorney
Linda Evans was published in Massachusetts Bar Association Section
Review, April 2001. Evans' study found age
discrimination against older, recent law school
graduates. ("Age discrimination and
the legal profession")
Advice from other law
students |
Below are links to words of
others who have written about their law school
experiences. Most are of more value than what I've
written. All links will open in a new window:
- Diary of Daniel
Richardson Bigelow,
Harvard Law, 1849. This man saw the
funeral procession of John Quincy Adams and heard
a speech by Daniel Webster:
"July 7th (1848): The
term closes. I have not accomplished so much as I
intended this term, but I think I have made some
progress in the law, in the knowledge of the
world and of human nature. I can now only be
thankful for what advancement I have been enabled
to make, regret that I have not employed my time
better, and by the light of past experience
endeavor to do better for the future."
- Passing judgment
on the grading system,
an article by Aaron Lamb and Lena Salaymeh,
published in Harvard Law's student newspaper,
says this:
"The Law School's grading system is so
demonstrably arbitrary and discriminatory that
its products are only relevant not as evaluative
tools but as social-psychological weapons."
- Sua Sponte, a
"blog" by a married woman law student
who began her law school odyssey in 2002.
- Law School - Part
II, by Josh Carden, a
lifelong homeschooler and a 2002 graduate of
Regent Law School.
- Justgal's journal, by Kelly Rogers, law student, Detroit
College of Law. [Three early entries on one page;
student switched to MBA program.]
- Bangalore Diary, by Anubhav
Sinha, while at National Law School of India.
- For $20,000 a
year, why can't the law school ..., by Michael Tita, law student, U. of
Richmond [one page]
Advice for the 'in
between year' |
- Bar Exam Primer, by Travis A. Wise, lawyer. Advice for
passing the bar exam.
Advice by lawyers &
law professors |
- Law school and stress, by
Barbara Glesner Fines, professor, U. of Missouri
- Kansas City School of Law:
"[T]he major reason many students do not
succeed in law school is that they started at the
wrong time: Don't start law school on the same
day you are also beginning major medical
treatment, a divorce, or have just had a new
baby."
- Pragmatic Reform
of Legal Education, by
Stephen R. Marsh, a Texas lawyer.
Marsh quoting David Barber, professor:
"Law school is a very hostile
experience. Studies have shown that it takes the
average law school graduate seven years before
they are willing to participate in Alumni related
activities (such as fund raising, etc.)."
Marsh quoting one who prefers no
attribution:
"[Law] profs know, or should know, that
the methods they use to teach actually make it
harder to learn the material. That is, law
professors provide a net negative input into the
learning process."
- Thinking of Law
School? American Legal Education: Buyer Beware, by David Dieteman, a lawyer working on
a Ph.D. in philosophy:
"[L]aw students are expected to teach
themselves."
That is the simple truth:
One does not buy teaching for one's law school
tuition dollars: One buys the right to sit for a
set of exams.
- Rethinking "Thinking Like a
Lawyer".
Excerpt below is from "Abstract of
Preliminary Findings of the Study of Legal
Education," Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, byy Judith W. Wegner, Senior
Scholar with the foundation, and former dean of
U. of NC at Chapel Hill School of Law:
"Elaborate law school assessment systems
have been created, which rely primarily on essay
examinations to sort students and assure quality,
yet form a 'hidden curriculum' whose fundamental
strengths and weaknesses are cloaked in
long-standing conventions and should be
reexamined and reformed in fundamental respects.
Problem-based examinations are suitable tools for
assessing expertise in law-related problem
solving, but this function is not appreciated or
explained, their use may unfairly advantage some
and disadvantage other students, and their
potential is significantly compromised by grading
systems in common use. Norm-based grading systems
that 'sort' students run substantial risks of
undercutting learning, perpetuating pre-existing
patterns of performance, and wasting faculty and
student time that could be better spent. More
attention needs to be paid to the close interplay
of learning and assessment, evident from schools'
approaches to thorny issues of academic
disqualification and new lessons about assessment
born out by the experience of academic support
programs. Law school assessment systems could be
redesigned to foster learning if greater
attention were paid to key design principles that
shape assessment to the imperatives of learning
rather than the other way round, more transparent
expertise-based evaluation were employed during
the first year, [and] other uses of assessment to
document and guide learning were introduced.
..."
[Wegner's work was
presented in June of 2001 at the Institute of
Advanced Legal Studies, U. of London. Publication
is expected in 2003, by Jossey-Bass Publishers.]
Advice for the 'grade
wounded' |
- For those who ran into academic
troubles in law school, stop beating up on
yourself and consider this list of people who
were academically dismissed from law school yet
went on to do well in life:
Vince Lombardi,
Seymour Hersh,
Bob Newhart, and
Adlai Stevenson (dismissed from Harvard
after two years, ultimately graduated from
Northwestern).
- According to former Vice-President
Al Gore who left Vanderbilt Law School minus a
law degree,
"President Franklin Roosevelt failed two of
his courses during his first year at Columbia Law
School and then never actually graduated.
As [FDR] later pointed out, in words that may
comfort us all:
'It certainly shows the uncertainty of marks.'"
|
UPDATE, 2004>
email Alice
|