ONE
HELL: Taking to
the Law: A First Year Law School Journey
Early thoughts on law school
- by Alice Marie Beard,
written while a first-year law
student
at The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
(Ms. Beard went on to earn her J.D. from George Mason U.)
This will be
nothing like Scott Turow's book ONE L that chronicled his first year of law
school at Harvard Law, but it will share my own early
thoughts on Catholic University's school of law. Why?
Because it's nice to have a place to vent, and, as Ronald
Reagan said about the microphone in New Hampshire,
"I'm paying for it."
What did I
get for $12,000 for the semester? Torts, contracts, civil
procedure, and legal research & writing. Three red
books and The Bluebook. A professor who earned
his law degree in 1959 and who talks about baseball and
movies. An associate prof who talks about her 2nd grade
daughter who threatens to sue her. Another prof who has
tried to assure me that I'm not the only 1st year
convinced I'm hearing a foreign language. An instructor
who (I'd bet good money) is in Washington with hopes to
write about the Supreme Court.
In the first
weeks, I felt as if I'd walked into the movie 15 minutes
late and missed all the important parts. I felt as if I
were in a parallel universe where people used words I
knew, but they used them in completely different ways, so
much so that it was a different language being spoken. It
was as if, before I got to the party, everyone had gotten
together and said, "Let's let 'up' mean 'down,' and
'pink' mean 'blue,' and 'tree' mean 'read.' Then, when I
arrived and saw a blue book on the floor, someone looked
at me and said, "Miss Beard, please tree the pink
book that is up on the floor." Imagine the
frustration. That is how my first weeks have felt. The
education is by "instant immersion." We are
told the cases build on each other, but they don't seem
to build in any sensible manner, and civil procedure
seems more like a game of bingo than anything else:
"12-c; 26-g; 36-b. Bingo for Mrs. Kelly! Pick up
your prize from Father Mulcahy."
When I was a
newspaper reporter, I learned cops sometimes lied. In law
school, I'm learning that judges have been known to lie.
We spent two days on an 1825 case called Mills v.
Wyman. According to the judge, the case involved a
man who got sick at sea and died and how someone tried to
get the dead man's father to pay a bill for taking care
of the son as he lay dying. It was an interesting case,
but it had nothing to do with reality. After we spent two
days on the case, the professor shared with us some
research that showed that the son hadn't died and hadn't
even been at sea. This professor said, "Um, maybe
the judge was mistaken." [FYI:
See Geoffrey R. Watson, In the Tribunal of
Conscience: Mills v. Wyman Reconsidered, 71 Tulane
L.Rev. 1749 (1997).]
Another
professor was less charitable: "The judges do
whatever they want; they decide cases however they want,
and they sometimes lie. And if a lawyer wins a case for a
reason other than the one he wanted, if it goes on
appeal, he's going to have to defend the reason the judge
gave him the win."
We spent
forever learning under what conditions the use of
spring-gun traps would be legal -- in daylight, with a
sign, if children could read -- with me all the while
wanting to scream, "SPRING-GUN TRAPS ARE ALWAYS
ILLEGAL!" And, of course, that's eventually the
point we got to, but it took us over a week to get to
that point. (Bird v. Holbrook,
an 1825 English case.) We learned
that the most important case in tort law involves two
dogs fighting (Brown v. Kendall,
an 1850 Massachusetts case),
and the most important case in civil procedure involved a
train (Erie v. Tompkins,
a 1938 U.S. Supreme Court case).
In contracts
we're learning we should stay on the right path if we
don't want to get lost in the forest. Hey, don't laugh:
That last tidbit is one of the few things I've actually
learned so far. It was like the day as an undergrad
studying political science when Professor Joe Parker
drawled, "When you've got 'em by the balls, their
hearts and minds will follow," and I thought,
"Hey, now I get it!" ... In contracts, the
paths in the forest are expectation, restitution, and
reliance. To recover, pick one, and follow the path.
In an early
exercise in contracts we were to look around the room and
come up with a list of the contracts around us. I listed
my contract with the university, the teacher's contract
with the university, the contracts the university had
made with the various builders who built the room we sat
in, the university's contract with the electric company
to provide power. The prof asked a student to name a
contract. A young female student said something about a
contract between the students and this professor, that we
would be good students and the professor would be a good
teacher. I thought, "Duh?" I did not laugh out
loud. The teacher didn't laugh, but she smiled and asked
questions until the student looked foolish even to
herself. Finally, the student said that maybe the
contract was that we students would provide laughter for
the professor. Welcome to the "Socratic
method."
There are
about 40,000 people across the U.S. now going thru this
initiation by immersion process. For reasons as varied as
people can be, we each have chosen to begin law school.
By now, most of the 40,000 have made their way thru the
case of the uncle who promised to pay his nephew for not
drinking and smoking, and the case of the trust-fund-kid
who kicked the kid with the bad leg. (Hamer v. Sidway, an 1891 New York
case; Vosburg v. Putney, an 1891 Wisconsin
case.) While the 40,000 are not
using the same books, a few cases are considered
"rites of passage" for all first years. I've
been told that, when I get to property next semester,
there will be a case about a fox jumping over a fence. (Pierson v. Post, an 1805 New York
case.)
The physical
plant is excellent: The library is gorgeous and has
wonderful views of the blue and gold dome of the
Basilica. Most classrooms are modified so a student can
plug in his/her lap top computer; most seats in the
library have set ups for portable computers. However,
it's not perfect: Perhaps because of the three-story
enclosed atrium, the temperature system seems difficult
to control; the air conditioning runs so cold that folks
need long johns in August. There is one auditorium-style
room that seats 300, with a movable wall that can divide
the room into two rooms; most (perhaps all) first-year
students have three of their four classes in those
half-auditorium rooms. As an auditorium, it's good. As
two classrooms, it becomes two classrooms poorly designed
for the law school teaching method and two rooms with
awful acoustics.
Only one
professor demands that students stand when presenting a
case. I have him, but I've yet to be asked to "stand
and deliver." The fact that the other professors do
not use the "stand and deliver" approach does
not, however, mean that they've grown soft. The best way
for a student to assure that he will be questioned during
EVERY class is to arrive in class unprepared one day and
chance to have the professor call on him. "I didn't
read it" doesn't wash too well with law school
profs. One student is living on a sailboat; during a
recent bad storm, he spent the night trying to save his
boat, and he arrived the next day not having done the
readings. Chance had the professor call on him; now the
professor is like a duck on a bug everyday with that poor
man. The student hasn't since had to say, "I didn't
read it."
(If you have a question in those early days, make sure to
meet with the professor privately and say, "I'm
embarrassed to ask because I fear I'll look stupid."
He'll say, "You're new. There are no stupid
questions." You'll ask the question, which will give
him the chance to respond in such a way that suggests he
sees you as the biggest dunderhead first-year student he
was ever given. Go ahead and fall for it; it's a little
like sticking your fingers into a Chinese finger trap.)
We are
divided into sections with each section having about 30
students. Each section meets by itself for the legal
research and writing class. For the other three classes,
we are joined with another section -- a different 'nother
section for each of the three other classes. The students
we are first getting to know the best are those in our
section since we have all four classes with those other
30 students. I am by far the oldest in my section. While
there are other first years older than I am, in my
section I am the only student older than 30. Not only am
I old enough to be the mom of any other student in my
section, I'm older than some of the students' moms.
Most of the
students are under 25, but the ages range up to past 55.
We are predominately white, but there is a generous
flavoring of black, brown, yellow, and "mocha."
Just over half the class is female. There is the student
from South Korea who intends to return to Korea to
practice law in the Korean corporate world. There is the
man who just returned from three years in the Peace Corps
where he lived in a mud hut. There is the Navy Reservist
who says that if you fall asleep in a Navy class, the
answer to give is, "The answer is three, Sir,"
because Navy officers can't count higher than two, so the
answer will confuse the officer. (In civil procedure
we've learned that, if you fall asleep during a trial,
the first thing to say when you wake up is, "I
object.") There is the student who belonged to the
same gym as Supreme Court Justices Rehnquist and Scalia.
He said, "Once you've seen their naked butts, it's
hard to be impressed with them." He opined that
Rehnquist has a good butt for a man past 70, but that
Scalia has a bad butt. (Actually, he described Scalia's
butt in greater detail, but even I have some limits.)
There is the young Puerto Rican woman who learned to
speak English only three years ago; the middle-aged
Russian Jewish woman who speaks precise but strongly
accented English; the innocent Marine wife from
small-town America; the man who acquired a police record
with his work to get clean needles to drug addicts so as
to reduce the spread of HIV; the former middle-school
English teacher; the professional violinist; the gay man
with a long-term husband; another gay man who's single
and looking for a date for Saturday night. There's the
American man who'd hoped to live out his life in
communist U.S.S.R. who is back in America with his
Siberian wife and Russian-speaking sons. There's the man
with the varied past who once lived with monks and once
drove a truck. There's the divorcing mom of young
children who works full-time as an R.N. We are liberal
Catholics, conservative Catholics, and failed Catholics;
Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and more. And, slowly, we are
getting to know each other as people, as individuals
beyond the guy with red hair, or the middle-aged mom with
a mouth.
Among my
disappointments?
(1) I'd hoped to find a distinctly "Catholic
flavor" at the law school. It is not here. Yes,
there is a crucifix on the wall in every classroom. Yes,
there is a chapel in the law school where noon day mass
is said three times a week. However, there's a good
chance that a student saying that abortion is murder
would be laughed at, or seen as eccentric. There's no
indication that, in regard to Roe v. Wade and the decisions it spawned, Catholic Law sees
itself as Charles Hamilton Houston had Howard Law become
for Plessy v. Ferguson. If Roe v. Wade and its progeny ever
are overturned or limited, it won't be because Catholic
Law took any active role.
(2) The advising at Catholic is poor to
nonexistent. If there is any system of faculty advisers,
I've yet to learn what it is. Another law school to which
I had been accepted had assigned me an adviser by July,
obviously before school started. Officially, Catholic's
position is that a student is welcome to seek advice from
any faculty member. In practice, what it means is that we
are half way into the first semester, and the only
first-year law students with faculty advisors are those
who are in the special "institutes." And, while
faculty members are readily available in the minutes
immediately after class, Catholic does not encourage
faculty members to maintain an "open door"
policy. Their offices are in a secluded area, guarded by
a receptionist; their office phone numbers are not listed
or generally available; there is no usable online
directory of e-mail addresses, and professors are seldom
seen in areas where students congregate other than as
they "pass thru." Do NOT come to Catholic's law
school expecting to find an open-door policy with
professors. The building itself seems to have been
designed to put barriers between students and professors.
(3) There is an informally run student mentor
program; however, perhaps because it is informal and run
on a volunteer basis, I've seen no evidence that it
exists in practice. If you come to Catholic, you had best
expect to make it on your own, without any faculty
adviser and without any "big brother/big
sister."
My advice? If
you are at the "applying stage" and want an
admit to Catholic, if you have roughly a 3.0 GPA in
today's world of inflated grade point averages and
roughly a 155 on the LSAT, you can count on getting an
offer of admission from Catholic. If your numbers are
lower, remember to count your application for admission
as your first case, and briefly explain the elephants
standing in the living room before you go on to show the
two-story family room that you built by hand. If you have
been admitted and know you'll be going to Catholic, watch
two movies before getting here: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS and A CIVIL ACTION. Then, pack your long johns for the cold
building.
More later.
The three red books are calling to me.
Alice
Marie Beard
Oct. 1, 1999
NEXT >

|

NEXT >
email Alice
|