Law Schools

Don't Judge A Law School By Its Cover

Don’t be too quick to judge -- you might not realize what you're missing.

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IMG_0560-privateI’ve discovered that there are grave disturbances out there that will cause you to lose focus.  I’m not talking about Pokemon.  I’m talking about people who cause disruption, jarring you from center, and leave you for a tailspin.  In the end, it is difficult to not judge those people, to label them, and move on.

I have written about these drama llamas.  This article is about the opposite type of people: The people who I really want at my law school, the LawProfBlawg School of Law.

It is incredibly easy to judge people.  We are human, after all.  We all do stupid things.  We make mistakes.  Taking it further, it is very easy to create a notion that the person who opposes us in court is a villain, their case is frivolous, and that we are always on the side of the angels.  It is easy to overestimate how awesome we are and discount the ability of others.  It is very easy to become self-centered Professor Narcissus:  Hear me speak, but I don’t need to listen.  It is easy to look upon the senior partner’s a**holishness without seeing that partner’s insecurities and pressures.

What I think caused me to think about this was the stark contrast of the Savannah Law Review and Savannah Law School. It is a special place. I was there for a symposium on American Legal Fictions.  I crashed the party because friends of mine were speaking.  I was welcomed.

The reception in the library was elegant and amazing.  But in one of the study rooms next door, two 1Ls were trying to study.   Many of us were looking in on them with some nervous pity as they studied.  After doing some silly things including a mime impression, it occurred to me to invite them to the reception to get some food and drink.  I did what I thought was bucking the status quo.  I invited them.  The thing of it is: I wasn’t the first.  Several of the Savannah Law Review’s board members and faculty had already invited them. It was the human thing to do.  I immediately thought back to how I’ve been in similar circumstances and didn’t get such an invite.

Unlike other symposia where the students stood in one corner, huddled in great fear and boredom, here students interacted with professors and guests.  They engaged.  I don’t mean “I read for next week” type of stuff.  It was genuine interaction discussing a variety of topics, including the papers, the presenters, and other things.

A champagne flute was broken (not by the 1Ls; I will not name names to protect the innocent). Several students and one of the symposium speakers rushed to clean it up.  No one called janitorial staff.  They took care of it themselves.

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Maybe this happens more often than I think at law schools, but it made me think that the students weren’t just tuition dollars to the faculty, and the faculty weren’t just people who gave out grades to the students.  It was a real graduate school experience.  It made me think about how quick we are to judge people and things.  Just because we rank the top 10 law schools as being awesome doesn’t make it so.  The same goes further down the ranks.

The next morning, a student took me to the airport.  The student was going to work on something for a professor, after having spent a good 80 gazillion hours on the symposium.  Then, the student said, “But [the professor] would be mad if [the professor] knew I wasn’t doing something fun today.”  What, huh?  It sounded like the student was going to do the work, anyway.

I point this out because as we rush to rank and judge, we all use imperfect screens to make those judgments.  Rankings are the worst.  Grades, too, might fall into that category.  Regardless, when we do that, we miss the details.  We miss the special things that aren’t quantifiable.  And we make wrong judgments on that basis.

Law professors, as you submit your articles this law review cycle and the next, as you seek to climb up the ranks to show how awesome your work is, consider this: Whom are you serving, if not the endogenous validations of those who came out of those law schools, only to validate them by forever ranking those schools highly?  How does that serve competition on the merits?  How does that affect the value of your own school?

Prospective students, as you think about entering this hallowed profession, look at what the schools offer.  Are you one of 3 billion students in a single class?  What opportunities do you have?  Do the professors care whether you are successful or not?  Rankings don’t always tell the whole picture, as a recent New York Times op-ed suggests.  Remember the times you think the same things about how your LSAT score isn’t the best, but that schools should look at you for the whole of your application?  It’s like that.

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In other words, don’t be too quick to judge.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school, who sees the irony in his bio in relation to his article this week. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at [email protected].

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