11.9.05
Had a my first taste of law school examination conditions, have to say it was pretty intense. It didn’t count for a major part of the semester grade, but I am wondering if my future exams will be in similar level of intensity and format. Talking to some of my classmates it didn’t sound like anyone had enough time to finish, making me wonder if the strategy of exam design is to make it so the average student is rushing at the end to finish.
A little bit of real world training, I suppose. With so much emphasis on deadlines for filing papers, format and language, I think it is relevant training for us to get used to it. There is a definite mentality and method of thinking that is being indoctrinated with the overall study of law, I can’t say I like or dislike it. A little too rigid and distrustful for my taste, but I suppose that is to come with the territory. The competitive nature of the profession creates an incentive for misconduct, one preventative action is to have a set code of conduct and rules.
For now I’m open to learning and developing skills, although I am curious to how all of this training will play out when we actually start applying some of the stuff we’re learning to real life situations. Having some limited experience working in legal settings before, I can see how parts of the coursework directly apply, and how others do not.
I think the rigid nature of the rules is supposed to in part serve as a surrogate client, keeping you on the ball and on point. I suppose it is supposed to instill a sense of responsibility or ownership in a case, as an advocate would for a client. That is, give you incentive to care about somebody’s case as if the outcome were in your best interest. Classic free market arguement, in this case, the course grade will later transform into a fat paycheck. I wonder if this is an effective substitute for simple empathy in the human condition of the client, in pursuit of their claim. Granted that all professionals are trained to maintain a certain level of personal distance from the client, I wonder if being favoring monetary incentives over altruistic incentives is the only and best way to go.
Of course, incentives are everything, contrasting with my experience in policy school, you could tell that the majority of the students (with a few exceptions) there were driven by public service as opposed to money. This being so might explain overall absense of a need to spend an excessive amount of time on ethics and professional conduct.
The other day on my way to class I ran into an elderly gentleman who was looking for legal advice on a property dispute. He had apparently tried to talk to somebody in the legal clinic at the school, but hadn’t gotten the advice that he was looking for. I told him that I couldn’t really help him much, being that I just started my degree, and haven’t even gotten a semester of classes pau yet. Chances are, he can’t afford the attorney fees, so he is going to his local law school to find pro-bono advice. It serves as another reminder of the current system in place that limits access to justice through the pocketbook. Won’t go into the the reasons for this right now, but I will say that it is an area that we as society probably need to work on.
You can’t buy empathy, but you can buy legal representation.