Dear Ann Althouse -- No, it's not ok

Ann Althouse is a great writer and a clear thinker, but in her February 20 New York Times column “A Skull Full of Mush”, she writes about something close to her -- teaching law -- and gets it wrong.  She ends the column this way:

"The students who come into our law schools are adults who have decided that they are ready to spend a tremendous amount of time and money preparing to enter a profession. We show the greatest respect for their individual autonomy if we deny ourselves the comfort of trying to make them happy and teach them what they came to learn: how to think like lawyers."

Ms. Althouse is responding to an issue that is rapidly gaining attention in the world of legal education: the tremendous damage that going through law schools does to many students.  Studies going back more than 15 years have repeatedly shown that law students suffer significant negative psychological chages during law school.  Although they look much like other undergraduates coming in, by the end the first year 30% are depressed, and it goes to 40% by the end of law school.  Drinking as a coping behavior goes up.  Anxiety, hostility and paranoia increase.  And, there is a shift from intrinsic to extrinsic motivations for practicing law.  In other words, students go from wanting to do good to wanting to get the goods.   And these trends continue into practice where lawyers lead the professions in the rate of depression. To put it mildly, this is not good for clients!

Ms. Althouse's position is a very convenient one for a law professor.  “Hey, what I’m doing is just fine!  In fact, it’s good for them!  And don’t your dare suggest otherwise!” And she's not alone here. Another law professor, James J. White put it:

"Until better data come forward, I will continue the traditional law teacher's reign of pillage and abuse.  I do that happy in the belief that my hectoring will leave my students better, if momentarily sicker, lawyers."

Mr. White seems to suggest we are currently doing an acceptable job of creating a great start in the law for new lawyers.  Actually, that's not fair. What he suggests, like Ms. Althouse, is that the only job of law schools is to teach students to “think like lawyers.” This, of course, is not what either the students or the public wants from law schools – we want those schools to teach students to be lawyers. And good ones. We most definitely are NOT OK with law schools pumping out depressed, unhappy students to face an extraordinarily tough transition into the profession without a healthy mindset to support them in that effort.

Anyone see the connection to concerns about professionalism here? In fact, we roll students out of law school reeling from three disorienting, unsatisfying, mind-numbing years that they hate in overwhelming numbers to face a transition into a very demanding profession that is a significantly more stressful today than it was just a few decades ago. Then we do virtually nothing to assist in that transition.  Why are we surprised when lawyers fail to flourish and the profession comes under increasing public hostility that stems, at least partially, from the root of unhappiness that is planted in law school?

I am in favor of helping students better cope with the challenges of law school. Positive psychology has developed proven approaches that can help students develop and maintain positive explanatory styles to ward off depression, experience more positive emotions so their base for learning, cooperation, and pro-social behavior will remain strong, and develop stronger relationships that will sustain them through their professional and personal lives. Law school should feel an strong sense of urgency about making training in these techniques available to students. Significant components of that training are available in web-based formats and could be rolled out for a tiny, tiny fraction of the tuition charged by even the most modest law schools, let alone the elites.

Beyond that, we need to consider carefully why law school is so damaging (and, yes, it seems more so than other post-graduate options). The discomfort some on legal faculties may feel at the possible disruption of a system that works for them is understandable, but most will surely be willing to engage in the effort for the good of students and society. And, when they do, I think they're going to be proud of the results.

Comments

[Ed Brewer]

While the points about law-school excesses and quality of teaching are well taken, I think Ann's comment needs to be given its due as well. Some students entering law school do expect to be made "happy" by a magic potion that they believe law professors obligated to pour through their open mouths and down their throats, and that will make them "lawyers." My own view, as I tell my students every year, is that we have three (or four) years together during which I have the opportunity and the privilege of helping them turn themselves into lawyers. I remind them that they have to take care of their own spirits and bodies, as well as their relationships with families and other loved ones, and that those matters come first. Most of us understand one another about who is responsible for what. If they aren't adults by the point they get to their first year of law school--and some of them are not (I wasn't)--they need to get that way before they are turned over to a profession that will eat them for lunch, regardless of whose fault it may be that that didn't happen. This is not a new idea: "bring up a child in the way in which it should go, and when it is old, it will not depart from it." (Prov. 22:6.) I certainly agree that we need to re-think and re-create legal education along the lines that positive psychology, among other critics, suggests. I also think that with rare exceptions, law faculties are woefully unqualified to undertake that task. Certainly I am, so I try to listen to colleagues who are qualified. But as regards helping our students learn to "think like a lawyer," we really don't have a choice about whether we are going to do that or not. Ann is right about that, she addressed a question worth addressing and did not attempt to develop a unified theory of legal education, and she was speaking from a perspective that both retains value and will retain value at least until legal education has remade itself in many ways. All faculty members and “camps” of “classroom,”, “skills,” and “clinical” faculty need to pull together instead of taking pot-shots at one another’s perspectives on our common endeavor. When we do that, we resemble nothing so much as the seven wise, blind persons surrounding and describing the elephant.

[Rebecca]

We bully students, thereby teaching them to bully each other, and later, bully the public. It impresses me to no end that states such as Connecticut are ready to put a law on the books that prevents bullying in employment, but law school professors like Professor White find it okay in the classroom.

[Alvaro]

Maybe a way to improve the situation is not from the health/ personality point of view but from the performance one. It is clear today that anxiety can affect quality of thinking, working memory and decision-making.

We can change the structure, and/ or how students are ready to deal with that structure. At the very least universities should consider introducing emotional self-regulation and stress management (through meditation, yoga or biofeedback) as part of what will enable law students to succeed in life...and school.

[Aaron]

My very first law school experience was walking into an 8:00 AM contracts class taught by J.J. White. He was tough, exacting, and demanding. It is fair for him to assert that the Socratic method works for him, because unlike most professors who claim to teach socraticaly, he uses that technique effectively. He falls among the few law professors I had who would have every right to ask those who would have him change his methods, "Where's your evidence that your way will work better"? (Subtract the dry humor from the quote above, and that is in fact what he's challenging the critics of law school teaching to do.)

I agree with your overall criticisms of law school and the teaching techniques used in law school. But at the same time, I have to give the devil his due. Had all of my law school professors been as dedicated, hard-working, and skilled in their teaching methods as Professor White, I would have learned a lot more and, frankly, I think I would have been happier. The professors I found most frustrating were those who defended their poor teaching methods with the claim that they were teaching us to think like lawyers, and those who tried to cover for their lack of preparation for class or perhaps even their lack of knowledge of the material they were supposed to be teaching by pretending their haphazard quizzing of students was "the Socratic method". I often had the impression that Professor White spent more time preparing for class than most of his students.

[Senia.com - Positive Psychology Blog]

Dave, great article. This is what you've always been telling us is the problem with law schools and then, later, with the legal profession! That it's a slow drift to the wrong direction. Thanks.

I like your title too.
Best,
S.