Boring
by
Robert E. Rains

Let us speak the truth. Law school is too often, er, you know, kind of, well, boring. Was it any different when you were in law school?

Oh yes, and also irrelevant. This, or course, is not exactly surprising inasmuch as we -- law profs, that is -- are, by and large, refugees from the practice of law specifically, and the real world in general. The major distinction among us is simply the remoteness in time of our flight to the asylum.

Every now and then I break bread with former students enthralled by the practice of law. I always ask two questions. How was law school? Their eyes glaze over as they struggle to find an honest answer that won't be too insulting. Did you learn anything that has actually been useful in your work as a lawyer? They ponder that one a while. I can almost see the mental search of those long-closed files. Then the light dawns. Gosh, no, they invariably conclude.

Now before you turn the page (or worse) in anger, let me reassure you of that which you are already thinking. These hackneyed condemnations don't apply to you (or me) personally, only to our colleagues collectively and to our grandiose, if ill-defined, mutual endeavor.

In the words of a now out-of-favor revolutionary, what is to be done? The problem is to bring reality into a largely unreal exercise. This is, of course, not exactly an original brainstorm. The trick is how to do it. Langdell tried to concoct a science out of cases. (Methinks the result was closer to alchemy.) Others have come up with moot courts and moot court teams, live clinics and that perfect oxymoron: simulation clinics.

All of these methods may -- to borrow from medical terminology -- provide valid aid to students if administered in homeopathic doses. Overdone, they will invariably induce iatrogenic disorders in the patients.

Now, despite what you may think when you read final exams, law students are pretty darn smart. By the second week of school they know us for what we are. Dare I say it? Fossils! But, as any paleontologist will tell you, there is still much to be learned from fossils. The analogy is apt. From our students' perspective, anything that occurred before roughly last week has the reality and significance of, say, the War of Jenkins' Ear. And because they have been raised in the ahistorical era of the sound-bite, students cannot readily understand the framework of law -- much less justice -- from traditional law school fare.

I have no answers, only a few suggestions. We must intersperse traditional legal education methods with media that are user-friendly for students. But the TV show, film, etc., must always be a supplement to, not a substitute for, traditional law school programming.

Every year, my most successful class transpires when I show the PBS video, Eyes on the Prize, America's Civil Right Years, Episode 2: Fighting Back (1957-62), to my Education Law Seminar students. They are assigned to read Brown v. Board of Education and its 1960s progeny prior to class. But they just don't get it. Then they see the National Guard with bayonets drawn at Little Rock's Central High and lawyer Thurgood Marshall and Old Miss ablaze and public schools chained shut by government decree. The reaction tends toward actual disbelief. It cannot be true; it can't have happened. Then I bring out my secret weapon: a black colleague who grew up in Alabama in that era, who calmly relates the conditions under which she fought for what every one of my students has always taken for granted, the right to attend high school. Her one-hour visit to my class, by the way, would dispel anyone's doubts about the critical need for multiculturalism in legal education. (The Eyes on the Prize series is generally available in public libraries, and I'm more than willing to act as an agent for my colleague.)

Another eye-opener for students is Frederick Wiseman's film, Titicut Follies (available through Zipporah Films, One Richdale Ave., Unit #4, Cambridge, MA 02140, telephone 617/576-3603), depicting conditions in a Massachusetts "correctional" mental institution. I show this to students in my Disability Law Seminar. I want students to feel what long-term institutionalization meant for mental patients. Then I take them on a field trip to a local state mental hospital. (Be careful. Hospitals often want to give students a sanitized tour. Insist on visiting locked wards and forensic units. At least one of our state hospitals has preserved an underground tunnel with rings fastened into the walls for chaining up the "patients.") Our local institution has a small, but excellent museum on site, with extensive photographs, electro-shock paraphernalia, and -- best of all -- a log book of commitments, going back to the mid-1800s. Students are edified to see that one could be institutionalized for such aberrant behavior as reading novels or extensive studying.

Sometimes, however, if you can't take the students to reality, you can bring reality to them. One of our state appellate courts was happy to schedule a panel to hear a full week of argument on our school's premises. Students were in and out of that room all week long. Similarly, the Social Security Administration's Office of Hearings and Appeals has had a program -- of which I've taken advantage -- to hold administrative hearings at law schools. With the claimants' written permission, a local administrative law judge scheduled four hearings one morning at our school, and my entire Administrative Law class attended. As a double learning opportunity, the cases were presented by students in my Disability Law Clinic. (You can bet they were over-prepared when they had to represent clients in front of their peers!) Although the formal program apparently no longer exists, SSA continues to encourage its ALJs to perform such public service. As a practical matter, I suggest contacting your local OHA at least two months prior to the date that you would like to have the hearings.

John McKutcheon's brilliant song, The Red Corvette (from the Water From Another Time album, (Rounder 11555) Appleseed Productions, 1025 Locust Ave., Charlottesville, VA 22901 ($12 for cassette)), invariably brings the house down in Family Law. It also, I hope, teaches students, in a way they are not likely ever to forget, the need for both spouses to maintain reasonable control over the sale of marital assets. (Sorry, but I won't explain the song any more fully in print; you'll have to get it yourself.)

Finally, when all else fails, try doggerel. I have inflicted my own effort at verse, The Cautionary Ballad of Susan M., 40 J. Legal Educ. 485 (1990), on an Education Law seminar to try to demonstrate the futility of educational malpractice litigation. The sequel, Susan M. Reprised, 43 J. Legal Educ. 149 (1993), maybe, just maybe, will illustrate the concept of res judicata to first-year Civil Procedure students, so that even if they don't remember the phrase, they still get the idea.

The point is that law school does not have to be as, well, you know, as it tends to be. With a little leavening, one can get a rise out of the students. And they just might learn, and remember, something valuable.