SISTER LAW STUDENT
I almost ended up like Henry Louis Gates. No, I was not short listed for Harvard (regrettably) – I’m talking about the part where he withdrew from Yale Law School after one month.
I can relate.
I have been attending William Mitchell College of Law as a part-time evening student. In addition to my full-time job as a professor. In addition to raising three children (ten and under) with my husband. This means it has taken me 23 months to complete the first year, or “1L” curriculum.
And don’t get me started about Contracts.
My experience last year in Contracts was more traumatizing than James T. Hart’s in The Paperchase. One of my concerns was that we did not have a casebook. In Mary Joe Frug’s book Postmodern Legal Feminism she argues that a casebook is a powerful document. She writes, “The editorial choices within a casebook determine how many readers think about law …” She agrees with Stanly Fish that, “linguistic and textual facts, rather than being objects of interpretation are its products.”
In my class, we were e-mailed the chapters two days before class. How I was supposed to learn a doctrinal course without a table of contents or an index?
Without a table of contents, I wasn’t able to put the assignment in context, which would have allowed me to anticipate the content or activate prior knowledge. A table of contents would have helped me to determine my purpose for reading and would have helped me to connect the assignment to other parts of the course. Without this important learning tool, I was not able to see why the case was important and isolate the “focus issue.”
As an academic, I can appreciate the need to publish, but as a student I was lost without a book.
Then, there’s the issue of law and gender. When I entered Contracts, I underestimated how much my views about gender would affect my understanding of the law. In 1988 W. David Slawson, Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, and chair of the Contracts Section of the Association of American Law Schools, declined a proposal for a joint Association program with feminists. In a publicly circulated letter, he explained his decision by elaborating his view that:
“Feminist theory, was unlikely (ever) to contribute significantly to contract law because the male bias of our society…has not had important consequences for contract law.”
Twenty years later, not much has changed and I wish I had known what to expect.
The year I graduated from college (1991) Patricia J. Williams published On Being the Object of Property (as a gift of intelligent rage), in The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Williams uses a combination of feminist personal narrative and legal discourse to analyze how contract law exercises a “deadening power” by creating in the individual “a passive relationship to the document: it is the contract that governs, that ‘does’ everything, that absorbs all responsibility and deflects all other recourse.” Her article further explores in particular how this quality of contract negatively affects those who have been institutionally (and thus legally) formulated as inferior: people of color and women.
As someone who earned a Ph.D. by addressing issues of inequality and then spent ten years teaching critical race feminism to undergraduates, I couldn’t help but feel that the “master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” (Audre Lorde) I kick myself however, because at nearly forty years old, I willingly entered the master’s house, and couldn’t bring myself to use his tools.
Next month I will take my last two “1L” exams (finally!). I will enter them with less trepidation and with lowered expectations. Because of exams, I won’t return to blogging until May. The topic? On turning 40! For now however, I’m a sister who REALLY needs to study, so wish a sister luck.
Carmen
1128 days ago
Best of Luck! I am sure that you will do great!
Dennis O'Bell
1128 days ago
1. Good luck on 1L, obviously.
2. Love what you’re doing with the blog.
3. Very intrigued by your comments on the lack of a table of contents and how it thwarted your efforts. In my day job, I often find myself having to bolt top-level messaging onto a client’s presentation or website or what-have-you — all the information is there, but they haven’t offered the audience a schema by which to glean the main messages and understand the core story. Actually, contrary to your experience here, businesspeople love tables of contents — the problem is that they offer nothing more: no context, no topline, no “so what.” It’s a common problem in so many information-rich disciplines, and I guess law is no different.
maria mitchell
1128 days ago
I tried to warn you or maybe it was your law school survival buddy that law is a profession/trade much like being a cook or a mechanic. While in school you learn the basics memorize and regurgitate what heard from the professor in the framework that has been used for centuries. There is no room for individuality and creativity. The formula is clear and that is what is expected. However, practice much like a chef or a mechanic you get to be creative, push your agenda and stake your claim in the world if you wish. You can use the power of the law for good or evil. Act as minister of justice or administer justice. As far as I can tell law school has very little to do with the practice of law or the furtherance of equal justice in our society.
Anonymous
1128 days ago
Hi,
The mysteries of Contract Law and the Law itself American Jurisprudence.I suppose that Contracts more than any other course in law School prepares one to “think like a lawyer”.i believe and clearly it is true that law scholl is to prepare one to think like a lawyer.And the law is unlike any other profession.occupation or endeavor in America.
It is difficult at times for a person accomplished in some other endeavor or profession,to put the thinking and structures that led to success there aside and adopt the “legal mind”.
I hope this makes a bit of sense to you although I guess it won’t matter because by the time you read this you will have finished your exams successfully.It has been almost thirty years since I was in law school and I will tell you I never went to school again until last year. After Law School I vowed “no more school”.Cuz Richard Mann
Ms. Akinyele
1128 days ago
Hi Duchess,
I pray that God gives you the strength you need to complete this program. The law is in dire need of you and your perspective!
I would be bothered by the lack of a table of contents as well. I think there is a tendency by Westerners to de-contextualize everything in order to establish laws that claim to be universal, but in actuality privileges one social group over another. For societies of color, context provides a basis for examination. However, I am quite certain that nothing can stop your great mind from arriving at viewpoint that challenges these conventional ways of thinking despite the lack of context. I look forward to hearing more about your journey!
tope
Anonymous
1127 days ago
You can do it! I’m right there with you, fighting to do the day work and the night studying. If anyone can do it, you can!
Patrick G.
jason schellack
1127 days ago
you know i am here to help my sisters out! if you want help studying for property, just ask!
~schellack
kfrancesca
1127 days ago
I went to law school as a grown up too. We used a DVD in my contracts class…then I knew I was in another place and time. I ended up supplementing it with the blue book with the ship on it. (I loved Peerless v Peerless). But constitutional law drove me nuts. When I finally got up the gumption, eight weeks in, to raise my hand, the prof answered “that’s a political response–what’s the legal argument?” That was the day I got it. Somebody gave me an explanation I cherish…Phds of a certain age already have so much text in our heads that narrowing something to four corners, or the legal reasoning is an act of torture. 1Ls don’t have the clutter of an education, so it’s easier for them. Plus, I never checked my grades. I had a job.
So good luck sisterscholar. We need more out here who know how those folks think.
You will make it!
Vertigo29
1125 days ago
Good luck with your exam. I have enjoyed reading your blog!
HJones
1125 days ago
Blog is a great! Good luck with all the studying. Will look forward to reading more.
Hilary
Anonymous
1125 days ago
Love the blog!! Good luck sista – getting over the 1L hump will be a hallelujah moment…until it’s time for Con Law.
Maybe we should get the school to make a rule that all books/texts we are using should have an index and table of contents! Just a thought.
Maureen
watchoutmomshome
1117 days ago
I love your blog. Your life experience allows you a unique vantage point from which to observe and contend with the law school process.
All of my children were born after law school, but I carried one of them while studying for and passing the bar exam.
I will follow your writings with keen interest. You are already a smashing success.
yocellie
1111 days ago
At least you’re in the same boat as your students (like myself)! It’s always good to know you never stop being a student. Good luck, good luck, good luck!
Celeste