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Survival tips
from a law professor
Posted on October 8, 2012
Is 1L one hell? Survival tips from a law professor
But obviously you shouldn’t wait for the ball or the answer. Instead, what you
need to understand is the analytical structure of questions relevant to an issue,
the range of valid positions, arguments made for and against them, and the
process of thinking through them. Because, unfortunately, thinking isn’t such a
breeze, and there is no simple ball that is hidden, but rather an array of balls
that you need to learn how to juggle.
9. Don’t be boring
We are a polite people, but one can take that too far. A British professor once
told me, “Americans are too damn polite, so that a conversation between them
consists of each person trying to say what the other person would have said had
it been their turn to speak. And that isn’t a real conversation at all.” Don’t be
afraid to disagree or be provocative, or even to try on positions you aren’t quite
sure about. And don’t close your minds to those who disagree with you. You may
find that they are more convincing than you thought, or that discussion with
them deepens your understanding of just why they are so wrong.
2. Go Meta
It won’t surprise you to learn that legal policy analysis often leads to unclear or
conflicting conclusions. In these sorts of situations, it is often useful to switch to
the meta-question of framing issues around who best is placed to decide the
question. Every time one side argues that X is the best outcome, the response
can be not only that Y is a better outcome, but also the meta-argument that
judges are not the best placed to decide whether X or Y is best, so judges should
defer to some other set of actors, such as legislators, agencies, or contracting
parties who have chosen (or would choose) Y. Just remember the old saying,
“Anything you can do I can do meta.”
Others leap to the opposite conclusion that all legal issues are confused. But
that doesn’t follow. Some things are resolved, and there is a structure to
thinking about the unresolved issues. Unfortunately, sometimes students get so
focused on spotting ambiguities and conflicts that they begin to jump at
shadows, straining to find ambiguities and conflicts everywhere, even when they
don’t exist. You have to understand the confusion that exists without seeing
nothing but confusion.
Perhaps I can best explain this with a saying from Zen. So here it is, quite
literally, your moment of Zen.
Before I studied Zen, mountains were just mountains and rivers were just rivers.
When I first took up the study of Zen, mountains were no longer mountains and
rivers were no longer rivers.
But now that I am a Zen master, mountains are once again mountains and rivers
once again rivers.
There will come a time for you this year when legal mountains no longer seem
like mountains and legal rivers no longer seems like rivers. But have some faith
that when the year ends, and you are a law master, that saying will actually
make sense.