ORIENTATION can be a stressful time. New students are worried about making the transition to the next stage of their lives amid unfamiliar surroundings. Orientation organizers, meanwhile, tend to be concerned about avoiding any gaffes that could bring down the entire schedule. Being in my final year at the Law School, I was decidedly in the latter category.
This year's orientation, with its freak earthquake and accompanying aftershocks, was, of course, more nerve-wracking than usual. Obviously, just coping with Mother Nature's ire this past Tuesday was high on my to-do list, but speechwriting came in a close second to survival. You see, this year as part of my duties as president of the Law School's student body, I was tasked with giving a welcome address to the new "1L" law students. Plan A had been to stitch together a pastiche of knock-knock jokes and Archer references, but common sense and fear of impeachment suggested I have a Plan B.
The central focus of virtually every law school orientation speech is the semi-mystical process of "learning to think like a lawyer." This peculiar phrase is polite shorthand for describing the set of deductive and analytical skills that an individual is supposed to develop in law school. Additionally, the process of "learning to think like a lawyer" is often used as a way to describe the pressurized atmosphere of law school and the focus on academic pursuits to the exclusion of all else.
Long-standing law school humor holds that once you begin thinking like a lawyer, you will not be able to think in any other way. Every conversation you have should suddenly become a training ground for you to fine-tune your use of deductive reasoning. And the truth is that many lawyers do tend to revel in dissecting the smallest issues, even in patently non-legal situations. While this obviously has its benefits, such pervasive - and perverse - attitudes contribute to the general misconception that lawyers are aggressive, uncooperative and socially insensitive.
The Law School has a strikingly different reputation, however, which I believe derives from the University's institutional culture clashing and combining with the general culture of the legal profession. While the Law School clearly does focus on teaching its graduates to think like lawyers, an equal emphasis is placed upon building a collegial environment and encouraging social bonds between the students and the larger community. While this may seem normal, an institutional emphasis on collegiality is actually quite rare among top-ranked law schools. Rather, the prevailing norm is predatory and internecine competition. Thomas Jefferson's ideals, which seek to created a courteous and well-rounded graduate of the University, are clearly also felt at the Law School.
Many students take the power of their University culture for granted, but the authority of our founder's vision is somewhat contested at the Law School. Truthfully, the diverse undergraduate components of the University simply lack a universal counterbalancing cultural force to University traditions. Regardless of interest or major, undergraduates are exposed to Jefferson's ideals and vision. Law students, in contrast, are faced with both the University's institutional culture, as well as the equally powerful culture of the legal profession, which has no real analogy on the undergraduate side.
At first, I was quite skeptical about claims that the Law School was influenced sufficiently by the University's institutional culture to be different from its peers. To be perfectly blunt, the legal profession is not about being well-rounded. Rather, one aims to hone his own individual reasoning and argumentation skills by practicing them in every possible arena. This is not to say that the study or practice of law must be a zero-sum game, but it is inherently competitive and confrontational rather than collegial and cooperative.
The fact that the Law School, perhaps uniquely among top law schools, possesses an institutional culture that mitigates the predatory hunting mode that passes for "thinking like a lawyer" is quite remarkable. And I can only attribute this to the overarching culture of the University, which insists that the well-educated individual also must be a socially engaged individual. This is truly astounding, given the extremely limited interaction between law students and undergraduates, the geographic distance from Central Grounds and the fact that the majority of law students have had no prior experience with the University.
Obviously, law students have a different lifestyle and conception of University traditions than undergraduates. For example, I cannot remember the last time I referred to the University's campus as "Grounds" and the number of law students who have streaked the Lawn is (mercifully) miniscule. Yet despite the lack of physical propinquity, the shared Jeffersonian commitment to collegiality, cooperation and social engagement is the bedrock of the Law School's culture that allows it to avoid the narrow focus of a legal trade school.
Ultimately, I found writing a speech for Law School Orientation quite simple. I merely highlighted why the Law School is different from its peers. Sadly, I only can claim a pyrrhic victory; I had to drop my knock-knock jokes to make room for more relevant information. Better luck next time, I guess.
Sanjiv Tata is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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