Winding Down the Fifth Semester

Traveling has dominated the first semester of my third year, and I've enjoyed every bit of it. Early on I had an election law class in D.C. on two different weekends, and a job fair there another weekend. I stuck around to attend an oral argument at the Supreme Court with a good friend, one of the best experiences of my three years here.

Because it was only the second day of the term, we got in line around 5:30 a.m. We were numbers 53 and 54. At 9:30 the guards let in the first 50 people, but we stood there waiting nervously. Twenty minutes later, ten minutes before the start of the argument, the guards let us in. We sat in the back row and watched the nine Supreme Court justices take their seats in United States v. Stevens, a First Amendment case involving a man who'd been sentenced to three years for showing videos of dogfighting. My friend and I enjoyed every minute of it, and afterwards we spent an hour and a half discussing the case and all its implications. An awesome day.

More recently I've made weekend trips to New Hampshire to visit friends, Iowa to visit family, and New Haven, Connecticut for a conference at Yale Law School (pictured) on the "New Media Ecology." I drove with two friends from W&M. We learned a lot about the future of media in the digital age, sustainable business models for newspapers, the unbundling of news, and the increased reliance on Wikipedia, among other things. Mostly we gleaned that we have little to fear from the future — the delivery of news will undoubtedly continue to change, but this creates as many opportunities for engagement as it does crises. Though some academics worry that society is becoming more polarized and seeking out news outlets that confirm their opinions, it's also true that more people are paying attention to news and participating in it to some degree. Many more of us see opportunities to add content to online sites or at least send articles to our family and friends, stimulating conversation and creating debate. Some argued that these developments do not bode well for society but others, including me, believe that these changes will make us a better, more engaged democracy.

For several hours the last two nights I have made phone calls on behalf of the law school admissions office, contacting admitted students and answering their questions about the law school experience. It's a strange thing to feel like, at least for these future law students, I'm a bit of an expert on all this — being at William & Mary, living in Williamsburg, knowing the people here. It doesn't seem that long ago at all that I was in their shoes, excited to get to law school but with no idea what I was in for. I'm looking back at it all rather fondly now, though of course it's not over yet. I have chosen my classes for the final semester. The job search continues.

In the last week or so I've spent some time reflecting on how my worldview has changed over the last two-plus years. I have come to this conclusion, and sorry if it seems rather obvious, but I think it's worth stating:

We human beings are all deeply flawed creatures. Each of us has countless faults, some glaring, some visible to others but not to ourselves, some obscured to most people but painfully known to those closest to us. We tread always on dangerous ground when we begin to judge others for their faults, though judging others is impossible to avoid. It's part of our human condition, making value decisions about the people around us, the people we hear about on the news, the people we see at work and at school. Still, we so rarely know the full story. Indeed, we almost never know the whole story, what makes others tick, the pressures that bear down on them, the difficulties they endure and likewise the privileges they have known.

I'm learning to keep this in mind, in no small part because it will be necessary when I become a public defender. To represent clients with rough histories, one must learn to love them, and loving them means appreciating all the hardships they've endured, all the choices they've made under difficult circumstances. I have led a relatively privileged life, with the love and support of family and friends and communities, so much of this is new to me. But over the past two-plus years, I have only had to open my eyes and walk into one incredible new experience after another, meeting so many inspiring attorneys, investigators, and clients along the way.

We are all deeply flawed creatures. But we all have so much potential for goodness. Ayn Rand once wrote, "Judge, and prepare to be judged." I once agreed with this, but now I would advocate a different approach. (I've been listening to Stoic podcasts lately.) Be slow to judge. In the words of Epictetus, "When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." Ah, philosophy, how I've missed you.

Equal Justice Works

Last Saturday I attended the Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair in Washington D.C. The two-day event is one of the largest gatherings of public service law employers and law students in the nation. EJW also puts on a similar job fair later in the fall at the University of Richmond, and between the two, I've landed both my summer jobs. So I get pretty excited about EJW. The way it works is students apply for interviews through a website, a month or so before the career fair. Employers take a few weeks to sort through the applications, then decide who they want to interview, and we get notified by checking the website. This year I had two half-hour interviews, both of which went fairly well, and I stopped to talk with a third employer that did not offer me an interview, but was willing to take another look at my resume, transcript, and writing sample.

Another great part about EJW is the speakers they bring in. This year's featured speaker was Ralph Nader, consumer advocate (we can thank him for seat belt laws) and of course, perpetual presidential candidate. Many people blame Nader for Bush's election in 2000, but I tend to side with the camp that believes there were a lot of other things going on — the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach, the 200,000 Florida Democrats who voted for Bush, the Gore campaign's weak effort to win a recount and of course one of the worst decisions ever to come out of the U.S. Supreme Court: Bush v. Gore. All of this is to say that it's certainly useless and most likely wrong to blame Nader for Bush's presidency. A Harvard Law grad, Nader is amazingly smart and a dynamic speaker, so it was fun to hear him lecture a bunch of eager law students frantically searching for jobs. At 75 years old and with an accomplished career of activism, Nader can take the long view.

Nader spoke about the deficiencies of legal education, a topic that interests me a great deal. In particular, he talked about how the law school curriculum focuses on areas of the law that serve to protect corporate interests. He used an example from his Harvard days. He asked the crowd, "How many of you studied landlord/tenant law?" Because we all took property as first-year law students, we all raised our hands. Nader said he was excited to study landlord/tenant law as well, but at Harvard, somehow they never got to the "tenant" part. That is to say, the vast majority of landlord/tenant law has to do with a landlord's rights. Tenants have few rights. This is no accident. Nader then discussed the deficiencies of how the subject of contracts is taught. He focused on contracts of adhesion (e.g., the lengthy, standard form contracts you sign every time you sign for a loan, download a piece of software, or purchase a cell phone plan). Nader said that 99% of the contracts we sign in our lifetimes are contracts of adhesion, but most contracts professors don't even spend a day of class discussing them. (I believe my contracts professor spent several days more than that, but his point is well taken.) A big problem with contracts of adhesion is that large corporations tend to use the same language in their contracts, so that if you don't like the terms of a loan that one bank offers you, it will do little good to "shop around," because other banks offer essentially the same terms. In Nader's view, there is too much collusion, too little competition, and a whole lot of oppressing the person who signs for the loan. The "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" refutation of Nader's argument, of course, is that if you don't like the terms, don't get the loan. And that would be fine for A) someone who comes from a family with a lot of money who doesn't need to worry about loans, or B) someone who never plans on going to college, buying a car, or buying a home. "There is no freedom of contract," Nader said. Contracts of adhesion "represent the private legislature of the corporation." In other words, these contracts suck, and the best way to fix them is through federal legislation and regulations, which is what Nader has pushed for most of his adult life.

Nader also spoke about the need for law students to organize to do social good in the 21st century. We have more ways of connecting with one another than ever before, and yet we think of our cell phones and email "as toys, not as tools." The guy from EJW who introduced Nader used this opportunity to recall the Student Hurricane Network, which was started at an EJW conference in 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, when law students from Tulane University in New Orleans connected with law students from around the country who wanted to help however they could. Nader wants us to do more of that. Nader spoke of the need for law students and young lawyers to have passion so that they can affect social change. "What does it take to get law students angry — really angry?" he asked. "If you don't have fire in your belly, it doesn't matter." Finally, he called on us to raise the level of small talk in law schools across the country. Instead of asking each other about the latest drinking adventures and job interviews, we might ask one another about what we're doing to change the world.

The other phenomenal speaker at EJW was Harold Koh, formerly the dean of Yale Law School and now legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State. Koh gave a hilarious, inspiring talk in which he discussed the Top 10 reasons to do public interest legal work. He was preaching to the choir, of course, because we were all at the conference seeking this kind of work, but it was still a great speech. In addition to being an incredibly accomplished lawyer, he's a self-deprecating humorist. He talked about his wife, Mary Christy-Fisher, who is director of the New Haven Legal Assistance Program, which provides legal aid to the poor people of Connecticut. Koh spent his first years as an attorney working at a large law firm, so in his marriage, his wife has at least historically been more of the public interest lawyer of the two. "When I got this invitation to speak, I asked my wife," Koh said, "'Honey, in your wildest dreams did you ever think I'd be speaking at Equal Justice Works?' She replied, "Dear, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're not in my wildest dreams.'"

Koh spoke at length about why it does not make sense to take a job at a big law firm after school simply to pay off loans. He said that taking a job for the money is the same as taking a job for no reason at all. "People who say they're taking a firm job to pay off loans are admitting they don't know why they came to law school," he said.

Koh told several stories about his family, and how they had influenced his career choices. At his law school graduation, a distinguished professor came over to congratulate Koh on his "accomplishments" — graduating in the top 10% of his class, becoming a member of a well-known legal fraternity, etc. When the professor walked away, his sister told him, "Harold, you haven't accomplished anything." He asked what she meant, because he had all these awards, which were all accomplishments to him. She said that lots of people who have never gotten degrees or awards have accomplished more in a day through real work than he ever accomplished at law school. Another time, when he told his mother about the offer he got to work at a big law firm, she congratulated him and then proceeded to screw up the name of the firm. She asked who his clients would be, and he told her (mostly big corporations). "Then she told me something I'll never forget," Koh said. "She said, 'You have the most privilege. Shouldn't you be working to serve those with the least privilege?'" Finally, Koh told a story about his young son's view of his father's work. One night on television the son saw his dad speaking about a case. The caption read, "Harold Koh, human rights lawyer." The son asked his dad what a human rights lawyer was. Koh replied, "A human rights lawyer is an international lawyer who got mad." Later, the son presented a paper in class about the person he loves the most: his father. He gave two reasons, Koh said. "The first reason is that my dad loves beer." The second reason was that his dad works for people who don't have much, people who are told by others that they can't do the things they want to do. "My dad is a human rights lawyer."

Koh wrapped up his talk by saying that public interest lawyers can do lot of good, even if they aren't perfect people themselves. He said that principle reminded him of someone—Michael Jackson. Koh ended by quoting Jackson, to huge applause: "If you want to make the world a better place, you gotta look in the mirror and make a change. And, don't stop till you get enough."

Death Costs More

The New York Times has an excellent editorial this morning, "High Cost of Death Row." Most people believe that killing someone is cheaper than putting them in prison for life but solitary confinement, execution chambers, and lengthy capital trials — to say nothing of the absolutely necessary federal habeas corpus proceedings — all result in a much higher cost. As the Times correctly informs us, "Money spent on death rows could be spent on police officers, courts, public defenders, legal service agencies and prison cells."

Cost is not the most morally persuasive argument but when you consider the other ways in which we could spend the money, the right thing to do is quite clear.