Ode to Spring, Break, and the Light at the End of the Tunnel

It's late February and Virginia still clings to winter like a pop radio station clings to Gloria Estefan: it hasn't done much for this place, no one cares for it, and yet it just won't go away. Lately the wind's intensity here has rivaled that of the Great Plains at times, though it will never have a Midwestern wind's endurance. The snow here has finally melted but flurries taunt us in this week's forecast. The rhythm is going to get you. Come on, sunshine and green.

(Before I go further, I should say that the title of this post is a tribute to my Cornell friend Aaron in Los Angeles, who writes a blog called Odeable Edibles, "A slapdash flight into a world of poems that should not exist." Check it out.)

The end of law school is now clearly in sight. On the other side of Spring Break, which starts next weekend, is the last half of the last semester of the last year. New editorial boards have taken the helm of William & Mary's four law journals, a new executive board has been elected to the Student Bar Association, and the administration has released the class ranks that determine who will join the Order of the Coif, that fraternal order of law students not unlike Phi Beta Kappa for undergrads. My own involvement in the law school has dwindled in its breadth, if not its depth. For the first time this year I will not be joining the Student Hurricane Network's now annual Spring Break trip to New Orleans. Fourteen others will, however, and of that I am glad. The ACLU leadership has finally changed to optimistic, energetic 1Ls. I was once one of those (now I'm just optimistic and energetic). I am lucky to be a student representative on a law school committee examining Legal Skills, one of our school's signature programs. It seems that now, every law school must look inward to make its students more prepared for a difficult legal job market. These days I also find pleasure in giving tours to prospective students, finally able to explain this place to strangers with some confidence. They ask fun questions like, "How do the students treat each other? Do they really tear pages out of each other's textbooks?" and "What's it like to live in Williamsburg?" I tell them the truth: we're good people, a decent community. No, we don't tear out pages; we share outlines. The competitive moments do come, but they're primarily reserved for exam days and Moot Court tryouts. And living in the Burg is a pleasant experience, thanks to the historical charm and the other people who live here.

It's difficult to say whether anxiety or relief pervades my classmates, so close to the end. I fluctuate between the two moods myself, depending on how much sleep I get. When I squeak by with four or five hours, I stress the future, wondering when I'll finally know where I will take the Bar exam, whether I'll have a job before graduation, and when I'll be able to tell my parents that their investment in me was a good one. When I'm fortunate enough to get seven or eight hours, I cast worries like those aside, and push through my day with a sort of debonair delight, realizing that I may never again enjoy a time like this. All the uncertainty aside, here I am, on the cusp of graduating from a laudable institution, amongst friends and future leaders of society, enjoying good health and good company on a daily basis. There is much I am thankful for.

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.

Back to School

Apparently I still have some readers out there, so here we go, for one more year. I just finished the last class of my third week, and I can now say with some authority that the third year of law school is by far the best. The old cliché, once again is: the first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death. But you can't get too bored if you take great classes or solid professors, and somehow I've managed to pull that off. This semester I'm branching out from my usual comfort zone of criminal law. My classes include Business Associations, a popular topic on the Bar exam, and three others dealing with highly relevant topics: Health Law & Policy (tonight we did a comparative analysis of the health care plans in Congress); Media, Technology & the Courts; and an Election Law class studying Bush v. Gore and other Supreme Court gems. I'm also doing a fantastic externship (I think that means "internship for credit," in law school jargon) with a federal public defender's office.

I returned from my summer in California—not to mention a 4,600-mile road trip—happy, relaxed, and refreshed. I learned an incredible amount this summer, but unfortunately I can't blog about it. For anyone who's interested, let me know, and I'll send the essay I wrote to fulfill my summer funding requirement.

It seems impossible that my fellow 3Ls and I have ascended to the last tier of law school, just two sets of exams away from graduation. An energetic group of 1Ls has filled the W&M Law Library, brandishing their highlighters and looking to us for advice. We start the year with a new, terrific dean, Dave Douglas, whom many in my class had (and loved) as a Con Law professor during first year. Most of us 3Ls are looking for jobs, or in the case of the firm crowd, waiting to hear about offers. Many of us, including me, applied for judicial clerkships over the summer. Clerkships typically last a year, and if you get an offer from a judge, you're basically obligated to take it. After two-plus years of spending time with my classmates, I find it fascinating to see who goes where. People will scatter all over the country and the world. Many will work at firms, some in the federal government, others at prosecutor's and public defender's offices. A few people won't even take the Bar, and may go back for more graduate degrees. One of my classmates learned to brew beer over the summer while living at his parents' house. More power to him. (I'm still waiting to taste the beer.)

This year should afford me more time to write. Before I close this entry, I do want to mention a particularly important case that the Supreme Court heard in a special session yesterday, and which we've discussed in my Media class. It's called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Briefly, in 2007, a conservative group funded at least partially by corporations wanted to show a 90-minute documentary criticizing Hillary Clinton (to put it lightly). The FEC ruled that because the group was funded by corporations, and because the documentary mounted an attack on a political candidate, broadcasting the documentary would violate a 2002 federal campaign finance law — the McCain-Feingold Act. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that Act back in 2003, though in recent years it has stripped a few provisions away from McCain-Feingold. But this time, the Supreme Court wants to decide whether restricting the broadcast violated the free speech rights of Citizens United, and the corporations that fund it. The case pits the interests of free speech advocates, from the Swift Boaters to the ACLU, against campaign finance advocates, from Bill Moyers to John McCain.

Normally I'm a big free-speech guy, but I do not believe that corporations should have the same First Amendment rights as individuals. Although McCain-Feingold is a flawed law, I agree that we should be able to regulate how much money corporations can pour into political campaigns. Unfortunately, we likely have a Supreme Court with five members who believe that corporations do have the same free-speech rights as you and me. A decision in the case will probably come later this fall.

It's great to be back in the Burg.

Philosophy of Law lecture: Jules Coleman

1:04 p.m. - I'm going to try something new: live-blogging a lecture. This is a new lecture series on the Philosophy of Law here at the Marshall Wythe School of Law at William & Mary. W&M Law Professor Michael Steven Green is giving the introduction to Professor Jules Coleman. Coleman is the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Coleman is the author of The Practice of Principle, Risks and Wrongs, and Markets, Morals and the Law, as well as many other books and articles in the philosophy of law and tort theory.

Prof. Green says that Prof. Coleman is a giant in torts theory.

1:05 p.m. - Prof. Coleman takes the stage in Room 141. Prof. Coleman learned from Guido Calabresi, a distinguished professor of Coleman's who "had the wrong views." He says he teaches from Calabresi's notes, but with a caveat: he puts a negation in front of what Calabresi said. (NOTE: Calabresi taught at Yale, and was nominated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by Bill Clinton in 1994. He still sits there today.)

1:08 p.m. - When people think about the philosophy of law, they think about it in a normative way. Tort law is not that way. What is tort law? What is essential about it? How does it differ from criminal law, contract law and other kinds of law?

1:09 p.m. - A good theory of tort law should resonate with its participants. It should be hermeneutic — participants in the kind of law should recognize their practice in a good legal theory. "I'm trying to offer a theory of tort law that makes sense to the people who are participants in it," Coleman says.

1:11 p.m. - Economic analysis. Time to talk about bad luck. Bad luck leads to people having to absorb costs. What should we do about these costs? Two obvious things: one, we should try to minimize them. Another thing is to try to spread their costs.

1:12 p.m. - Tort law provides remedies to people who get injured. If you're an economist, you might look at tort law and say it's all about deterrence. That might be plausible, but it may not resonate with the participants in practice.

1:15 p.m. - "It's a good question to ask when you're trying to offer a theory of the law: What kind of explanation are you trying to offer?" Coleman says.

1:17 p.m. - Coleman is interested in the question: Should the theory of a certain area of our social life be responsible to what participants think?

1:18 p.m. - Coleman is skeptical about the application of his theory to theories about markets. "No one in their right mind" would think that market theories should depend upon what market participants think about markets, he says. The same is true of language, and speakers of it. Linguists and language theorists don't think that language speakers should have theories about language. Who would care about such theories? Well, maybe being a judge is different, Coleman says. A judge may have to have some level of understanding about the role that a judge plays in the law. "How is law different from other kinds of social engagement?" he asks.

1:22 p.m. - Coleman makes a joke. "You're in law school, you have competent teachers. I'm supposed to slip that in three times during the lecture. I've done it at 20 after, I'll do it again at 40 after ..."

1:24 p.m. - Coleman mentions that his theory is corrective justice. "Sounds good, doesn't it? What kind of justice do you stand up for? Corrective justice. As opposed to what? Incorrective justice." The audience laughs.

1:25 p.m. - Coleman provides the elements of torts: duty, breach, harm. He cites Justice Cardozo in Long Island R.R. But what makes these the elements of torts? What does a theory of torts try to accomplish? For most people who make theory about torts, he says, it's about trying to predict the outcome of cases. They're not trying to say why duty matters, why breach matters, etc.

1:28 p.m. - The economic theory of torts is uninteresting to Coleman, unless it has one more thing. Is it an accidental relationship between the theory and the outcomes of cases, or is there a mechanism at work that connects the theory to the outcomes of cases.

1:30 p.m. - "I actually think very highly of myself as a torts theorist," Coleman says. Now he makes a joke about being a psychotherapist, being aspirational, and being Jewish. A number of people are laughing. I'm typing furiously and I don't know the Jewish-psychotherapy connection, so I don't get it.

1:33 p.m. - Coleman is trying to engage a 1L, who's not laughing at his jokes. This lecture is being filmed, by the way. Not sure how or when it will be available.

1:34 p.m. - Coleman believes the paradigmatic tort is a wrong, not an accident. If I want to understand tort law, I should want to understand intentional torts, he says. Coleman switches gears to contracts and specific performance being the paradigmatic remedy for contracts. HYPO: Let's say I promise to paint your house ("very unlikely," he says). Someone comes up to him and says, you promised to paint my house, but you didn't paint my house. There's no reason for you not painting my house. Why does the person who asked for the house to be painted need to provide a special reason for having the painter paint the house? If you think that contracts are promises, you would think about why specific performance is appropriate, when it is appropriate.

1:40 p.m. - Coleman's making a joke, plugging his book because he has children in the arts and has to support them.

1:42 p.m. - When an economist looks at tort law, he sees three things: accidents, costs, and liability as a mechanism for shifting costs. "As a philosopher, I see more concepts, and different ones," Coleman says. "I see rights and wrongs. I see responsibility. I see costs as a mechanism for holding people accountable. I don't see costs at all. They're not primary to me. The notion of duty is primary to me, and an action contrary to a right is primary to me."

1:44 p.m. - When Coleman looks at tort law, he sees it as a subject already influenced by some working theory he has of it. He doesn't look at it in a completely normative, neutral way. In contracts, he wants specific performance. On the philosophical side, he says there are moralists in the theory of tort law. "I take great pride in the fact that no student of mine ever holds a theory that I hold," Coleman says. Even though he's a legal positivist, and legal positivism is the most common legal theory, he says that no student of his is a legal positivist.

1:48 p.m. - Coleman says that Richard Epstein is an institution, who cranks out legal ideas faster than anyone, and has views about everything.

1:52 p.m. - The lecture is going to have to end soon, sadly, because many students and professors in the room will have to attend 2:00 classes. Looks like there won't be time for questions.

Here are the next two lectures in the series (courtesy of the W&M Communications office):

March 19, 1 PM, Room 141: Michael S. Moore, Walgreen Chair and Co-Director, Program in Law and Philosophy, University of Illinois College of Law. Professor Moore is the author of Educating Oneself in Public, Placing Blame, and Act and Crime, as well as many other books and articles in the philosophy of law and criminal law theory.

March 26, 3:30 PM, Room 127: Lawrence A. Alexander, Warren Distinguished Professor, University of San Diego Law School. Professor Alexander is the author of Is There a Right of Freedom of Expression?, Whom Does the Constitution Command? (P. Horton co-author), and The Rule of Rules: Morality, Rules, and the Dilemmas of Law (E. Sherwin co-author), as well as many other books and articles in the philosophy of law, constitutional law, and criminal law theory.

1:55 p.m. - Coleman has given a summary of people doing philosophy of law — stuff he's interested in. He's giving a reading list, a sort of Who's Who in the Philosophy of Law today.

Semester No. 5

It hardly seems possible that law school is half over for me, but it surely is. William & Mary marks the occasion for its 2Ls this Thursday with a "Half-Way Through BBQ."

I arrived back in Williamsburg on Thursday night, having spent three relaxing weeks in Iowa (see picture, from Pikes Peak State Park). Much like many of my classmates, I tried to achieve two main goals: spend as much time with family and friends as I could, and spend as little money as I could.

My class schedule for this semester is settled, after I managed to get admitted into one of my classes from the wait list. Here's my schedule, which is full of interesting and mostly criminal law classes:

• International Criminal Law, M-W, 10-11:15 a.m. (3 credits)
  
• Criminal Procedure I, M-Tu-Th, 11:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m. (3 credits)
  
• Post-Conflict Justice and the Rule of Law, M-W, 3:30-4:45 p.m. (3 credits)
  
• The Death Penalty, M, 6-7:40 p.m. (2 or 3 credits, depending on length of final paper)
  
• Legal Skills (2 credits, pass-fail)
  
• Ethics (1 credit)
• Law Review (1 credit, pass-fail)
  

I have four classes on Mondays, which should make for a busy start to the week, but I think I seek that out given my history in weekly newspapers, where organized chaos reigns on Monday and Tuesday. Crim Pro I, which covers the Fourth Amendment (searches, seizures, and warrants) and Fifth Amendment (self-incrimination, due process), will help considerably on the Bar exam. Post-Conflict Justice and The Death Penalty are smaller, seminar-type classes—more discussion than lecture, which I prefer. These two classes will require presentations, class participation, and a final paper, rather than the typical final exam. My first Death Penalty presentation will be Jan. 26, with three other group members.

As one might guess from this schedule, I have settled on criminal defense as a "specialty," though law students do not actually declare majors or specialties, as undergraduates do. Our education must prepare us for only two things: passing the Bar exam and getting a job. One hopes that it will also prepare us for a third—being good at that job—but it'll be a long time before I know if I've accomplished that.

As for the immediate tasks, tomorrow I will defend my Law Review Note for 20 minutes against three editors who have reviewed it and made suggestions. Also for journal responsibilities, I'll have two cite checks this semester, and probably some other tasks. Over break, I began work on another semester of research for my fellowship professor, 10 hours per week. Our Legal Skills trials get under way next week, though mine isn't until Feb. 5. My friend Tommy and I will act as prosecutors, which should be fun.

Ethics, which is part of the Legal Skills curriculum, is a two-week class followed by a graded exam. It is all preparation for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), which all law students must pass before we can take the Bar. Next week I will likely register for the March 7 MPRE, to get that obstacle out of the way.

As for the truly exciting stuff, I got a ticket to the Inauguration! A giant thanks to Senator Tom Harkin. On Sunday, I will either carpool with a friend or take a passenger train (for about $100) to D.C., where I will do my best to record—with my mind, pen, and camera—what promises to be an amazing, historic scene.

First draft, done

Today I finished the first full draft of my major legal writing project, my law review Note. It's 39 pages long so far, though it's likely to get longer when I return to it next semester. Without boring anyone (or pre-empting myself by writing about it online), I argue that a portion of the Virginia death penalty is unconstitutionally vague and misleading, and that in a recent case, the Supreme Court of Virginia wrongly interpreted two provisions of the Virginia death penalty statute, ignoring both a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and modern science in the process. Look at me, picking on judges two or three times my age.

The publication process is a long one. There are 39 law review staff members in my class, and we've all written Notes between 5,000 and 10,000 words long. When we return in January, we'll defend them to three-person panels, comprised of 3L editorial board members, who will have read our papers and critiqued them. Then it's back to the editing process, and eventually we'll turn in completed copies. Sometime next spring or summer, a new editorial board will select about six or seven of those 39 Notes for publication in next year's William and Mary Law Review. Those of us who don't get published will have the opportunity to submit our papers to other law reviews and journals at W&M and other law schools.

For now, I'm done! Two and a half weeks until finals. This semester has gone so quickly.

Redistributing the wealth

The self-described conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans here at Marshall-Wythe (and there are many) keep rekindling the phrase "redistributing the wealth," in relation to President-elect Barack Obama's middle class tax cut. One classmate of mine even managed to mention it during Evidence class this morning, in response to the professor's question about self-incrimination. I missed how those two concepts, wealth redistribution and self-incrimination, had anything to do with each other. Perhaps someone should ask Joe the Plumber.

Recall that it was Obama's conversation with Joe the Plumber in which Obama used the phrase, "spread the wealth around." Not long after that, conservatives (led by Matt Drudge) dug up this 2001 interview that Obama gave to WBEZ radio in Chicago, in which he talked about the Warren Court of the 1960s, which by Obama's account, did not engage in much "redistribution of wealth." For a much more academic discussion of this than I'm capable of, read this fascinating account of Obama's 2001 remarks. Obama's conclusion, as documented in the 2001 interview, is that redistributive change is not possible (or necessarily desirable) through the courts. One cannot know for sure if that is Obama's driving factor in leaving the Ivory Tower of academia for the political arena, at least not without asking him, but I tend to doubt it.

So what would Obama do with our wealth (now that we've lost $1 trillion of it)? For starters, Obama's middle class tax cut (which, by the way, he's been pitching since the Pre-Caucus Era) can be found here. Obama's plan, if enacted by Congress, would cut taxes for families making less than $250,000 a year (e.g., Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, my parents). For the wealthiest 2% of Americans, those making more than $250,000 a year (see the Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, McCains, et al.), taxes will increase to the same levels they were in the 1990s. This will have the effect of increasing, not redistributing wealth, to the vast majority of us. We'll be able to save it, or at least pay off some debt, while richer Americans will go back to paying a larger share. According to a few of these overwhelmingly rich Americans, that's quite alright.

Instead of all this talk about "redistributing the wealth" and socialism, then, perhaps we should spend a little more time debating the merits of a middle class tax cut, because that's what Obama wants to do while in office. It might not get as many laughs in Evidence class, but it's a more fruitful discussion.

No Confidence

Since I started law school more than a year ago, it has become clear to me many times that this place, this experience, can break your confidence. We are imperfect, prideful souls, we law students, and law school aims to crush our spirits. We can't let it, of course, but despite our best efforts, we get down on ourselves again and again.

Normally I use this blog to speak for myself, but part of the desolate feeling I'm describing comes from the unnecessary loneliness of these crushing blows to our self-confidence. I know better — I know I am not alone. I know this happens to all of us. With a simple Google search, I found this blog, from "Proto Attorney," a self-described 29-year-old 3L "at a mediocre law school." Her blog entry is titled, "Confidence." It reads, in part:

For the past two years of law school, I've really felt all along that I just don't know enough. I don't feel that in any of my classes, even the ones I got good grades in, that I fully grasped all of the concepts of that area of law. Some of them, I'm pretty sure I didn't grasp a single concept of the law.

Proto Attorney, Confidence, June 1, 2008, at http://attyworkproduct.blogspot.com/2008/06/confidence.html.

This sounds about right. Despite the magnificent amount of information we learn each semester, most of us also encounter seemingly infinite setbacks. Many are small, and go by virtually unnoticed. A job application sent to a distant state, and no reply received: no big deal. A professor finds it necessary to correct the recitation of facts I give in class one day. Eh, I'll get over it. A motion argument, weakly argued before a fellow student. Better luck next time.

But other stumbling blocks aren't so easily reconcilable. A tryout for Moot Court, Trial Team or Law Journal, unsuccessful. Ouch. An interview with a dream employer, fumbled. Crushing. A grade of B- for a class in which an A or A- seemed attainable. Heart-wrenching.

Oh, these things don't matter, you say. No? Ask around. Ask a professor if grades matter. Ask a more seasoned law student if Moot Court or Journal experience counts when looking for a job. And ask yourself if what job you get matters.

Of course all these setbacks merely pose temporary obstacles. One can recover from each and every one. But the cumulative effect can and does create a sense of defeat in many of us, a sense that we really don't know what we're doing, and that we may never quite know. This is not comforting, and it produces some predictable reactions, to ease the cognitive dissonance of wanting to be successful — of wanting to be seen as being successful — and the reality of failing on a regular basis.

Some law students project false confidence. Most of us probably do it without thinking. We've always been good before, so we must be good now, even if our grades and experiences here don't bear it out.

Some law students — many law students — become depressed. "Studies have shown that law students suffer from clinical stress and depression at a rate that is three to four times higher than the national average." Herbert N. Ramy, Student Depression Becomes an Issue of Faculty Concern, available at http://www.abanet.org/lsd/studentlawyer/apr05/opinion.html.

Some law students, by necessity, lessen the blow of failure by shifting the blame. Didn't do well in Contracts? Must have been the professor. Some practice schadenfreude, to the detriment of humanity. Another way to cope is to discount the meaning of that activity at which we have failed: Didn't get appointed to Honor Council? Don't worry, they don't do anything valuable, anyway.

But even those of us who engage in necessary rationalizations strive to improve, at least where improvement is possible. If an interview doesn't go well, we prepare our best for the next one. If we don't make one team, we try harder in the next competition. If we don't do as well on a final as we'd hoped, we may talk to the professor to find out what went wrong, and how to fix it before the next one.

If we make it through law school with our confidence intact, it will be no small feat.