The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Making Elite Lawyers
, 103–106. For example, women who en-
tered law school with altruistic motives were more likely to be unhappy than those with
more careerist motives. Over half of the women surveyed said they believed that the fac-
ulty was biased against women. A study conducted by the Law School Admission Coun-
cil found some gender-based differences between men’s and women’s experiences of law
school, including academic self-concept, experiences of discrimination, and perceived
fairness. Wightman, 
Women in Legal Education
. There have also been indications of gen-
der differences in recent reports from individual law schools. Schwab, “A Shifting Gen-
der Divide” (Columbia); Bowers, “Women at the University of Texas Law School.”
On the other hand, an early survey of students in two national law schools during
1974–1975 found women students actually reporting a more positive response to Socratic
teaching than was found in men. Schwartz, “Law, Lawyers and Law School,” 448–451; see
also Schwab, “A Shifting Gender Divide,” 324–325. Two studies conducted in state law
schools (New Mexico and Minnesota) in the 1970s and 1980s found little difference be-
tween men and women. Teitelbaum et al., “Gender, Legal Education, and Legal Careers”;
Mattessich and Heilman, “The Career Paths of Minnesota Law Graduates: Does Gender
Make a Difference?”; see also Garrison et al., “Succeeding in Law School” (finding no
gendered differences in grades or honors at Brooklyn Law School). The authors of the New
Mexico study concluded that contextual factors such as class size and degree of faculty
diversity might affect students’ reactions to law teaching. Ogloff et al., “More Than ‘Learn-
ing to Think,’ ” make essentially the same point, noting that we cannot generalize from
individual schools to all law schools.
67. See, e.g., Guinier, 
Becoming Gentlemen
; Granfield, 
Making Elite Lawyers
; Homer
and Schwartz, “Admitted but Not Accepted”; Krauskopf, “Touching the Elephant”;
McCleary and Zucker, “Higher Trait- and State-Anxiety”; McIntosh et al., “Stress and
Health”; Ogloff et al., “More Than ‘Learning to Think’ ”; Wightman, 
Women in Legal
Education.
68. Jacobs, “Women in Law School,” 470.
69. Weiss and Melling, “The Legal Education of Twenty Women.” In 5 of the 19
courses, fewer than a third of classes were coded; in the remaining courses, over two-thirds
of the classes were coded. Id., 1363–1365.
70. Guinier and her coauthors suggest that
working-class women had grown accustomed to challenging societally prescribed roles
during their struggle to gain admission to law school. Once they were in law school,
they were not about to give up. In other words, these women had socialized them-
selves to be successful, active participants who took charge of their education as they
264
Notes to Pages 188–189

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had taken charge of the course of their lives and careers. (Guinier et al., 
Becoming
Gentlemen
, 33 n. 86)
71. This institutional hypothesis does a somewhat better job of explaining differences
found among different kinds of law schools, because there are women from a variety of
backgrounds in many law schools (although admittedly, the distribution may vary). Pres-
sure for conformity can obviously be exerted in multiple ways, including through the re-
sponses of students to one another and to the professor in the classroom, in addition to
the more obvious top-down channels. Female professors can themselves be subject to in-
stitutional pressures, which may vary systematically in ways we have yet to uncover.
72. Yale Law Women,