The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

kind
 of thinking and talking. This 
kind
 of approach may indeed be more demand-
ing than others as to some parts of the problem put before attorneys, but, as we are
seeing, it is most certainly less demanding as to other parts. The phrase “thinking
like a lawyer” is often used in a way that naturalizes this process, characterizing
lawyers as possessors of an overarching and superior analytic ability rather than as
experts in one profession’s specialized way of processing relevant information. Like
all professional epistemologies (and accompanying discourses), legal thought is
socially and institutionally grounded in specific practices and power relationships.
It asks some kinds of questions while neglecting others and makes sharp demands
for proof in some places where elsewhere it accepts unproven assumptions. The

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On Becoming a Legal Person
99
first-year classroom is a key location for examining the shift to this particular pro-
fessional language.
This study provides an anatomy of that change in law students’ relationship
with language, demonstrating that it is in the minute linguistic details that we can
locate both a profound moral shift and the cover-up that often conceals this shift
from view.
Legal Personae
We have seen that law professors systematically focus their students’ attention on
layers of textual and legal authority when deciphering the conflict stories at the
heart of legal cases. But what happens to the people in these stories? What aspects
of their identities and lives remain important when refracted through this legal lens?
We can ask as well: What aspects of the law students’ and professors’ lives and
experiences are considered to be salient during the conversation?
As a legal reading tightens students’ gaze on certain specific facts of each case,
it focuses their attention on certain people, and on particular aspects of those
people and their lives. When beginning their training, law students may attempt
to discuss the people who appear in legal texts using different, lay conventions.
For example, one might expect to introduce a person in the story by describing
his appearance (Transcript 4.6) or general character. Some, especially those with
social science backgrounds, might wonder about aspects of social context such as
race, class, or gender. Or, drawn by the moral dimensions of the conflicts discussed
in legal cases, students might want to begin by asking about what is fair, raising
ethical issues about the people and their situations (see Chapter 1, pp. 9–10). How-
ever, as we have seen, law professors insistently return their students’ attention to
the framework given by legal categories. They do so for obvious reasons: they are
teaching first-year students a distinctive approach to language and reading. Only
certain facts are relevant to this reading. If students fail to grasp this, they will not
be able to write legal briefs, read legal opinions, or successfully shape legal argu-
ments in court. If professors fail to convey this, they are in essence committing a
form of pedagogical malpractice. The problem is that as students are drawn into
this new discursive practice, they are drawn away from the norms and conventions
that many members of our society, including future clients, use to solve conflicts
and moral dilemmas. The seeds of citizens’ dissatisfaction with the law, of clients’
dissatisfaction with courts and lawyers, are sown already; already we can begin to
understand the schism that divides a distraught divorce client, who is pouring out
what she deems to be crucial emotional details, from her impatient attorney, seek-
ing to shut down the stream of time-wasting, irrelevant material.
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