The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Transcript 6.19 [1/7/9]
Student:
The salesperson tells you something that is completely opposite to // what //
Prof.:
//At //
the auto parts store?
Student:
At the auto parts store. I’m, you know, I like your voice or whatever--
Prof.:
--not
my face anymore?
Class:
[[laughter]]
Student:
They do this, doesn’t tell you if there is no money back guarantee, or
anything like that. You got it, okay. And then the owner calls back, and
goes “Well, you know there’s a mistake,” but you’ve already written the
check, or whatever.
Prof.:
Well, if he’s made an offer, he’s revoked it and unless 2-205 is going to
be applied, and there has to be a signed writing, unless you could argue
estoppel, if you’re dealing with the Code number 1-103, which opens
the doors to the common law, you don’t have that kind of protection,
unless it’s a consumer statute, or a federal trade regulation- regulation,
you don’t have that- that kind of protection.
Student:
I.e., salespeople can lie?
Prof.:
Huh? Not only, i.e., salespeople can lie, i.e., salespeople do lie, con-
stantly.
Student:
That’s not fair.
Prof.:
No, no. Fairness is not something that I accept as a general proposition,
and certainly not in my household.
Class:
[[laughter]]
The clear message here, as it is throughout the classes of this study, is that a legal
reading is primarily focused on 
what the law says you can or cannot do
 rather than
on
what’s fair
. This is simply an accurate rendition of the metalinguistic norms
surrounding a competent legal reading; professors may vary in their attitudes about
whether this is a good thing, and may even convey a distancing from this approach
at times through metalinguistic commentary or signaling, but they uniformly stress
this focus on layered textual authority. In the excerpt above, we see that the pro-
fessor in fact jovially embraces the tacit ethics (or lack thereof) involved in this kind
of approach. His response also models for students the nested series of textual re-
sources through which they should mentally check in answering a question such
as “Can a salesperson lie?” Just as medical training requires a hardening and dis-
tancing of students’ sensibilities from empathic reactions to death and human
bodies, legal training demands a bracketing of emotion and morality (as it is com-
monly understood) in dealing with human conflict and the people who appear in
legal conflict stories.

---

122
Similarity
Students do struggle with this shift, and occasionally vocalize their discom-
fort, as with one student, who finally protested, “Is all we do as lawyers think of
ways to get out of contracts we’ve made?” (2/6/146). This exchange highlights the
marginalization of both emotion and unmediated concerns about ethics and mo-
rality. The student leads into this ethics question with a statement of emotion:
Transcript 6.20 [2/6/16–18]
Student:
Thank God you brought that up! 
[ . . . ]
 Does anyone else feel angry?
[[laughter]] I mean, I’m just furious. I mean, I’m the only one in the
room?
Prof.:
I missed something, I missed something, I don’t- why are you angry? ()
You’re angry at me?
Student:
I’m- [[laughter]] I’m angry at the whole class. 
[ . . . ]
 all we can do is try
and think of ways to worm out of 
[the contract we just made]
? Is that
what we’re trying to do as lawyers?
The professor’s somewhat startled response here signals the perceived incongruity
of this level of emotional response to the issue. In subsequent turns, the professor
first invites discussion of the issue, leading into a hypothetical involving the con-
cept of efficient breach, which generates some role-play and joking. He then broad-
ens the discursive frame (although setting clear limits in terms of time) by asking
a practicing lawyer in the class to comment and subsequently opening up the floor
with the comment, “We’re going to have a few minutes on this issue”