The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Intercultural Communication
. As noted in
the text, at the level of linguistic analysis, this study offers insights into the very subtle ways
metalinguistic filtering can operate to convey or alter worldviews and norms, particularly
in settings of initiation or socialization into new identities.
8. Levi, 
Introduction
.
9. This sketch is obviously designed to highlight some of the more dramatic examples
of the overall process described in this book; as we will see, the day-to-day reorientation
of students is generally more mundane and subtle. This “ideal typical” vignette merely helps
to crystallize some of the patterns documented in less crude form throughout the rest of
the book. On the merits of ideal types, see Weber, 
Economy and Society. 
However, note
that the dialogue and examples in this vignette are taken from actual transcripts and re-
ported real-life instances.
10. These exchanges are taken from Transcript 4/1/1–7.
11. Transcript 6/2/1.
12. Transcript 1/7/9.
13. Williams, 
Alchemy
, 85.
14. Id., 84.
15. See Stover, 
Making It and Breaking It
; Erlanger et al., “Law Student Idealism”;
Erlanger and Klegon, “Socialization Effects,” for discussions of declining student concern
with altruism and public interest during law school.
16. There is a debate in the literature over the causes of the documented shift away
from public interest work during law school; some attribute this to diminishing interest
from law students as they become more indoctrinated by law school training (and as they
eye the pay differential between public interest and more lucrative jobs); others attribute
it to a diminishing supply of public interest jobs. (See note 15 above.) This book points to
aspects of legal training and epistemology that in themselves might contribute to a shift
away from public interest ambitions.
226
Notes to Pages 4–11

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Chapter 2
1. For just a few examples of debates and commentaries on this issue, see the classic
discussions by Bohannan, Beidelman, and Gluckman: Bohannan, 
Justice and Judgment
 and
“Ethnography and Comparison”; Gluckman,
Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence
; Beidelman,
“Swazi Royal Ritual”; as well as more recent writings. See also John Comaroff and Rob-
erts,
Rules and Processes
; Lazarus-Black and Hirsch, 
Contested States
.
2. Anthropologists and sociolegal scholars have for many years provided trenchant
attacks on singular notions of the law in particular societies, pointing out that there are
usually multiple visions in any given society of what the law is and how it operates. Thus,
how law is conceived may in part depend on to whom you are speaking. See, for example,
Greenhouse et al., 
Law and Community
; Lazarus-Black and Hirsch, 
Contested States
; Starr
and Collier, 
History and Power.
3. On the issue of divergences between lay and expert conceptualizations of the law,
see, e.g., Bumiller, 
Civil Rights Society
; Sarat and Felstiner, 
Divorce Lawyers
; Sarat and
Kearns,
Law in Everyday Life
. On divergences among experts in approaches to law, see,
e.g., Conley and O’Barr’s discussion of the way judges differ in their approach to decision
making. Conley and O’Barr, 
Rules versus Relationships.
 On differences among laypeople
in their views of law, see, e.g., Greenhouse, 
Praying for Justice
; Williams, 
Alchemy.
 And for
a nice blurring of any sharp division between lay and expert understandings, see Yngvesson,