It’s an exciting time to be alive(2)
Kramer: Approximately 70% of our students work on one or another of our journals. The development of student edited journals in law is really a historical accident. Law journals were originally dedicated to professional rather than academic writing: they compiled information and analyzed cases for the benefit of lawyers and judges. This was work that could be done easily and well by students and that provided them with excellent training. Over time, participation on a law journal became an important signal to potential employers about the kind of training and experience a student had while in school, and student edited journals became firmly established. I think the institution is a good one, on the whole. There are advantages to faculty editing, of course. But the benefits of this experience for students are considerable.
Xing Zong: A famous quote by a law professor to the new students, “You come here with minds full of mush — and leave thinking like a lawyer”. Dean Kramer, in your opinion, what exactly does it mean to think like a lawyer?
Kramer: “Thinking like a lawyer” refers to a process of problem spotting and rigorous analysis employing a set of foundational concepts that help structure an argument. It is much more an art than a science, something one develops a feel for over time and gets better at with experience. This is why we teach law the way we do: using cases and Socratic method. I can tell you how to play the guitar, but you won’t be able actually to play until you pick one up and pluck out a tune. Socratic method is a way of getting students to make arguments themselves, followed by further questions to help them think through the various consequences of their position. “Thinking like a lawyer” is a transferable skill: it is essential in law, but it is equally valuable in a variety of other professions and practices---anything in which rigorous, analytical thinking has value. It is, at the same time, incomplete. To succeed, we need problem solvers as well as problem spotters, and traditional legal education does very little to teach lawyers how to solve the problems they identify for their clients.
Xing Zong: One striking difference of a law school in U.S. compared with a law school in China is that there is no undergraduate law degree conferred. Why? Why can’t undergraduate receive legal training just as receiving economics training?
Kramer: Once again, this is mainly a historical accident. Until the middle of the 19th century, law was not seen as an academic discipline to be taught and learned at school. One became a lawyer through a process of apprenticeship. When law schools emerged, they began as post-graduate programs because law was not seen as one of the liberal arts or sciences and because most of the people coming into the profession first did so after completing their undergraduate studies.
Xing Zong: Another striking characteristic is that law school in U.S. belongs to the category of professional school, not graduate school, which means the whole legal education is market-oriented. Let me make an analogy, law school is like an assembly line, where student products who can meet the market’s needs will be produced after three years’ intensive training. Do you agree? What is the advantage and disadvantage of this system?
Kramer: I don’t accept the distinction between professional schools and graduate schools. Law is a graduate school, albeit one that is training people for a profession. This means that we must be sure that the education we provide will meet the needs of the profession, but that is very different from saying that our education is market oriented. We endeavor to be much more than a trade school. We are training people to understand and think deeply about law and its role in society. Lawyers have historically provided a disproportionate share of the leadership in American society, a reflection of the centrality played by the rule of law in our nation. We need lawyers who have a rich appreciation of law’s role so they can meet the larger responsibilities our profession owes to society. Such an appreciation makes them better lawyers for their individual clients as well.
