CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

                Thanks to Steve for giving me this opportunity to get the word out about my new book—1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School (Thomson West 2009) (420 pages)—while also sharing some things I learned while writing it . This post about psychological distress in law students is the first of three guest posts.  My book is branded as “a candid step-by-step roadmap to both academic and emotional success in law school’s crucial first year.”  Parts of what follow are modified excerpts from Chapter 18—“Maintaining Well-Being.”

Part I: Psychological Distress in Law Students

               Our students are struggling. As a former law student and veteran law teacher, I knew, of course, that first-year law students are under stress.  But until researching the book, I had no idea of the depth or extent of their suffering. I discovered that studies have long shown that law students suffer disproportionately from stress, anxiety, and depression. Data from as far back as 1957 show that psychological distress in law students significantly outpaces not only the general population, but other graduate student populations, including medical students.

               A 1980s study of University of Arizona law and medical students found that law students scored significantly higher than both the general population and medical students in nearly every category of psychological dysfunction measured, including anxiety, depression, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, hostility, and obsessive-compulsiveness. (Citations omitted to avoid cluttering up this post, but are available on request.) Continue Reading »

When I was in law school, there was no dress code per se for students.  We all dressed casually, just as we did in undergrad.   That appears to have continued to the present time, based upon my personal observations during visits to Elon and other law schools.  Generally, the only time a law student would be seen in business attire was during interview season.

Not so in law practice.  When I began practicing in the 70’s in North Carolina, business attire (i.e., suit and tie for men, parallel attire for women) was the rule with few if any exceptions.  Within the past several years, however, law practice attire in North Carolina appears to have morphed into something different.  I am not sure exactly what — just that it is different.

Standards now vary from firm to firm.  True, some law firms still require formal business dress.  But, at other firms, one might find casual days, casual seasons, and even casual-all-the-time approaches, depending to a large measure on the image a particular firm wants to project (i.e formal, relaxed, sophisticated or whatever).  Some firms simply let each attorney decide individually what he/she wants to wear, within an acceptable range of course, or let the attire de jure be determined by whether a client meeting or court appearance is scheduled for that particular day.   This potpourri of standards does not seem to have any nexus to the size of the firm, the region (mountains, piedmont  or coast), or whether the firm has multi-city presence or a singe-office location. Continue Reading »

Clinical Education, RIP. I hope that this hypothetical epitaph spurs clinicians to re-imagine an educational methodology that seems to have seriously lost its way. Most clinical courses fail to enhance students’ lawyering skills in any significant way. The reason is that clinicians focus courses on narrow types of legal problems rather than on skills chosen because they are complex and therefore worthy of analysis and training in law school. Most “innovative” clinical courses consist only of pouring the same wine into differently shaped bottles, as clinicians apply the same methodology to different types of legal problems. Not surprisingly, clinicians continue to grapple with security-of-employment issues.

The rudderless nature of clinical legal education is nowhere more apparent than in clinicians’ choices of conference topics. (Unlike other AALS sections, clinicians have persuaded the AALS that they are entitled to a conference or workshop every year.) You might think that since clinical education focuses on legal problems of the poor and disenfranchised, conferences would customarily be devoted to scholarship concerning structural problems that plague our system of justice and distribution of legal services. But this is decidedly not what happens. Continue Reading »

Good posture is a critical aspect of effective communications.  How you stand, with your shoulders back, stomach in, and torse erect but not rigid, will affect both the impression you leave and the quality of sound you produce.  When you slouch, your airways are crunched and you won’t be able to use the air you breathe to insure full, rich, sound.

Perhaps lawyers (and law students) should learn from the uniforms worn by professionals who consistently rank the highest in public opinion polls. Asked questions such as “which professionals do you most trust?” respondents typically name nurses, firefighters, doctors, pharmacists and airline pilots. Just imagine how much credibility lawyers would have with jurors during closing arguments if they scrapped their 3 piece suits in favor of white coats with stethoscopes or bright yellow fire retardant suits with hatchets.

After attending a very interesting conference on the future of the law book, several thoughts come to mind:

1. Law books aren’t doomed, but there is a lot of pressure for change.
2. Talking about law books is really an opening for talking about almost all of legal education.
3. There is a whole new and evolving e-world out there. Readers, such as the Kindle,can readily replace the printed page and the heavy case books we carry around.
4. The generation “born digital” has a whole different take on materials, and the future looks bright for increasing electronic forms of material.
5. A goal of using technology is not simply to replace books with electronic gadgets, but to increase the mobility of learning (see Pod Casts and TWEN) and the utility of a legal education. (The gadgets, and the new vocabulary that accompanies them, however, sure are fun.)

Generally, it appears there are few, if any, law school dress codes, especially regarding informality. Many students begin law school dressed like they did in college. Students often learn quickly, however, that the same is not true for the world of law practice, particularly law firms. Lawyers, it seems, have uniforms. While the uniforms — suits — do not have team insignias, they are the calling card of lawyers nonetheless. It is interesting to see how the uniforms start infiltrating the classroom in the second year, especially when law firm interviewing begins. By the third year, no one looks twice when a student shows up in business attire. Perhaps this is just another way the law seems to creep up on us and “change our way of thinking.”

After watching the debates between Obama and McCain, I was less interested in who “won,” (unlike the many pundits who always declared victory for their guy), than how they responded to each other’s assertions. It seems to me they generally had two basic structural choices in responding to the opponent other than saying “I’m not sure:” (1) You are wrong because…..; and (2) You are correct, but….. Most of the time, they both were uttering “you are wrong” before the other person had finished his sentence. I don’t know what this means, but perhaps it has to do with going on offense or being on defense. At the very least, how they argue seems like something worth keeping track of, rather than who “won.”

–Steve Friedland

Though many of us have been told to stand in an “At Ease” position, such a stance is anything but “At Ease”.With legs apart and knees locked, one cannot stand for long periods of time without rocking, swaying, shifting, or bouncing. Such movement causes distraction to the audience and tires the speaker. Instead, stand with weight evenly balanced on both legs, placing one foot slightly forward of the other and keeping your knees flexed.You will be able to hold that position for long periods of time without tiring or succumbing to unnecessary and distracting movement.

With everything else that law students need to know, they often forget to develop what ultimately will be one of the most important competencies they will need as practicing attorneys: effective communication skills. As an executive coach for communication at a law school (and formerly a professor at a college and trainer at the Center for Creative Leadership), this entry focuses on tips for enhancing communication effectiveness.
First Tip: “All you need is air.”

Good sound results from good breathing. If you don’t take sufficient breaths, you won’t’ have the air supply you need to sustain good sound throughout your speaking. Shallow breaths will result in thin, quivering, volume dropping speech. So, whether you speak in class, before a judge or to a firm partner, breathe.