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Why Return to Law School
-- By DanielRosenfeld - 09 Mar 2017
In this essay, I will explain why I will return to law school for my 2L year.
Section I: (A Lack of) A Theory of Justice
On the first day of class, maybe even last semester, Eben told us that he knew of only two reasons to come back to law school next year. He said that the only two reasons that he knew of were loving justice and/or hating injustice. There could be more, but he knew of only those two.
I’ll admit, those words kind of freaked me out. I’m 23 years old. I have no idea what justice or injustice are. Some people my age might know what they are, but, with my limited lived experience, I surely do not.
Personally, I think that justice and injustice, if they exist, are probably experiential knowledge, not theoretical. One has to experience justice and injustice to know their true nature. It is one thing to think that it is wrong to intentionally kill another person. It is another thing entirely to have done it. In self-defense? To protect someone else? In rage? For your own gain?
I’m only 23 years old and I don’t have a lot of the experiential knowledge that I think ought to in order to inform my view of justice and injustice. I think (and hope) that as I move through life, I will acquire such knowledge. Until then, love of justice or hate of injustice won’t provide sufficient reasons for me to return in August.
Section II: Why Come Back to Law School?
I’m coming back to school next year because I think being a lawyer will help me achieve Eudaemonia.
Eudaemonia, a Greek word loosely translated as “human flourishing,” is about living the best life one can. The basic idea is that people live their best life by doing the thing they are best at and getting better at it. People who are best suited to be teachers achieve by being a teacher and people who are best suited to be lawyers achieve it by being lawyers. Furthermore, one must work to achieve “excellence” in one’s field. I suspect that I can achieve a eudaimon life through law.
Before I do a job, I can’t know if I’ll like it or not. However, so far, law school has made me think that I will like being a lawyer. I’ve enjoyed law school more than any other school experience I’ve had so far. I’ve progressively enjoyed school more as the complexity has increased. Law school, if nothing else, is complex.
I understand that law school is very different from being a lawyer. I want to be careful to state that what I like about law school is essential to law, not the part essential to being a student. If I liked the short days, the sitting in class, or the freedom to center my education around my interests, I’d be worried.
Instead, what I like about law school has been the intellectual puzzle solving as well as the challenge of learning new material and integrating it into what I already know. I think the fact that what I like about law school will feed into what law practice consists of bodes well.
Law practice, to me, is using my license to achieve outcomes for my clients, whether that be a private citizen or the state. I’ll have to use my training, my knowledge, my experience, my creativity, and my judgment to obtain my client’s outcome. That will require thoughtfulness, ingenuity, and creativity.
Again, before I’ve actually done it, I can’t know for certain, but my experience in law school thus far has made me think that I will achieve my best human life through the experience of becoming a lawyer and my efforts to become the best lawyer I can. My skillset, preferences, and personality all seem to point me in this direction and my experience this year has only confirmed what I previously had thought: that I would enjoy being a lawyer.
Section III: (On Developing) A Theory of Justice
Part I of this paper doesn’t argue that justice and injustice are unimportant to me, just that they are unknown to me. As a lawyer, I understand that I will have immense power over other people’s lives- to improve them, or to really mess them up. Especially if I continue in my desired path of criminal justice law, knowledge of justice will prove critical.
Furthermore, merely liking the tasks of a lawyer isn’t protection against becoming a person who is a net-negative on society. I want to be a lawyer who makes society a better place.
The question then becomes how to acquire knowledge of justice. Since I don’t know what justice is, how can I know when I’ve found it? I have to hope that I’ll “know it when I see it” or else the task is hopeless.
I suspect (but don’t know) that knowledge of justice and injustice are experiential. As one has just experiences or unjust experiences, or even sees/hears about justice and injustice one acquires knowledge of it. I have some already (I’ve seen a deranged narcissist become the most powerful man in the world) but nowhere near enough to say that I “know” what justice or injustice is.
This summer, I’m going to intern in a rural District Attorney’s office. There, I hope to get firsthand experience, to continue trying to learn what justice and injustice are.
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