-- MichelleLuo - 19 Apr 2012

Michelle, as you know, I really enjoyed both the first draft of this essay, as well as your re-write in progress.

Correct me if I'm wrong, or mischaracterizing your ideas, but I feel like this essay goes to the very heart of what makes it so difficult to be a lawyer- and why people who aren't lawyers regard the profession and its practitioners with wary disdain. As I was telling you earlier, I think "bullshit" is symptomatic of a lot of specialized disciplines that have their own vocabulary, framework, and modes of thought that one must be inducted into- which is pretty much what our entire 1L year has been about. It sounds like what struck you most about the class in which you wrote on Arctic Barbies was how easy it was to not only learn the discipline, but to excel in it, primarily through mimicry and adopting jargon. There is a fear that this the only thing law school teaches us to do, and if we choose, we can walk away from this experience with only that to show for it.

Eben said in one of our classes that as we go through life, we'll come to recognize that the vast majority of people suffer from a dullness of the mind. It's not a lack of intellect or an inability to learn and assimilate information. It's the failure to recognize that there is more to being a great legal practitioner than learning the language, because all you're really allowing yourself to engage with are complex layers of signifiers without any regard to what's actually being signified (to use Saussurian terms).

On the other hand, the unconscious is an incredibly scary and powerful place- and there is a real sense that to recognize that much of what informs what happens in the world comes from there, and not man-made logic, doesn't seem to leave us with much ground to stand on. Perhaps the lesson I would take away from your paper is that it's important for our humanity as lawyers, regardless of what work we end up doing, to be deeply cognizant of just how limited, fragile, and incoherent legal logic is rather than futilely trying to grasp at some "strong" measure of "truth." I don't see a way out of bullshit, but in recognizing and deeply understanding what it is and how we use it, we can best harness it to meet our goals.

-- RumbidzaiMaweni - 19 Apr 2012