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Law School

Contents:

A. Law school in general, according to Sienho Yee

B. Law schools in the USA

C. Foreigners in US law schools

D. International law: http://www.sienhoyee.org/pil.htm

E. Teaching jobs in US law schools: http://www.aals.org

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A. Law School in General, according to Sienho Yee

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1. Law school is nice in several respects. The best among these is that it can instill in the students a certain attitude towards things and give them a certain methodology in dealing with issues and reality. Once you have mastered these, you can do something you like in society competently.

2. Law is about how to manage society, and, in the final analysis, forms part of the unique nature of society. If one has big ambitions, being a legal thinker should be the goal, and you can give the world ideas that might move it into a certain direction, in some respects,big or small, perhaps. For example, if you have an idea about how this or that law should be, and then it is adopted by the law-makers, you would have moved the development of the law into a certain direction. Of course, one can also be content with being a normal lawyer, fixing problems when they arise, and making a comfortable living.

3. If you like to read a little about what law and law school life are like, please read:

Scott Turrow, One L (about first year law school life at Harvard).
Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet.

Kafka, The Trial.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House.

Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx : The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Vintage) (1997).
Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2001).
Mary Anne Glendon, A World Made New (2001).

Telford Taylor, An Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trial (1992).
Jan Jaan Kross, Professor Martens' Departure (Anselm Hollo trans. 1994).
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Paperback - April 4, 1995).


4. In addition, I would like to recommend that you read the biographies of other founders of the USA, such as Madison, Hamilton, etc. They are great stories about how to set up a pretty good nation-State.

5. Having a proper sense of professional responsibility is most important. This topic is too technical for a non-law person to appreciate but a lay-person perspective can be distilled from:

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (Paperback - Sep 12, 1990).

6. If you like to read anything that I have published, let me know and I will see whether I can send you copies. The list is here: http://www.sienhoyee.org/publications.htm.

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B. US Law Schools

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(a). The J.D.

7. For some general info written by the ABA organization, see: http://www.abanet.org/legaled/prelaw/prep.html

8. In the United States, the design of normal law school education for a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree (on this see below “2. Types of degree and education”) is based on the idea that a law student should be a mature “thinker” and therefore must have had a sufficiently good basic education as an undergraduate before entering law school. This is in some contrast to the situation in many other parts of the world where law is being studied as a “university” subject, and not just that, but also by an undergraduate starting at age 17 or 18. The merits or demerits of the two approaches may be apparent to you if you just imagine a 17 or 18 year-old undergraduate pondering the intricacies of separation of powers, the rule of law, the values of self-determination, questions that philosophers in their prime are struggling with. The issue is not only whether a student may be able to understand and wrest with such topics, but also whether at such young and malleable age a student may be groomed into certain unhealthy habits such as passive memorization and dogmatic application of black letter rules.

9. The overall outlook of a normal US legal education is one of “general legal education”, but with plenty of room for specialization. Once in law school, a student is required to master the basic core subjects in the first and second years. The most important aspect of the law school education is, however, in training a student how to think and how to work like a lawyer. Probably the differences between various types of lawyers mentioned in paragraph 2 above will manifest themselves during or shortly after the first year. Some students are mistakenly led to believe that one has to memorize everything, but the only thing one really needs to memorize is probably the methodology and how to improve things based on that. If we were to memorize everything, why do we need all the great law libraries?

In the second and third year (now perhaps even in the second semester of the first year), a student is allowed to take “elective” courses, and, therefore, to attempt some specialization. Typically, a student is required to write three substantial papers: one on research methods and skills, one on appellate litigation, and one for a seminar on a substantive issue. If a student is involved in a journal (especially the “Law Review”, normally considered to be the voice of a particular law school), then the student, more likely than not, will write another long paper and edit it for months for publication in the journal. Publishing in the Law Review was the single most important experience for me.

10. The pretty interesting or, weird, thing about law is that prestige and semblance of power are more important in this discipline than probably in other disciplines. Really good ideas may not necessarily win out; the trappings of power and glory may. Because of this, you not only have to be a good lawyer, or a good thinker, you probably also have to have other “credentials” to be successful. Therefore, you might want to have your education at one of the top law schools, regardless of the costs. That fact alone may open the door to you in your endeavors.

11. Personally I believe ultimately good ideas will win out (http://www.chinesejil.org/wang1.pdf). Those who do not listen to good ideas may even suffer, sometimes even dearly. However, the time it takes for good ideas to win out may be more than you can imagine or stomach. That is to say, although almost any significant situation presents an intellectual battle, only a few can be soldiers in it, and most are not able to see the clashes of ideas and therefore cannot appreciate good ideas and good values. So you have to be prepared to endure a lot and, hopefully, acquire some enriching experience along the way that there is no substitute for.

12. My personal experience tells me that the publication of my long paper in the Columbia Law Review is the single most important factor when I first started my job hunting; everywhere they asked me about that paper.

13. As far as getting ready for law school is concerned, it does not matter what you are studying now. Of course, being a good thinker is the most important; otherwise getting into law school would not help. So something that can help to inspire your imagination and improve your reasoning processes would help. Beyond that, the most important is to get the best grades you can. Second, try your best to do well in the LSAT. Take the test only when you are ready for the best score; otherwise they keep the bad scores for an average in the future. The combination of good grades and a high LSAT score will get you into nice law schools. The law school admission process is very much "number-driven".

(b). J.D. and Ph.D.

14. Often there is a controversy as to whether a J.D. is really one just good for practice and not for theoretical work. This controversy often pits the J.D. against the Ph.D. It is true that a J.D. who has avoided all the theoretical courses in law school may have some trouble dealing with theoretical work. Of course, one may wonder how much better a Ph.D. is, if he or she has been conditioned by an entire intellectual life studying law into the unhealthy habits of thinking about the law rigidly. In any event, the J.D. programs in a good US law school affords much room for theoretical inquiry. For example, at Columbia I myself personally took courses in perspectives on legal thought, federal courts, advanced constitutional law; any one of these has a theoretical component more difficult to deal with than a philosopher can, to his or her satisfaction, to be sure. To some contrast sometimes, people working on a Ph.D. in law in some other countries simply bury themselves in some technical aspects of the legalistic doctrine for a few years and produce a thesis that is very much “doctrinal” with little theoretical inquiry in it and yet the title of their degree has “Ph.” in it. So the better thing to do is simply to go to the substance of the person, not his or her degree, or other marks of his or her success. Put another way, it is better to count ideas and analyses from someone, rather than his or her certificates. The problem is that only true pros can see substance; all others are destined to see only surface.

15. This controversy apparently had some force at the beginning of the J.D. Now in the USA the battle is over. The J.D. has won. Still, those who are still struggling with this issue, however, may draw inspiration from the following statement:

The American Bar Association Council has issued the following statement (http://www.abanet.org/legaled/accreditation/Council Statements.pdf ):

J.D. Degree - Ph.D. Degree Equivalency

WHEREAS, the acquisition of a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree requires from 84 to 90 semester hours of post baccalaureate study and the Doctor of Philosophy degree usually requires 60 semester hours of post baccalaureate study along with the writing of a dissertation, the two degrees shall be considered as equivalent degrees for educational employment purposes;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all appropriate persons be requested to eliminate any policy, or practice, existing within their jurisdiction which disparages legal education or promotes discriminatory employment practices against J.D. degree-holders who hold academic appointment in education institutions.

(c). J.D. and LL.M. and J.S.D. in the USA

16. As noted above, the J.D. is the most important degree in the US law schools. As generally believed, LL.M. and J.S.D. are really designed for foreigners. There is a school of thought that says: if one competes, one may just as well compete with the locals on the local terms (the so-called “main stream competition”); if not, the feelings of victory will not taste as sweet. From this perspective, some people jokingly say that the JD is the regular army while other degrees are simply guerrilla groups in the legal education in the USA. That of course does not prevent the foreigners who have received degrees designed for foreigners from going home and excelling in their home territory on the terms of their foreign home territory. Only enlightened people in the foreign land can see the value of the J.D. degree.

17. Interestingly, these days one can see that some foreigners who have received the degrees designed for them, such as LL.M. or J.S.D., or degrees designed for all but in another field such as Ph.D. in anthropology, philosophy, have decided that they have received is not good enough. They have decided to study for a J.D. degree also, as their FINAL, terminal degree. Perhaps they did not get enough exhilaration from competing with others in their earlier experiences and have decided to take the final plunge into the J.D.? Or other possibilities?

Of course, one also sees some J.D. holders hold Ph.D.s in another field such as international relations and literature. These persons normally branch out in different fields and they become either very good in each or not so good in all the fields they dabble in. One should make such a choice to branch out with the full knowledge of one’s own wherewithals.

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C. Foreigners in US Law Schools

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(a). Scholarships and stuff

18. Different law schools have their scholarship/fellowship programs. An applicant has just to go to their websites to find info and try them all. There is no simply way of finding out info.

19. Generally speaking, however, the better a law school is, the stronger its scholarship program is.

20. A good law school normally takes pride in having a policy that almost guarantees education if an applicant is accepted, regardless of his or her financial situation.

21. However, this policy may not apply to a foreign applicant.

22. The general idea is that it is very difficult for a foreigner to get a full scholarship from a US law school. Only a few fortunate ones at the best schools may secure the special scholarships for foreigners.

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D. International law: http://www.sienhoyee.org/pil.htm

E. Teaching jobs in US law schools: http://www.aals.org