Welcome, Box-Top Kids
29 May 2009 • Ricardo J. Bascuas • 11 Comments » • Tags: NoneIf you did this the way I did this, you are secretly anxiety-ridden over not knowing why you are going to law school or what it is that lawyers even do exactly. Sure, everyone knows lawyers argue. They manufacture and sell legal arguments. And maybe all you know about legal arguments is that they can’t possibly be much like the arguments you have with your mother, brother, girlfriend, or husband. 
(Three years hence, you will doubt the sanity of the non-lawyers who argue in the unstructured, emotionally overwrought way that you do now.) What you don’t know is that you made your first legal argument when you were playing Monopoly or Parcheesi or Chutes and Ladders or whatever board game was en vogue when you millennials were tots. Someone rolled a double and wanted to roll again even though he was in jail or landed on Free Parking and wanted money for it, and there was a dispute. And one kid whipped out the box top and read everyone the paragraph that says rolling a double gets you out of jail but you can’t go again or the one that says that Free Parking is just that and you don’t get any money for it. And everyone was annoyed at Box-Top Kid’s pedantry because it sucked the fun right out of the room.
Box-Top Kid was you. Box-Top Kid grows up to be a lawyer. The fun kids grow up to be firefighters or professional hockey players or astronauts.
This fun-sucking skill—finding, parsing, and applying rules—is exactly what you’ll be honing in law school. The box top is much, much bigger—big enough to regulate all aspects of life. No one can ever follow all the applicable rules, so you’ll never be bored. Better still, the box top is always changing and it is the lawyers who edit it and amend it. As a result, you can never actually know what the law is. You will always have to research the box top—even after you’ve been practicing for years and years. And your family and friends (who will start asking you for free legal advice in just a few months) will fret that you never know the answers to their problems. The best part of it is that the box top is never quite definitive because the basic box-top building blocks—words themselves—are political creatures subject to manipulation by the lawyers and judges who deploy them, as David Foster Wallace explains in this brilliant piece that takes a little while to download because it’s a pretty big file but is worth reading right now.
Yeah, OK, I’m not reading that Wallace piece. I have Elements cases to brief.
Right…lawyers don’t make emotional arguments or attack the other side. Today’s Judges are the “Box Top” kids. The lawyer was the one who kicked the shit out of the box top kid and broke out of jail….now, we all pay the price for our behavior in having to say “your honor” to the sissy at the table.
So, how long until Janet Stearns or any of the other extremely competent and in touch administrators realize what a joke Elements and LRW are at this school? god forbid our LRW might include contract drafting or anything practical.
I knew you were going to do something when I read that the blog was to be “censured” and everybody would be identified. This parallel blog is a good idea…
Former UM law student here. I think LRW was a useful class. Contract drafting? Seriously? What does “Fake Real Lawyer” think most law grads do transaction work? I am willing to bet that most students will find projects that develop their ability to draft research memos or briefs far more useful in their first years of practice then drafting a contract. All new litigators need to be able to draft memos/briefs, whereas a new transaction attorney will not draft any contracts until years after they start their careers.
I’ll take a grad who excelled at LRW, any day of the week.
So, UM Grad now partner in BigLaw firm in DC. LRW was the single most important class I took at UM. My prof was incredible (not sure if still there) and the experience gave me a huge leg up.
As to Elements, it’s a useful exercise in synthesis, not sure if it isn’t time for something else, but there is value to it, and some of the cases are fun–who can ever forget the NY contract cases–Lady something-or-other? Sorry none of you newbies will have the chance to take this with the late Professor Gaubatz, he was a trip.
Best of luck to all.
and the fun kids will be the ones asking for the free advice from us box-top kids
ASD, how many times have you long form briefed a case since LRW? Probably never. Talk to students at various schools around the country and they’ll tell you their LRW classes accomplish more than writing 2 memos in a semester.
In the second semester of our 1L year, we met for LRW one time. That’s right, one time. Glad we paid 2 or 3 thousand dollars a credit for that. LRW should be taught by faculty, not by adjuncts who have their own thing going at work.
Also, if there was ever a case for blind grading LRW would be it. At UM, with gigantic classes, LRW teachers are the only ones who get to know you on an individual basis at all. This allows the development of personal feelings, positive or negative, towards different students. The A’s go to the kids the teacher likes, and the curve destroys everyone else.
Here’s an illustration of what happens at UM LRW: my moot court partner and I found an error in the moot court problem that required the problem to be re-written. Rather than being acknowledged for paying attention to detail, we were called in and asked why we were so “nit-picky.” Amazing.
wow…that explains why I went to law school. I never could figure it out before. I really was that nerd.
I’m actually looking forward to the box top fun-sucking skills I’ll be learning! I’m a little concerned, though: Who’s doing Elements case briefs? Was there an assignment I missed? Any input would be helpful — thanks!