Advance Sheet. The Narrowing of the Legal Mind

• Author: Robert E. Shapiro
• Pages: 58-61

Advance Sheet

Published in Litigation, Volume 47, Number 1, Fall 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be

copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. 58

ROBERT E. SHAPIRO

The author, an associate editor of Litigation, is with Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP,

Chicago.

Approaching the end of her freshman year,

a college student called home to her par-

ents, a tone of considerable desperation in

her voice. “I don’t know what to do,” she

said. “I’m not ‘pre’ anything.” Pressed for

an explanation, she responded: “All my

friends are ‘pre’-something, you know,

pre-business, pre-med, pre-nursing, pre-

law. I have no idea what I want to do and

don’t know how to choose.” Her parents

congratulated her on the breadth of her

interests. Exasperated, and having let

pass enough time for a virtual eye roll, she

hung up, presumably to mull over her se-

lection of an undergraduate major without

the guidance of her family, let alone any

specific career choice.

In our world, the imperative to know

where one is headed upon graduation

from college could hardly be greater. With

the looming need to make a decent living,

college students are increasingly pres-

sured to decide early on what to do with

their degrees. Indeed, the degrees them-

selves seem increasingly to be valued, or

not, in terms of what future success they

ensure in securing a position, if not by the

income any such employment will offer.

Much of this “pre” culture makes eminent

good sense. We hardly needed the pan-

demic to remind us of the need for uni-

versity graduates to get a good job. And it

can hardly be denied that undergraduate

organic chemistry, for example, is an es-

sential, if daunting, prerequisite to matric-

ulation in medical school. So, too, courses

in marketing, finance, and accounting are

good preparation for those intending to

enter the moneymaking world directly.

But what, when all is said and done, is

pre-law? Almost unheard of a generation

ago, it has become a regular feature of

the résumés of young lawyers who tout

this major or field of concentration as

proof of their commitment and readi-

ness to become lifetime practitioners in

the profession. But does the idea even

make any sense?

What Is Pre-Law?

What exactly should a concentration in

“pre-law” comprise? What should a young

person know or know how to do in pre-

paring to become a lawyer? It is difficult

to say. Public speaking or writing, or their

more effete godparent, rhetoric? A good

start. Not for nothing, perhaps, was the

brilliant John Quincy Adams, a noted law-

yer and the son of one, as well as a later

secretary of state, and sixth president of

the United States, also a professor of rhet-

oric for a time at Harvard. Great oral and

written communication skills are certainly

the mark of a fine lawyer. But does anyone

teach, let alone study, rhetoric anymore,

given that the term is most usually con-

nected with the modifier “empty”? As for

public speaking and writing, they don’t

seem the province of any one department

or academic discipline, and barely even

grist for an individual course. There’s the

ever popular “mock trial,” which allows

students to get some experience with

a courtroom, but that’s a course, not a

major, certainly. What about logic? This

might carry a student over to the philos-

ophy department, but the logic on offer

there hardly seems of the same character

as what a lawyer uses, which is probably

better left to the law schools anyway. And

epistemology or metaphysics, not so much.

The usual default is to political science

and government, particularly American

government. There the emphasis is on

lawmaking and law-deciding within a spe-

cific political context, maybe with a his-

torical theme. Yet, other than the knowl-

edge it might provide of the Constitution

and what’s been held by the U.S. Supreme

Court over the years, it is not easy to see

the connection between this course of

study and being a lawyer. It might offer a

little bit of a leg up for one or two courses

in law school. For the practice of law? Not

so much. Few practicing lawyers look to

THE NARROWING OF

THE LEGAL MIND