I’m starting to notice that there are two types of learners in my law school; those who learn for the sake of learning, and those who learn to meet the particular goal of passing law school exams.

I guess I’ve assumed since the beginning that I’m here to learn about the law, to work my way into it and really grok it (By the way, ‘grok’, which rhymes with rock, is one of my all-time favorite words and is an accepted word in the English language which comes from Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land.”  The whole book is essentially a definition of the word grok, but at one point the reader is told that “Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience.”).  The exams - hurdles we all must jump -  are just a way to measure our understanding and group us accordingly, for better or for worse.  Don’t get me wrong, doing well on law school exams is critical.  But is that the only reason I’m here?  What about learning about the law?  Aside from elucidating so-called “Black Letter Law”, reading and briefing cases forces me to learn about the nuances in law, about objectivity and subjectivity, about the art of law.

But those who are here just to get through it, to hurry up the next 3 years as much as possible, have a completely different philosophy.  For them, the exams are the alpha and the omega, the whole point of law school.  These are the same people who constantly whine, “This is a waste of my time.”  If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that in the past 9 weeks, I could afford law school.  I love the fact that first-year law students purport to know SO much about the law that they are able to deem an exercise as wasteful.  I’m 30 years old with a Ph.D. in biochemistry and I don’t yet know what is a waste of time and what will be helpful somewhere down the road.  But maybe that fact that I’m 30 years old with a Ph.D. in biochemistry is WHY I don’t purport to know what is a waste of time.  I don’t know a damn thing about the law yet, so every exercise will be helpful.  Every exercise will put another piece into that big puzzle which is missing the cover to guide me.

Sometimes I feel like one of the major anti-establishment books, Planet Law School II, is all about learning for the sake of meeting that single goal of doing well on exams.  It spends a significant amount of time bashing the law school curriculum/mentality and blaming the status quo for bad lawyers as well as making law school so difficult.  In my humble opinion, the HOW of law school curriculum is an important question but changing it will not alter the overall results.  Law school will always be difficult and there will always be bad lawyers.  It’s supposed to be hard, and as such it will always create a stratified hierarchy of lawyers; those who rose to the challenge and those who got by.

Believe it or not, I’m not passing judgment.  Everyone is different and therefore learns differently.  I learn for the sake of learning, but by no means does that make me better than anyone else.  I’m just pointing out that I see two types of learners at law school.