Think Like A Lawyer - An Overused and Misused Expression?

I hesitate to admit this: I've used this phrase so many times that it just sort of swims to the surface and color almost all that I do to include how I approach my work as an academic support educator.  However, as Professors Kris Franklin and Rory Bahadur remind us in a recent publication, this phrase is relatively meaningless as to the real purposes behind legal education. Directed Questions: A Non-Socratic Dialogue about Non-Socratic Teaching (Aug. 16, 2021).

And, I might add a bit dangerous in the sense of destructive of learning...

Here's why:

First, notice the word "a".  

That doesn't seem to leave much room for differences among our future lawyers.  Rather, it seems to suggest that there is only one type of lawyer.  Exclusive.  Not part of broader society.  One type of which I must be trained to think like.  It leaves out the "me" in lawyering.  In short, it suggests that unless I give up what is really me and become someone else, this mythical lawyer, I will not succeed; I will not belong; I will not think like a lawyer.

Second, notice the word "think".  

I do a lot of thinking, well, mostly day dreaming.  Much of my thinking is not productive.  Why not? Because I don't act upon it.  It just remains hidden from action, in my mind, silently powerless.  In fact, by suggesting that we are going to train our students to "think" like a lawyer, we are really leading them astray, because law is much more than just thinking. It also requires communication, it requires action, it requires practice, it requires leaning in and giving up of yourself for representation and betterment of others.  And, if truth be told, it requires a lot of writing, too.

Third, sticking with the word "think".

Of course, learning requires thinking, much thinking, deep thinking.  But learning takes much more than thinking because we learn through what we experience, what we try, what we fail in and what we succeed in, and how we learn to overcome and improve through and with our learning experiences.  In short, the phrase sells learning short.  It suggests that we can think our ways into being lawyers.  Like the practice of law, learning requires lots of practice too, lots of action too.

I'm not sure what should replace this phrase.  But maybe it's a lot more showing what it is like to be and serve and work and counsel and act as lawyers.  As a starting point, I just wrote our faculty and staff and suggested that they bring some of their former students, who just graduated and took the bar exam recently, back to their classrooms, their programs, and their offices to talk about how they learned in law school and what they are learning now.  In other words, there's lots of room for lots of different lawyers with lots of different ways to practice.  Letting our students know that they are allowed to be who they are and that there's room for them just as they are might just go along way to helping our students thrive as they begin the fall studies.

(Scott Johns).