The Public Citizen to Lawyer Transformation Process
or simultaneous culture & reverse culture shock
As I approach the end of law school (and the upcoming months where I will be locked in a cave hoping every penny of my Bar review course pays off), I find myself finally acknowledging: I am going to be a lawyer. Yes, that has been the end goal since I started my three year journey of case briefs, memos, cite checks, source pulls, clinics, mock trials, and discovery, but it feels different knowing that the end is almost here. I am excited to be rejoining the outside world but know it’s going to take a while to adjust to no longer being a law student.
This acknowledgment brings me to a topic that few, if any, people tell you (or warn you?) about when you start law school: transformation. Unless you spent years working in a law firm prior to starting law school and/or grew up in a family of lawyers, law school will change you in ways you didn’t expect. While much of the transformation is positive, other aspects are challenging, which may partially explain why lawyers don’t necessarily have the brightest image in society and why so many lawyers are unhappy.
So, what on earth am I talking about? Let’s start with the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (ugh, I know, right? Don’t worry, I won’t stay here very long). The Preamble reminds lawyers they are also “public citizens” who should seek improvements in the law, access to the legal system, and the administration of justice. When I first read this, I thought the Rules must be designed to protect public citizens and that lawyers and other public citizens are in this whole administering justice thing together. However, once I became familiar with the Rules, I realized this reminder was just that, a reminder: Don’t forget, you should sometimes try to think like a normal person too!
In my limited experience, lawyers and law students have a difficult time relating to public citizens (and vice versa) — not because we’re of a different species (though some may say we are) but because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be a lawyer or law student. The more exposure I get to the legal field, the less I see that public citizen, the one I brought with me to law school, shining through (please forgive the cheese factor here).
Perhaps the best way to explain my thought process is to share an analogous experience/transformation I had in college (this sounds way steamier than intended). After studying abroad in Argentina, I had to take a special class designed for students who had studied abroad in Spanish speaking countries. One of the class’ main areas of focus was reverse culture shock, which, as we learned, is a condition almost everyone who studies/works/lives abroad goes through when they return home. Reverse culture shock often makes it hard for people to readjust to daily routines or to perform normal activities without constantly comparing them to their experiences abroad or making judgments about people who had not spent time abroad. Many people experiencing reverse culture shock grow frustrated with their surroundings or depressed at their inability to relate to what used to be familiar. Part of the purpose of the course was to help us learn coping skills so we could use our experiences in a positive light — to make us better students and more open-minded individuals.
Going through law school is sort of like going through culture shock and reverse culture shock at the same time. It’s similar to experiencing culture shock because lawyers seem to speak a different language from the rest of society and to perceive scenarios in their own ways. To some students this is overwhelming while others take delight in finding so many likeminded people in one place. Sidenote: in a class I took recently, we learned that lawyers all tend to fall into the same Meyers-Briggs categories. While public citizens are predominately extroverted, lawyers are typically introverted; while public citizens are feelers, almost all lawyers are thinkers; and, while public citizens tend to be divided between perceiving and judging, hardly any lawyers fall into the perceiving category. To add in the challenges and competitions that take place in law school, the whole experience is akin to joining a fraternal order, where members bond through shared interests, similar mindsets and personality types, and an intense hazing process.
As for reverse culture shock, most law students venture back to the public citizen world on a daily basis, either by spending time with public citizen friends and family or engaging in everyday activities, like riding the bus or going to the grocery store. While it may not be the case for all beginning law students, I certainly found myself looking at every small puddle on the ground as a potential source of tort liability and redirecting every conversation with non law school friends towards something law or law school related. Initially, it was easier to hang out with other law students because I found my non law school friends, even those who had completed rigorous graduate school programs, did not understand what I was going through.
One problem with this legal culture/reverse culture shock scenario is that there is no class or exam that encourages law students and lawyers to cope with this transformation or to learn how to readjust to the public citizen world in a positive light. Instead, lawyers are encouraged to embrace legal culture (through the Rules, law school’s format, the nature of the profession, etc.), regardless of whether it would make more sense to act as a public citizen than as a lawyer in a given situation. A following problem is that this may lead to a large disconnect between lawyers and public citizens and encourages lawyers and law students to set unreasonably high expectations for themselves.
The consequences of this transformation, though not necessarily negative, may be personal and far-reaching. On a personal level, it may be easy for lawyers to choose to spend time with other lawyers over public citizens, leading to further disconnect. Or individuals may become anxious or unhappy when their views do not align with those of other lawyers. Personally, it has been challenging for me to accept that my lawyer self is going to frequently conflict with and trump my public citizen self.
Going forward, it’s hard to know what needs to, or should change. Perhaps lawyers and law students should be required to perform pro bono where they’d have to get out of the law office from time to time (highly controversial, I know). Or maybe emphasis should be placed on work-life balance, or some sort of self-growth.
On a positive and final note, I do appreciate much of what the transformation has brought me. The transformation has brought me organization, articulation, clarity, and an understanding of how to find answers I need and the confidence to be assertive. Basically, law school has helped me develop my inner lawyer, who was always in there somewhere but didn’t know how to get out. The important thing now is to not forget about that public citizen self and to allow her plenty of opportunities to lead the way.
