Practice and Theory

Some thoughts on my last week of practicing in a large NYC law firm before becoming a full-time academic.

I didn't want to practice law.  For that matter, I didn't really want to clerk either.  With clerking, it was a means to an end: even though I was getting a Ph.D., a clerkship is more or less a prerequisite for an academic job.  I only wound up practicing because my first year on the job market was unsuccessful.  Still, these two years being a real part of the practice of law were truly invaluable for my understanding of the social practice that I am used to studying from the distance of an academic.  As someone mostly interested in theory, I rarely found myself very close to the law even while writing about it.  These years have been extremely educational and I am certain my scholarship and my teaching will be enriched by them.

Just what have I learned?  That legal realism is at least partially true; that the law is at least partially autonomous; that the judiciary has severe institutional limitations; that clerks have a lot of power and those who teach them can have immediate impact; that politics is only relevant in the marginal cases in the lower courts; that being an advocate can be redemptive; that ethical questions pervade the profession; that practicing can be as intellectual and rigorous as any theoretical enterprise; that serving clients can make one feel extremely useful and selfless; that representing the poor or thinking through the cases of the dispossessed is an ennobling experience; that hierarchy and commitment to it is very damaging to legal institutions.  These aren't huge insights, of course.  But practicing helps one internalize these lessons in a manner more convincing than any article can possibly be.