Socialisation in a Space of Law: Student Performativity at ‘Coffee House’ in a University Law Faculty

10.1068/d4205 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 761-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Turner ◽  
Desmond Manderson

Working with ideas of performance and performativity, the geographies of law, and the sociology of the legal profession, this paper reports on a study of the microgeography of a social space in a major Canadian law school, and, more specifically, questions what it means to be a law student there. ‘Coffee House’ at McGill University Faculty of Law is a weekly social event sponsored for half the academic year by prominent Canadian law firms who supply free alcohol and food to the students attending in an effort to ‘brand’ their firm. These events contribute in different ways to the socialisation and identity of the law students present. We argue that a performativity of what it is to be a McGill law student heading towards corporate success begins to be structured through the repetition of a range of performances undertaken in this space.

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (03) ◽  
pp. 649-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Manderson ◽  
Sarah Turner

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler, we develop a detailed ethnography of a social space in a major law school and explore its socialization of the students there. “Coffee House” is a weekly social event sponsored by Canadian law firms and offering free drink and food to the students present. We argue that this event and the actors involved profoundly change student identities and alter educational aspirations. Although the students themselves insist that “nothing is going on,” our ethnography suggests that in “Coffee House” identity is developed through performances, and in the accumulation of symbolic capital, until ultimately students come to feel their future career path is not a matter of choice, but destiny. We explore the important work of Bourdieu through this setting, but ultimately we resist his determinism, and suggest instead that, following the work of Butler, identity is a more complicated and fluid dynamic between space, repetition, and performance. It appears that a personal unconscious transformation among law students attending Coffee House is underway; yet opportunities to change the meaning of this space and these performances remain.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Huang

Abstract This Article recounts my unique adventures in higher education, including being a Princeton University freshman mathematics major at age 14, Harvard University applied mathematics graduate student at age 17, economics and finance faculty at multiple schools, first-year law student at the University of Chicago, second- and third-year law student at Stanford University, and law faculty at multiple schools. This Article also candidly discusses my experiences as student and professor and openly shares how I achieved sustainable happiness by practicing mindfulness to reduce fears, rumination, and worry in facing adversity, disappointment, and setbacks. This Article analyzes why law schools should teach law students about happiness and mindfulness. This Article discusses how to teach law students about happiness and mindfulness. Finally, this Article provides brief concluding thoughts about how law students can sustain happiness and mindfulness once they graduate from law school.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Michal Urban ◽  
Hana Draslarová

<p align="JUSTIFY">For almost seven years, Street Law has been a part of the curriculum of the Prague Law School. Over the years, law students have taught law at public and private grammar schools, high schools, business schools and also some vocational schools, mostly located in the Prague region. They were all secondary schools and predominantly ethnically homogenous, since members of the largest Czech minority, the Roma, for various reasons hardly ever attend these schools. Last summer, however, a group of Prague Law School students and recent graduates travelled to Eastern Slovakia to organize Street Law workshops for Roma teenagers. This text tells the story of their journey, reflects their teaching methodology and experience and offers a perspective of a law student participating in the workshops.</p>


2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (03) ◽  
pp. 677-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christa McGill

It is frequently suggested that law school debt is preventing new law school graduates from entering public service careers. The basis for this contention is largely anecdotal, however. This study puts the presumption to empirical scrutiny. Aggregate data from law schools and individual-level data from law students both point to the same conclusion: law students may indeed be competing in a money chase, but it is not because of their indebtedness. Private firms with prestige and high salaries are appealing to many students regardless of their debt burden. And government and public interest jobs may be in too short supply to meet the demand of non-elite students who are essentially closed out of the high-paying jobs in larger firms. The biggest barrier between these students and public service jobs may be the lack of supply of these jobs, not the lack of demand for them.


Author(s):  
Maryvon Côté

The Faculty of Law of McGill University decided to take an unprecedented step in 1999 in replacing the approach of training to undergraduate law students with the creation of a new legal education curriculum referred to as “transsystemic legal education.” This unique program, geared towards all undergraduate McGill Law students, consists of learning two legal systems, including civil and common law in a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. This article discusses how the law library at McGill had to break from a traditional approach of building a law library collection regarding the practice of Canadian law to acquire the scholarly material needed by professors and students. This meant a complete rethinking of the collection development profile with an increased focus on multilingual legal material from Europe and other legal jurisdictions worldwide, and could only be done with a good collaboration between the library and the faculty members.


2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 855-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bliss

In the terms of Erving Goffman's classic role-distancing analysis, newly admitted law students often aspire to an “embraced” lawyer role that directly expresses their personal and political values. Empirical research has suggested that during law school these students are instructed in an amoral and apolitical vision of professionalism. The literature has paid less attention to how students internally experience these norms within their continual processes of self-construction. This article takes an exploratory micro-dynamic look at professional identity formation drawing on longitudinal interviews and identity mapping with three student cohorts. Over the course of their legal education, students bound for large corporate law firms tended to report increasing professional role distancing. In contrast, students who pursued jobs in the public-interest sector tended to sustain a more proximate conception of professional identity, overlapping with racial, gender, political, and other centrally constitutive roles. The article concludes with normative and theoretical implications.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Borrows

This article examines pedagogical developments in Canadian law schools related to outdoor education. In the process, it shows how recommendations from the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission can be applied, which called for law schools to create Indigenous-focused courses related to skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights and anti-racism. Land-based education on reserves can give law students meaningful context for exploring these Calls to Action. At the same time this article illustrates that taking students outside law school walls is not solely an Indigenous development. Thus, it first provides a few examples about how outdoors legal education is occurring in non-Indigenous settings. Next, the article examines unique Indigenous legal methodologies for learning law on and from the land. Finally, the author discusses his own experience in teaching Anishinaabe law on his reserve to demonstrate how students can develop deeper understandings of their professional responsibilities.  Dans cet article, l’auteur aborde les développements pédagogiques liés à l’enseignement de plein air dans les écoles de droit du Canada. Ainsi, il montre comment il est possible de donner suite aux recommandations de la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation relative aux pensionnats indiens, notamment en ce qui concerne la création par les écoles de droit de cours axés sur les compétences au regard de l’aptitude interculturelle, du règlement des différends, des droits de la personne et de la lutte contre le racisme. L’éducation axée sur le territoire qui est offerte sur les réserves peut donner aux étudiants en droit un contexte significatif qui les aidera à explorer ces appels à l’action. Au même moment, cet article montre que l’apprentissage du droit à l’extérieur des murs de l’école de droit n’est pas observé uniquement chez les Autochtones. Ainsi, l’auteur donne d’abord quelques exemples de la façon dont l’enseignement du droit à l’extérieur se fait dans des environnements non autochtones. Il décrit ensuite des méthodologies autochtones uniques utilisées pour l’apprentissage du droit axé et fondé sur le territoire. Enfin, l’auteur décrit l’expérience qu’il a lui-même vécue lorsqu’il a enseigné la loi anishinaabe sur sa réserve afin de démontrer comment les étudiants peuvent parvenir à mieux comprendre leurs responsabilités professionnelles.


2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 761
Author(s):  
Rosalie Jukier ◽  
Kate Glover

In this article, the authors argue that the longstanding trend of excluding graduate studies in law from the discourse on legal education has detrimental effects on both the discourse and the future of the law faculty. More specifically, disregarding graduate legal education is at odds with the reality of graduate studies in Canadian law faculties today, ignores the challenges of graduate programs in law, and perpetuates inaccurate distinctions about both the career aspirations of law students and the relationship between undergraduate and graduate legal studies. In the authors’ view, these concerns can be overcome by reframing the discourse. Once the purpose of legal education is understood to be the cultivation of jurists and the law faculty is seen as an integrated whole of people, place, and program, graduate legal education moves easily into the discussion on the future of the law faculty. Including graduate studies in the discourse is an opportunity to explore, and be hopeful about, the institutional missions of law faculties and their place in the university, the optimization of legal education at all levels, and the methods by which participants in graduate studies should fulfill their responsibilities to the future of the discipline.


Author(s):  
Jo-Anne Pickel

Last year, the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto approved a plan that will see tuition fees increase from $12 000 to $22 000 dollars over the next five years. Other Canadian law faculties are beginning to follow, or are considering following, the University of Toronto's lead. In light of this trend toward higher tuition fees, the time is ripe to step back and ask: what will this mean for legal education in Canada? In particular, on the twentieth anniversary of the release of Law and Learning (the “Arthurs Report”), it would seem important to reflect on the impact that higher tuition fees might have on law and learning in Canada. What will dramatic increases in tuition mean for the values and laudable objectives set out in the Arthurs Report? These are some of the issues that I seek to address, partly through a personal reflection on my own experience as a law student and as someone who is near the completion of graduate studies in law.


2014 ◽  
Vol 96 (895-896) ◽  
pp. 987-1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Jastram ◽  
Anne Quintin

AbstractThis paper assesses the evolution of teaching international humanitarian law (IHL) in law schools in the United States since 2007, analyzes progress made in overcoming challenges to more effective integration of IHL content in law school curricula, and provides a measure of the contribution of promotional initiatives and strategies undertaken by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to this effort. The findings and recommendations should serve to support law faculty and law schools in the US and elsewhere, as well as the ICRC, in expanding opportunities for teaching and scholarship, and in encouraging law students and professors to pursue their interest in this field.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document