Thinking Like a Lawyer: Blog

Lisa Mazzie, faculty at Marquette Law School, blogs about thinking like a lawyer.

http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2009/09/04/thinking-like-a-lawyer/

Excerpt: Most lawyers will readily agree that to “think like a lawyer” is to think differently than others. For some, this is unsettling because the rational, analytical processes one gains while learning to “think like a lawyer” can make them feel that their core values are being challenged or even changed. Professor Lawrence Krieger, in his pamphlet “The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress,” says that “[i]f you begin to ignore your sense of right and wrong . . . in order to rationalize any possible outcome, you will dampen the ideals and values that brought you to law school in the first place.” This loss of connectedness to one’s long-held personal beliefs affects one’s sense of self.

.......Then-Assistant Dean Meg Gaines once wrote in a student newsletter when I was a law student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison that “law school trains us to stay in our heads – in our rational minds.” But, she added, “good relationships necessitate a broader consciousness,” and it was “integrating . . . our whole selves” that made us “better professionals and better people.”