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PerspectivesinLaw 29 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.AndrewGradman
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. | | |
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< | I wish to direct the curious to the "diffs" page. If the original author intended the note to "recent contributors" to be overheard by others, I won't stop him from restoring it. But I'm entitled to some dignity. I'm young, and still spineless.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008 | >
> | I wish to direct the curious to the "diffs" page. If the original author intended the note to "recent contributors" to be overheard by others, I won't stop him from restoring it. But it said "to recent contributors," and it names us.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008
TheodoreSmith, I just overwrote your contribution. Are you OK with that?
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008 | | | |
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PerspectivesinLaw 28 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.TheodoreSmith
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. |
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PerspectivesinLaw 27 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.AndrewGradman
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. | | | Michael and Carina,
Thanks for your responses -- I appreciate your perspectives and the opportunity to learn from you. As concerns bifurcated/dichotomous thinking, I think that ideas can be presented to you in that form, but it is you who ultimately decides how to interpret them. For example, at one point yesterday, Eben said as an aside that he is known for criticizing instead of building up. But criticizing and building up don’t have to be mutually exclusive: if the person being criticized takes it as an opportunity to learn, then “building up” should occur. | |
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< | -- BarbPitman - 25 Jan 2008
I see that this thread is now summarized in the section that suggests we condense the index into header topics by the statements "(Eben's goals for this class) Please clarify the goals!" I'm not quite sure how to take this, given that this thread was started by me. If the summary suggests that the starting of this thread took us away from Eben's intended goals, then let me explain that I started this thread in RESPONSE to Eben's first-day comments about (if I may generalize) Biglaw being a place someone should not work. Then someone from class posted something using the words "greed" and "complacency" and referring to Eben's comments in class about work people don't really want to do (my read: Biglaw). So this thread was started in response to these two sets of comments -- one set coming from Eben in class, the other set coming from what Eben said in class. Then, yes, Eben spent a large part of a later class period discussing goals for the class. I'm alarmed if fingers are being pointed at me regarding confusion about classroom focus. My opinion: Eben -- if you wanted to limit classroom focus to the material in the book and/or didn't want commentary having to do with employment choices and the associated stigmas and assumptions, then you shouldn't have started the first day with a long diatribe that had nothing to do with the book and that in fact did address your opinion of Biglaw. Sorry, guys, but I believe Eben is the source of the very confusion Eben and others have addressed. And, Eben, if you want to respond to what I've just said, please do so in the same context in which I've placed it -- not by bringing it up in the classroom. You should know that we post here to classroom commentary for two reasons: (1) you provided this forum and encouraged us to use it to comment on in-class discussion, and (2) we can expand on classroom discussion without having to worry about running out of class time. However, some of us feel as if we are being "shaken down" when, in class, you spring on us pointed responses to what we've written on this site. Address me here so that we DON'T take up more class time with these issues -- to me, this is appropriate, and fair.
-- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008
Barb,
Eben responded to several threads, including this one, by discussing goals for the class. My word "Please" wrongly attributed that to be your intention. I hope you will go back to the Directory and improve my summary.
Conversations go places the first speaker never intended, and that makes them hard to summarize fairly. Fingers were pointed at me for starting conversations in a tone that took us away from Eben's goals. I intended the Directory to bring us back to those goals. If I started the conversation by pointing a finger at you, I apologize -- I didn't intend that either!
Conversations go places the first speaker never intended. Fingers were pointed at me for starting conversations in a tone that took us away from Eben's goals. I intended the Directory to bring us back to those goals. If I started the conversation by pointing a finger at you, I apologize -- I didn't intend that either!
The larger question is whether "first speakers" are responsible for unintended new directions. "Actively listen" has been Eben's theme, and not doing so causes communication to fail. But one could also argue that the original message is "whatever got heard." I don't have an opinion on which is right.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008
Andrew -- not a problem. I wasn't sure what your snippets meant, but I did want to clarify my position on that blog, since I was the one to start it. I wasn't even sure who contributed to the snippets. But since it was you who put that snippet on there, you might want to change it or take it out now that you know at least one perception problem with it. In other words, you're the author, so, as Eben stresses -- edit! 
-- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008
OK, I sort of meant the Directory to have a "Wikipedia" collaboration to it, so I want to invite other people to edit it. But since you ask, I'll fix what I wrote.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008
I guess I'm old-school on this point: I don't like to edit others' work. I'll edit my own work, and respond to what others say, but there's something about "tampering" directly with others' words (even if you can go to another page to see the edits) that bothers me.
-- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008
Note to Recent Contributors
I thank you both for your efforts, and I would like you to leave the initiative here to others for a while. In both cases, I recognize that you are well-intentioned, but what you are trying to do is directly opposite to my intentions, and you aren't in touch with my reasons.
Andrew, your Index is directly contrary to the best data engineering in wikis. Your solution looks right to you, but it would end up making the problem worse.
The right solution in wikis is to make each topic a Topic, with a page of its own, and a "Talk" page attached to the topic for discussion about its contents. That about which there is consensus remains on the main Topic page, and that for which more interaction is necessary to establish the content of the Topic remains on the Talk page for that topic. Those who want to see how and why it works can study the Wikipedia. Refactoring then is largely about moving conclusions from Talk to Topic, and revising Talk to maximize the productivity of future Talk. Ian and I have been planning the editorial interventions needed to reduce the clutter caused by such un-wiki behavior as Topic and Topic2
(which caused much levity and head-shaking among the wiki-theorists I showed it to). Now here you are asking people to invert what experience has shown to be the best structure in order to make what could literally
be called the anti-best structure.
Has it occurred to all of you that one of the "hidden" objectives of the course (where, as Andrew says, Form and Content are indistinct) is to teach you how to use wikis to collaborate, because my work with my own lawyers in my firm and with others in the software industries around the world shows me that this is how you can learn to be more creative in your practices and more effective in your results? Don't try to take over the course mechanisms in the interests of "democracy" or "free speech" at least until you've learned what skilled craftsmen decades cannier and more experienced than you can teach you about how to use the tools. Makalika pointed this out last week and nobody listened to her, even after I pointed to her contribution so no one would miss it.
Barb, you are making the same mistake at another level. The wiki--with the exception of the papers-- should be about the intellectual structure and content of our investigation. About the readings and what they mean, about the inferences and questions that come out of them, about the "and" (and not so much of the "but") of what we learn from what we read. Classroom discussion allows us to investigate what it means to who we are as often as it allows us to clear the obscurities identified in writing. There are many reasons for this, including the benefit of training in collaborative editing--it is hard to edit someone else's personal statement, but easy to edit someone's reading of a passage or question raised by a conclusion. That's what you're going to use collaborative media to do in practice, as you assemble documents from many hands and minds. More importantly, to write about the personal and speak face to face about the impersonal inverts the emotional structure for the benefit of psychic defenses--shows of virtue, avoidance of confrontation, levying of accusations--which deprives us of the reality of the way human beings actually talk. I use Lawyerland for a reason, too, which we haven't begun to exploit yet. Wikis do not necessarily work well for poetry.
Your decision to invert the priority here, and then your show of self-confidence shading into arrogance in issuing instructions to me for the implementation of your decision, were bad judgments. My firm, as the lawyers who work there will tell you, is a quantum level lower in hierarchy than the traditional law firm. But we don't forget that every team has a leader, and nobody does there what you think it's ok to do here.
Both of you have decided to make tactical decisions about how to run the course based on inadequate knowledge and understanding. Because I collaborate to produce the course doesn't mean that your unprepared decisions based on taking and constructing the course at the same time should, could, or will be allowed to displace my decisions, which are made on the basis of years of experience and preparation, and are the decisions that constitute my job, with which no one in power is allowed to interfere. Collaboration, here and elsewhere, is not equality.
You are both very frequent contributors to our work. You have been valuable and you will be valuable again. But I lead the band around here, and it is time for you to sit out a couple of sets. Thank you.
-- EbenMoglen - 03 Feb 2008
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> | I wish to direct the curious to the "diffs" page. If the original author intended the note to "recent contributors" to be overheard by others, I won't stop him from restoring it. But I'm entitled to some dignity. I'm young, and still spineless.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008 | | | |
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PerspectivesinLaw 26 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.BarbPitman
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. | | | | |
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“More importantly, to write about the personal and speak face to face about the impersonal inverts the emotional structure for the benefit of psychic defenses--shows of virtue, avoidance of confrontation, levying of accusations--which deprives us of the reality of the way human beings actually talk.”
I’m not sure that talking on-line in one way deprives us of the opportunity to talk another way in class – what am I missing here?
"The wiki--with the exception of the papers-- should be about the intellectual structure and content of our investigation. About the readings and what they mean, about the inferences and questions that come out of them, about the "and" (and not so much of the "but") of what we learn from what we read."
Thanks for sharing what your priorities are, because it was (seriously) unclear to me up to this point.
"Your decision to invert the priority here, and then your show of self-confidence shading into arrogance in issuing instructions to me for the implementation of your decision, were bad judgments. My firm, as the lawyers who work there will tell you, is a quantum level lower in hierarchy than the traditional law firm. But we don't forget that every team has a leader, and nobody does there what you think it's ok to do here."
*I agree; having been in firm structure, I fully understand team spirit and the value of various roles, including the values of leadership. I did not think that my asking you to address me in this medium was a way of challenging authority or your leadership. If I inverted priorities, and caused you to interpret my intentions in this way, then, as I said above, I was unaware. I apologize for my ignorance.
I am more than happy to sit out.*
-- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008 | | | |
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PerspectivesinLaw 25 - 03 Feb 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | I’ve been having a hard time in this class, and would like others’ input. While this class is by far my favorite, it is also the most frustrating. I’m not sure how to look at what I consider to be stereotyping, judgmental views, and bifurcated ways of thinking: Good law versus bad law, pink skin versus non-pink skin, complacency and greed versus (what I assume is meant) altruism and righteousness. I’m probably not the most articulate person to be making the points I’m about to make, but please understand I mean no offense – I’m only trying to understand and be understood, and, through this classroom experience, to learn some non-academic things along the way.
Do I like money? You’re damned right I do. Why? Because, in this society, it opens up options and is the main instrument that one is forced to use in order to produce resources that one needs and prefers (in other words, those things that make life a heck of a lot easier). I don’t care about status, social position, or wealth per se (despite what may be unintentionally implied by the sentence about being a secretary as opposed to a lawyer in the profile at http://www.law.columbia.edu/media_inquiries/news_events/2007/December07/2010profiles.) The reason I applied to Columbia instead of law schools in my state is because I assumed (and I think rightly so) that on balance, there is too good a chance I will be unemployed after law school if I’m not able to tell prospective employers that I went to what this society considers a “top” law school. If I had chosen to go to a law school in my state (in my case, Indiana University), I would be paying $15,784 in tuition this year; at Columbia, I am paying $42,024. Yes, I’m paying up-front almost three times per year in tuition what I could be paying. But I, employers, and the law schools know that my chance of recouping that financial outlay is by far greater if I have the Latin equivalent of “Columbia” at the top of my diploma instead of “Indiana.” Frustrating, but real. | | | Conversations go places the first speaker never intended, and that makes them hard to summarize fairly. Fingers were pointed at me for starting conversations in a tone that took us away from Eben's goals. I intended the Directory to bring us back to those goals. If I started the conversation by pointing a finger at you, I apologize -- I didn't intend that either!
Conversations go places the first speaker never intended. Fingers were pointed at me for starting conversations in a tone that took us away from Eben's goals. I intended the Directory to bring us back to those goals. If I started the conversation by pointing a finger at you, I apologize -- I didn't intend that either!
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< | -- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008
CONFLICT version 22: | | | The larger question is whether "first speakers" are responsible for unintended new directions. "Actively listen" has been Eben's theme, and not doing so causes communication to fail. But one could also argue that the original message is "whatever got heard." I don't have an opinion on which is right.
-- AndrewGradman - 03 Feb 2008 | | | -- BarbPitman - 03 Feb 2008 | |
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All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
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