student loans, scarce jobs, professional expectations

I just finished my annual workshop for Seattle University Law students entitled “Money Problems: Balancing a Commitment to Social Justice with Concerns About Financial Security.”  I thought I would share the format of the workshop in case people find it useful to engage similiar conversations in other spaces. The goals of the workshop are several.  First, I want to move them out of an individualist perspective on the financial pressures they are facing and into a collective action and mutual support framework.  Law school and professionalism generally contribute to a competitive, individualist mindset based in scarcity and fear that can keep them from connecting with each other about the pressure they are under and from making good decisions about their own lives and working together to address the causes of the pressure.  Second, I want them to build some critical analysis of the pressures they are under by putting their own economic situation into the context of wealth disparity broadly and by recognizing the ways that consumerism, competition, and fear are being generated in them by the media, the profession, their families and their social circles.  Third, I want them to build a framework for balancing the pressures they are experiencing with their own visions, passions and interests so that they might hold on to some of their own values and actually use their degrees to do work that is meaningful to them rather than being pushed into things they hate doing and that are harmful in the world.  The session is a short lunchtime session and the students vary in political awarness, identity, and resources so in many ways it is just an initial conversation.

The format I used today was very simple.  After a brief introduction of the goals above, I opened with the question, “What keeps us from clearly seeing our own positions in the US and world economies?”  We did a brainstorm with me recording their answers on the whiteboard.  They talked about a range of things including consumerism, competition, the media, and the myth of meritocracy and the American Dream.  Next, we addressed the more specific pressures law students feel and messages they hear about work and money.  Students described family pressure, work/life/family balance issues, debt, upward mobility desires, fear of joblessness, and valuation of lawfirm jobs in addition to other things.  Third, we addressed the question, “What can we as law students do to be able to pursue the work we are passionate about after law school and to increase econmic justice and wealth redistribution generally?”  We talked about models for building sliding scale law practices and for generating revenue for social justice-focused work outside of foundation and state funding, waht it means to live on less to do the work you love, organizing for more loan forgiveness from the government and the university, organizing for more funding of social justice post-graduate opportunities from the university, striking against creditors, and other ideas.

I am hopeful that the session supports the students in talking with their peers about these issues with a broader economic justice lens that hopefully tempers some of the fear and scarcity that generally surrounds the topic.  I imagine it is a conversation that is also needed in many other educational contexts.

3 Replies to “student loans, scarce jobs, professional expectations”

  1. Professor Spade –

    As a 1L student who was present during yesterday’s present, I just wanted to extend my thanks for chairing the conversation. Though I disagree with you – and rather seismically, at that – regarding capitalism and wealth redistribution – I certainly appreciate the discussion and your obviously sympathetic ear.
    I’ll be looking to SU as an institution in the future to elaborate upon what precisely is meant by “social justice”; the school speaks of it often and freely, but more often than not in amorphorous terms that don’t seem particularly inhabited by a readily agreed-upon meaning. Doesn’t what constitutes “social justice” vary greatly according to the eye of the beholder? And surely there must a way to infuse legal careers that aren’t explicitly predicated upon a notion of social justice (say, intellectual property practice or corporate litigation) with a cognizance of the greater social need.
    These are just my thoughts during these first weeks of school and not questions I’m posing to you, per se; I’m just feeling reflective.
    It’ll be a pleasure getting to know you during the next few years.

    Best,
    Win

  2. Win,
    Thanks for your thoughts. The Social Justice Coalition had a retreat last year where they looked at the definitions of Social Justice that many other organizations had created and drafted one of their own. You might want to ask them to see it–may be food for thought as you continue thinking about what that term means to you. I agree that there are a variety of interpretations at SU about what that term encompasses and I think that talking about that leads people to really interesting conversations about their understandings of power, oppression, social movements, law reform, governance and a variety of other key topics for our work at the school. I am excited to get to know you more in the coming years and see how your ideas develop as you progress through law school.

  3. What a thoughtful article, have you given thought to the prospects of law students and the sub specialties. As some fields within law are contracting there are other niches that are doing quite well.

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