Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change. - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 26, 1997 by Ginny Kiernan-Richards

Graduate and professional education -- especially law school -- has traditionally been something of a "gentlemen's club." But what happens when those who are not "gentlemen" -- or even Euro-American and Christian at that -- start showing up?

Answering that question is the burden of this provocative book, cowritten by Lani Guinier, erstwhile nominee of President Clinton for assistant attorney general prior to being engulfed in "nannygate," and two other female lawyers and scholars. The book is persuasive in its argument that women and people of color experience unusual difficulties in law school and that pedagogy is the chief culprit. That conclusion, moreover, has broad significance for graduate education in all fields.

The problem is that in the culture of legal education, those who think quickly are favored over those who think deeply. Those who are fast to put their hands up or quick with one-liners do better than those who prefer to mull things over or consult with others. All of these working styles have their place in actual legal practice, but only a few are rewarded in law school. It is not a problem that arose because women were admitted but one that the experience of women and people of color has illuminated.

Before anyone insists that law has "always" been taught this way and that any change in teaching methods is equivalent to lowering standards, let me issue a reminder of the legal battles we have seen lately. In a recent major trial, we saw a legal team, not a one-person Perry Mason performance. That team included, certainly, the charismatic and quick-minded trial attorney. It also included those whose specialty is knowing every precedent and decision ever written in the team's particular field, ready to grasp where one might be used -- or interpreted -- to the client's benefit. The researcher, the interpreter, the hair-trigger mind, the financial wizard, the negotiator, the insurance expert and more ensure that all the complexities of the legal system are successfully navigated.

The reality means law schools should be welcoming, indeed going out of their way to solicit persons who learn and develop most fully under various methods. The issue is not whether diversity weakens educational standards but rather why law school pedagogy isn't better suited to developing diverse talents in ways working attorneys see as essential.

When NCR first asked me to review this book and test the author's conclusions against my own experience of graduate education as a woman in a Catholic university, I wondered what law school and graduate study in theology could possibly have in common. As I began to read, my quandary increased, for this surely was not my graduate experience (though certainly, like those who responded to Guinier's survey, I studied in schools and a field that until recently were both all-male and all-white).

But as I reflected, suppressed memories returned of just such Socratic, adversarial classes from earlier in my career. I was indeed put down, firmly and sometimes nastily, for interpreting past theologians in a contemporary context, both by professor and by other participating students. The quick and aggressively pursued response was most certainly the norm and earned praise from professors, at least for male students. Female students had two choices: Become "gentlemen" or wallflowers. I choice the latter initially, feeling utterly intimidated and inadequate. Not every class was like this, but, as with law school, it was the rule. As with Guinier's portrayal of law school, only a few professors were welcoming and open to serving as mentors.

The NCR editor's guess was correct. In these widely disparate fields, teaching methods and learning experiences that put women and minorities at a disadvantage share some very real elements.

Contrary to my expectations, Guinier's study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (incorporating student data from 1987-1992) does not ultimately find simplistic chauvinism as the driving mechanism for these difficulties. Gender is not the central target, nor is law school the sole provenance of Socratic-method teaching that incites and rewards aggressive student participation. The most important possibility suggested by these authors is that graduate pedagogy itself, for many fields, may hinder the full development of those students for whom the immediate fact is not the true vehicle for learning and aggression is not the chosen form of participation -- and this pertains too most women, minority groups and many of those from non-European cultures.

As Guinier et al. point out, there was a time when the quick-witted trial attorney was the norm. The case method and adversarial base made sense for teaching law then. That is not the norm for legal practice today; even criminal attorneys need experts in research, interpretation, negotiation and more. In all areas, as Guinier points out, law is becoming less courtroom-oriented and more transactional and complex.

There was a time when theology could be taught in that same rigid setting, for it consisted largely in absorbing (without substantive question) the teachings of the past and passing them to students in the same manner. Faith for most was a "catechism" affair. The adversarial base for learning was unavoidable, for most theology students were seminarians expected to "defend the faith" against a hostile and challenging world.