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SPECIAL THANKS

The disorientation guide is a collaborative project that required the hard work and dedication of numerous talented students at Windsor Law. We’d like to extend our profound gratitude to all the contributors, editors and formatters who volunteered

their time to make this project happen. In order of appearance, we want to thank the following people for their contributions to this publication:

Dean Spade

Chris Rudnicki Kathryn Bell

Brady Donohue Jackie Hardy

Tammii Thomas Anonymous Alum Carolina Paterson

Hannah Bahmanpour Justine Ajandi Heather Salter

And a special thanks to our fabulous editorial team:

Kathryn Bell

Sam Chrisanthus Brady Donohue

Richard Kirkham Faiza Malik

Chris Rudnicki

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TABLE OF CONTENTS. Introduction 3 Advice For Those Considering Law School 4 Getting the Most Out of Law School 10 A Commitment to the Clinics 12 Creating Your Own Suffering 14 (Re)learning to Trust Yourself 15 An Argument for Alternatives: Being a Dual at Windsor Law 17 The Bar Exam vs Interesting, Enjoyable Courses 18 Argument Get Your Panel Off My Ovaries 21 Imagine No Tuition 22 Professionalism and the Politics of Performance 23 Principles in Practice: Moving Beyond the Divide 25 An Alternative Vision of Justice: Toward A World Without Prisons 26 Against ‘Social Justice’ 30 Resources Volunteering Outside Law School in Windsor 31 An Alternative Guide to Social Life in Windsor 32 Resources and Recommended Readings 33 !!!!!!!

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!!Introduction Friends and colleagues, What you have in front of you is the beginning of a conversation. This guide hopes to re-start a tradition started a number of years ago by a group of students who felt that critical and alternative views of the law were missing from the orientation and first year experience. The aim is a discussion that we hope you will continue to have well into your future legal careers. The arguments put forward in this guide may be familiar to you, or it may be the first time that you’ve had to stop to reflect on the privilege of being where you are. While the content and opinions of these authors may be diverse, they share a commitment to understanding social justice and how we go about achieving this ideal, both within the legal profession and within greater society. Ultimately we hope this guide inspires our colleagues, new and old, to continue pursuing the goals which initially drove them to apply to this school and to not become apathetic to the rampant injustice which remains pervasive in our society and is often perpetuated by the legal profession itself. Law school can be a lonely place for those with alternative views. The purpose of this guide is to assure you that you are not alone. To those students who are unsure about ‘Access to Justice” or feel that these conversations are meant merely to “make you feel bad” or to isolate you- this is not the aim. If you have a different viewpoint, we would love to hear from you. Please send all of your questions, concerns comments feedback to uwindsor.lawunion@gmail.com. It’s been a pleasure to watch the cooperation and creativity involved in creating this publication. We hope that you enjoy digesting the ideas contained in this guide as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you. You know what they say about journeys and single steps-thank you for sharing in one of ours. Yours in solidarity, Windsor Law Union !!!!!!!!!!!!

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For Those Considering Law School - Dean Spade

!Footnotes'omitted'!I get several emails every week from people who want to go to law school or are trying to figure out if they want to go to law school. Most are queer or trans activists or people who want to somehow transform the world and end various harmful and horrible dynamics impacting people and communities they are a part of or care about. Because I talk on the phone or in person to many of these people and end up saying a lot of the same things to them, I thought it might be useful to write them down. In general, these conversations are focused on helping them get past the national narratives we have all been fed that tell us that legal cases are the most effective way to dismantle systems of oppression and change people’s lives. If we compare that idea to what is really happening in the world and what social movements are strategizing about, we find a more complicated relationship between law and social movements that raises questions about whether, when and how becoming a lawyer could be a good way to participate in transformative change. Here are a few things worth thinking about when considering law school: 1. Most legal work maintains, rather than transforms, systems of maldistribution. Many people’s interest in becoming lawyers is driven by the myth that changing law is the way to change lives. However, there is plenty of evidence that changing laws is not as central or as important to social change as we are made to think. In fact, in the face of large

scale social movements demanding change, governments often have created laws that declare equality or neutrality in order to quell dissent and maintain the status quo to the greatest extent possible. Very often, legal change that emerges in these moments heavily compromises the demands of grassroots movements in ways that lead to symbolic victories and possibly a small amount of material change to the least vulnerable of the group who the demands were about, but leave most people the same or worse off. U.S. law is fundamentally structured to establish and uphold settler colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism–the legal system will not dismantle these things. When we look at any radical movement in the U.S. challenging these institutions and conditions, whether it’s workers organizing against labor exploitation, women organizing against patriarchy, people of color organizing against white supremacy, people with disabilities organizing against ableism, people organizing against destruction of the earth, queer and trans people organizing against violent gender and sexual norms, or anyone else, we can see that those movements’ most transformative demands were/are not met by law, and instead that law changes are usually created to maximize the preservation of the status quo while adding a window-dressing of fairness. Even when we win law change that looks like it is supposed to guarantee the redistribution of some essential thing, that law is often quickly repealed, or it is never enforced, or it is twisted through administrative or judicial interpretation to do the reverse of what movements were seeking. 2. Lots of legal work that needs to be done to support poor people can be done without a law degree. For those of us who want to directly help people in our communities entangled in battles with horrible legal systems, the good news is that we can do a lot of that without going to law school. Legal advocacy can be

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done by non-lawyers—non-lawyers can even represent people in and help people prepare paperwork for many types of hearings related to public benefits, immigration, and other urgent issues. Some of the most radical movements in U.S. history have provided direct help to community members in de-professionalized ways, with people learning how to get through systems or get needs met and then helping and teaching other people so that lots of people can help each other, instead of a situation in which expertise is hoarded by a few privileged people. Getting help from someone else who is directly impacted is a powerful experience that brings people into social movements and lets them see themselves as potential providers of such help to others in their circumstances. Getting help from a privileged person with a professional degree does not have the same effect and often mirrors and reproduces dynamics of subordination. A great deal of the work that poverty lawyers help people with is similar to what social workers do—filling out forms, making calls to get people into housing or medical programs, accompanying people to intimidating meetings, explaining systems, figuring out if the government isn’t providing some help that it is supposed to provide. You can do a lot of that without going to law school, and law school classes mostly don’t teach you how to do that. You learn that by doing it, by finding out how those systems work where you live, by talking to people who have been doing it for a long time. If you do that work for three years you’ll learn more about supporting individual people struggling in those systems than if you spent those three years in law school learning about rich people’s property laws or the rules of federal courts. Most poor people will not end up in federal court but there are tons of people fighting for their lives in administrative hearings with no advocacy assistance every day. Because there are not enough poverty lawyers to even scratch the surface of poor people’s needs, we desperately need to de-professionalize legal help and focus on

sharing information with people in targeted communities about what they can demand from landlords, employers, and government agencies and how to be as safe as possible in the face of enormous state violence. De-professionalizing this work is also essential to breaking down the paternalistic role that service providers play in communities targeted for police violence, immigration enforcement, infrastructure abandonment, budget cuts, and political disenfranchisement. We also have to face the reality that the rules mostly don’t benefit targeted people and never have, that when good rules get created they are not followed or enforced, and so to actually change conditions of maldistribution we need mass mobilization and direct action to force deep transformation. Helping people get by as much as possible under awful conditions can be part of that kind of transformative process, but it is not enough on its own, especially for those (like people targeted and caged by criminal and immigration systems) who are on the violent losing end of all those rules and for whom legal relief is usually not available. 3. Law school is expensive (in most cases) and it’s worth thinking about what impact the debt may have on your future. Law school is extremely expensive and way less financial aid is available for it than for undergraduate education. Many people graduate with more than $100,000 of debt. For many, this creates pressure to take any job when they are done. Often those who went in with intentions to do certain kinds of social justice work end up either doing horrifying pro-capitalist work at a private firm or some kind of “public interest” job that they don’t like or don’t believe in. There is no point in investing three years of your life into a school experience and then having a job you hate, so consider this strongly before going. Think about price when choosing a school, and think about whether you are willing to give up credit privilege and default on loans. Being co- opted because of debt is a sad and

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avoidable fate. It is awful to watch people graduate and rationalize taking any job they can find because of the pressure of their debt and the law school culture that equalizes all career choices (becoming a prosecutor or working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement is considered a “public interest” or even “social justice” job in many law schools!) and supports feelings of competition and desperation. There is enormous pressure to take any job after law school. It is in the schools’ interests to have graduates employed in elite (usually conservative or mildly reformist) work, so they support a culture of scarcity, individualism, competition and fear that drives students to take jobs that make them miserable. It is no coincidence that rates of addiction are so high amongst lawyers that some states require all attorneys admitted to the bar to take a class about substance abuse.

4. Law school is a very conservative training and rarely a critical intellectual experience. Law school is not like liberal arts college. It isn’t about writing cool papers full of critical ideas. Many law schools, like academia in general, are perceived as “bastions of liberalism” in the context of our outrageously white supremacist, conservative country, but the intellectual and political environments are so mildly reformist (at best) that they will feel shockingly conservative to anyone who wants to see significant change. The things that interest you about law are not what the classes are about. You don’t even get to choose your classes until they have had a full year to isolate you from your communities and passions with an enormous workload and tear down and rebuild your way of thinking. Law school classes are about memorizing obscure rules that are likely to have nothing

to do with your daily practice as a lawyer. They are about indoctrinating you into the belief that racist, genocidal legal systems and principles are neutral. They are only somewhat about passing the bar exam, an exam that also tests you on things that have very little relevance to social movement lawyering. Law school is like a language immersion program, but one in which the language you are learning is the language of rationalizing white supremacy, settler colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism. The traditional pedagogy of law school relies on humiliating students if they bring in other ways of thinking or knowing about the world, thereby whittling them down to a shadow of their former selves and reshaping them to make them think inside a very narrow box. It is true that law school sometimes makes people more concise speakers and writers, but it is certainly not the only way to do that, and there is an equal danger that it makes people into bad communicators. Culturally, law school is a place where white masculine norms and behaviors are exacerbated. Curved grading ensures an environment of competition and scarcity, a hierarchy of perceived intelligence that inevitably values white, masculine norms. Classes are often enormous—80-100 people—and students sit in assigned seats. Critical dialogue is made impossible in such an environment, and ostracism of people who fall outside the norms is par for the course. And it feels like high school—the first year is pretty much all day every day, you have a locker, white wealthy people frequently bully and tease people who bear markers of otherness. Usually when I share these concerns with people considering law school, they nod, but they feel that they can resist this climate and training. I urge you to take it seriously. I think that no activist exits law school without having been changed and made more conservative. It took years of social movement engagement for me to shed some of the internalized dominance behaviors I gained in law school, to remember how to think about

“We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts

those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.” – Derrick A. Bell

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solutions that cannot be won in law, and to revive communication and relational skills that law school tramples. 5. If you go to law school, it’s crucial to go to a school where you will have allies and support and where the learning experiences you want are actually being offered. Don’t get caught up in the quest for prestige. After I share the above points with many people, they still go on to law school, and they still go to the highest ranked school they get into. It could be that people drawn to law school are also people who value prestige and have a hard time resisting social pressure, regardless of their self-identifications as anti-capitalists, rebels, non- conformists, or whatever. If you are someone who actually wants to see transformative change, and despite my above points you are committed to going to law school, go somewhere with a social justice mission or a specific program that you know draws MANY students to that school because they share your commitments. Lots of schools have something on their website about public interest law. That’s not what I mean. I mean go to CUNY–a place that is truly committed to social justice, that has lively and vibrant student activism and roots in transformative movements, and that draws students because of its mission, so your classmates will have more to teach you. Or go to Northeastern, where students are given the chance to work for credit more than at any other school. Or go to UCLA where the Critical Race Studies program is a rare haven for students of color and racial-justice focused students to learn from critical race scholars and deeply engage with law from a critical perspective. Or come to Seattle University and hang out with me, and help us push the school to make our social justice mission as vibrant and transformative as it can possibly be. In any case, do not fall into the trap of prestige. Some of the most elite law schools in the country don’t even offer classes in Critical Race Theory or Poverty Law. Rankings are based on the wealth of the school, the extent to which their students succeed on racist

indicators like the LSAT, and other criteria that are irrelevant to or counter to social justice concerns. You need a school that offers as many classes as possible that are relevant to dismantling white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy. You need a school where student activists are taking the institution as their target and engaging in multi-issue activism, teaching each other along the way. You need a school that values clinical legal education and will give you lots of chances to actually do work supporting poor communities while you are in school. As someone who used to be part of hiring attorneys, I can tell you that I did not value fancy degrees. I valued people who had gotten some experience, people who had developed critical thinking about race, disability, poverty, gender and immigration, and people who had thought critically about the role of lawyers in social movements and learned how to think about privilege. Once you are at school, you need to form your own reading groups and other support spaces to learn what is not taught there, including movement history and the role of lawyers in social movements. And you must continue to engage with social movements, not in a lawyer’s role, throughout law school and after. This is essential to keeping perspective on the limited role of legal work, maintaining humility, and finding balance and passion. What Roles Can Lawyers Play in Social Movements? The idea that people who want to make change will make the biggest impact by becoming lawyers and bringing precedent-setting lawsuits needs to be reevaluated in the face of what movement history reveals. Once you let go of that idea, you can start to think about what role lawyers should or could have in social movements and evaluate whether you see yourself in those roles. In my view, transformation really happens because

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of the mobilization of large numbers of people directly affected by harmful and violent systems who make collective demands that exceed the limits of law and then force change through direct action (i.e. breaking the law). It doesn’t come from the top—from elites granting change through legislation or courts. The question then becomes what role lawyers can have in that broad, participatory, mass mobilization-focused, bottom-up transformation. Some important roles lawyers can play in such movements are: 1. Demystifier of legal systems Lawyers can serve movements by using specialized knowledge to help demystify systems that are targeting vulnerable people but that are often intentionally opaque. Sometimes lawyers can help movement leaders identify and strategize who the targets of various campaigns could be or where weak points in certain legal systems are. However, this is easily overstated, because people targeted by violent legal systems usually know more about how they actually work and lawyers often only know how they work on paper (and sometimes mistakenly believe that to be how they actually work). Legal training can make people less adept rather than more adept at strategizing for change because we tend to buy into how the system works without even realizing it. Law school teaches people how to stop thinking outside of legal solutions to problems, which mostly means we can only think of ways to slightly tinker with harmful systems, and thereby strengthen, stabilize, and legitimize them. The entire focus of legal education is about working inside the existing legal system. Even the small part of legal education that is about poor peoples’ struggles is usually about narrow reforms and courtroom strategies, not about supporting rent strikes or squatting or prison abolition or indigenous land struggles–essentially, not about actually challenging the

root causes of maldistribution. Again, because law school is a powerful space of indoctrination, if you decide to go, you need to have already formed deep frameworks to resist that indoctrination through participating in and studying social movements and legal systems through perspectives of people directly impacted by systemic maldistribution and violence. 2. Legal service provider Lawyers are sometimes helpful for people facing abusive legal systems (immigration enforcement, criminalization, welfare cuts, eviction, environmental injustice). If survival services are part of a larger organizing strategy aimed at systemic transformation–meaning that they connect people to a way of joining with others struggling in similar circumstances and are governed by people from the directly affected group–they can be an important entry-point for people into resistance struggles and an important source of support for people to help them take political leadership on matters that concern them. Unfortunately, that is not what legal services look like for the most part. Most legal service provider jobs where lawyers help people navigate violent legal systems (like criminal defender jobs, welfare advocacy, unemployment benefits advocacy, immigration law) are not part of broader social movement strategy. Many lawyers working in those jobs end up feeling like they are just cogs in the machine. Because of the way that these jobs are structured (large organizations with lots of hierarchy, narrow practice areas or funding restrictions on certain kinds of help, and gigantic caseloads), it can be hard or impossible to connect with larger social movements even if lawyers who work there want to do so. Only a tiny percent of people can even get a lawyer, and only for some of their needs. Everything is so stacked against poor people that many have claims that lawyers won’t take because they can’t win.

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Those few that get a lawyer and win something are the exception, not the rule, and often what they are winning is something that isn’t that great and might be taken away again at any point. Many lawyers providing direct services come to feel like their work legitimizes the system, and also hate that their jobs involve enforcing the laws on their clients–telling people to take the plea bargain, or that they can’t represent them in eviction defense because they don’t have enough rent saved up, or that there are no avenues for them to gain immigration status. Very few of the people most impacted by poverty, racism, ableism and xenophobia get representation, and very few “win.” Legal services provided in this way focus on individuals–as if people’s problems with eviction, immigration, criminalization are an individual matter–and do not get to the root causes that affect whole neighborhoods, cities, racial groups, or economic classes. Unless legal services are directly connected to a strategy of mass mobilization, they mostly maintain and mildly legitimize harmful arrangements because a few people get some small help surviving. Most legal services are not currently connected to transformative change strategies, and are not going to be unless we marshal resources for much more of that kind of work—direct community organizing, base building, mobilization. This is something to consider about becoming a lawyer—are those the skills most needed by our movements right now? We definitely do need radical people to be criminal defense attorneys and welfare lawyers and all that, but we also need to be building the skills and strategies for seeking bigger change, and the reality is that the mostly privileged people who go to law school–and the few people from targeted communities who get in end up doing system-maintaining work. Most law students I meet have never worked with and often have never heard of mass mobilization efforts besides a few historical examples like the Civil Rights

Movement, and they tend to have a skewed view of mass movements that centers charismatic individuals and law changes and obscures the roles of mass mobilization, direct action, and armed struggle. Unless you have a really clear idea of how you will navigate these tensions and how your work will be different, going to law school may just co-opt you into narrow reform work. There are ideas out there of alternative models for doing legal support work for movements. You should find out about them before you decide whether or not to go to law school so that you can be part of building the kinds of accountable grassroots-based movements that can direct legal work in meaningful ways. Don’t get half way through law school before you figure out that you are very limited in addressing the problem that drove you there (mass deportations, homelessness, access to education) by practicing law. In the context of many current movements, legal work is overdeveloped and mass mobilization strategy and infrastructure are underdeveloped. System-sustaining services are more supported than system-threatening mobilization strategies. Think about where you can get the skills you need to do whatever you do in ways that actually generate change and make you maximally useful to the processes of transformation you believe in. Do we need more lawyers or more organizers, given the limited effectiveness of legal change strategies? This framework is generic—it does not address specific conditions that you may be facing or specific movements you may be a part of, but I hope it provides a moment of pause in the assumption that law school is a wise choice for activists who want to transform the world.

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!5 tips for getting the most out of your classes - Chris Rudnicki

Welcome to law school! As everyone is fond of telling you, it is hard. In addition to mountains of readings, a steep learning curve and challenging material, there is also tremendous pressure to “perform” – meaning to get high grades. These tips may help you get better grades, but that’s not the point. The point of law school is to learn as much as you can about as many areas of law as you are interested in; it’s to expose yourself to new and challenging fields of law; and it’s to think about creative new ways to use the legal system to help people. Ultimately, the point of law school is to learn how to be a good lawyer. This guide will help you stay on top of your material, stay focused on what can often be dry subject matter, and get the most out of the courses you’ll take during your three years at Windsor Law. Remember that everyone has a different learning style, and that if these tips don’t work for you, you should ditch them and figure out what does work. If you have any tips you’d like to add to next year’s guide, please feel free to let us know! You can reach the Law Union steering committee at uwindsor.lawunion@ gmail.com.

One: Attend classes and do your readings. This sounds silly, but it bears stating explicitly. Going to classes and getting all your readings done can make you a law school superstar. Of course, take time off when you need it and make sure to take care of yourself; if that means missing a class or a couple of readings, that’s okay. But make attending class and doing your readings a priority, and don’t let silly reasons – IE “But I

really want to finish this season of Orange is the New Black!” – get in the way of making the most of your law school experience. The rest of these tips will help you make this happen.

Two: Treat law school like a job.

You’ll have about 16 hours of class per week in first year, and likely less in second and third. But you’ll be assigned two-three additional hours of reading and homework per hour of class, bringing the actual amount of hours per week up to 32-48. That’s a lot, and it is very easy to get behind! My advice is to treat law school like a job, and spend 8 hours per weekday working on school. Try to arrange to be on campus from 9-5 each day, or 10-6, or 8-4 – whatever works for you. When working, make sure it’s in a space without distractions. If you don’t like the library in the law school, try Leddy, the campus library, or the Green Bean Café under the church at California and Wyandotte. You’ll find that this way, you stay on top of your readings and assignments – half the battle when it comes to getting the most out of law school.

Three: Try the pomodoro technique.

It can be extremely challenging to concentrate while reading three mid-19th century cases discussing obscure and out-dated doctrines of property law. Some folks can just sit down and get it done, but the rest of us need a strategy to tackle this kind of work. One method is called the Pomdoro Technique. The people behind it have a website - http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ - but you don’t need to buy anything to use this technique. Just follow these easy steps: 1 - Get out a blank piece of paper. Draw four little tomatoes at the top. Write out the list of things you’d like to accomplish for the day. It helps if they’re broken down into small

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chunks. Leave some space at the bottom of the page. 2 - Set a timer for 25 minutes. Work for that time. If you get distracted, write down the source of your distraction at the bottom of the page, and get back to work. Identifying the source of your distraction and writing it down helps neutralize it for the time being while making sure you don’t forget it. (IE – pay phone bill.) 3 - Once the timer dings, cross out one of the tomatoes and set the timer again for 5 minutes. Do whatever you want! Check Facebook, do some push-ups, read a book, call a friend – whatever. 4 - When the timer rings again, repeat steps ii and iii three more times, once for each remaining tomato. You should complete 4 sessions of 25 minutes each – a solid two hours of work. 5 – When you’ve completed four tomatoes, take a longer break. Half an hour is usually a decent amount of time. It is also roughly the time it takes to watch a tv show! What a coincidence. 6 - When your longer break is up, write out four more tomatoes and repeat steps ii-v. You should be able to get 3 sets in an 8 hour day, accomplishing a solid 6 hours of work. Note that this technique is not set in stone! Adapt it as you like to fit your learning and working style. Lengthen the individual tomato times, change up the number of tomatoes you complete in one sitting, take longer breaks – whatever floats your boat.

Four: Make your own summary.

You may have already heard tell of the mythical upper year CAN: short for condensed annotated notes, these documents are summaries of a given course’s content for

the year. If you get the right CAN, so the story goes, you will be able to get a good grade with minimal effort. Just make a few changes here and there throughout the course, and voila! You have a ready-made summary when the exam comes. This works for some people, and doesn’t work for others. Using a ready-made CAN often leads to mistakes that you don’t catch because you don’t know the material. It also means that you are less likely to remember the necessary law, requiring you to be constantly flipping through your notes during the exam; very detrimental in the time crunch of law school examinations. Finally, and most importantly, it means you have a far weaker grip on the material than if you prepared your own. While studying for your exams, our advice is to prepare your own course summary. If you’ve stayed mostly on top of your course readings, it’s not hard. Use your syllabus as a table of contents, and simply fill it in with the notes you’ve made in class and from the readings. Other people’s CANs can be very helpful for figuring out how you want to structure your own summary and for checking to make sure you’ve got the law right. But in terms of learning and digesting the course material, nothing’s going to beat making your summary.

Five: IRAC. Learn to love it.

This tip actually is about marks. Law school exams often take the form of a hypothetical fact pattern, or “hypo” for short. Students are required to read about a hypothetical situation, identify legal issues, and argue about them. This doesn’t sound like rocket science, but writing one of these exams after four years of social science essays can actually be quite challenging. The trick is to succinctly communicate to your professor that you know the law and that you can argue it one way or the other.

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One tried, tested and true method of accomplishing this goal is IRAC – Issue, Rule, Application and Conclusion. Start your paragraph by identifying the issue; “The first question is whether Bart was wrongfully dismissed.” In your second sentence, discuss the applicable rule; “The test for wrongful dismissal comes from the Supreme Court’s decision in Bardal v The Globe and Mail.” In your third, discuss how it would apply to the facts in the hypo. Here you’d want to flesh out your analysis a little bit. Finally, conclude what the result would be based on your analysis. Vice-Dean Craig Forcese of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law has written at length about how to succeed in law school. He has this to say about tackling law school exams:

This three way task – spotting, recounting and analyzing – is standard fare for law school hypothetical-driven exams. It is also dramatically different from what most students have encountered in past academic ventures. Sing this mantra in the shower every morning: spot, recount, analyze.1

IRAC might not be the most sophisticated method – it’s the conceptual equivalent of those five-paragraph essays you wrote in high school – but law school exams are about speed and precision above all else. Learn to love IRAC, and you’ll do just fine.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!Craig Forcese, “Slaying the Law School Exam and Other Terrors that Go Bump in the Night”, Bleaching Law, online: <http://craigforcese.squarespace.com/bleaching-law/2012/11/20/slaying-the-law-school-exam-and-other-terrors-that-go-bump-i.html>.Terrors that Go Bump in the Night”, Bleaching Law, online: <http://craigforcese.squarespace.com/bleaching-law/2012/11/20/slaying-the-law-school-exam-and-other-terrors-that-go-bump-i.html>.!

A Commitment to the Clinics Kathryn Bell At Windsor Law we are extremely lucky to have such accessible opportunities to work in legal clinics. There are opportunities for students to volunteer with both Community Legal Aid (CLA) on campus and Legal Assistance of Windsor (LAW) downtown. These clinics provide invaluable experience to students while allowing us to provide a service to the community. We are extremely privileged to be able to assist people with their legal problems and gain hands-on experience, but this privilege does not come without responsibility. As a reminder, inspiration for a goal to work towards, or just some back up when discussing these issues with colleagues at the clinic, here is a short (and by no means complete) list of some things we can do as student volunteers to make the clinics a better environment for us as well as our clients:

Recognize our privilege.

This should really be the tagline for all of law school, but in the clinic setting it is especially crucial. At poverty clinics we are working with clients who are overwhelmingly marginalized, put down, and targeted by the system. They are experiencing things that most of us cannot relate to, and will likely never experience. Often, we may be made to feel extremely uncomfortable by these situations, but addressing this discomfort is an important part of understanding our own privilege. The goal is not to feel comfortable; in fact if we don’t feel some kind of uneasiness, we probably aren’t being critical enough. Remember that is each of our jobs to confront our privilege, and to recognize our role in the systems that oppress our clients.

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Understand why our clients might not trust us.

While we should work our hardest to show our clients that we are working hard to help them, that what they tell us is confidential and that we’re on their side (see point #3), we need to understand why they might not feel comfortable trusting us with all the details of their life. This requires examining the position of power that our legal knowledge, experience and wealth (both individually and as a profession) put us in, and the way that our role in the legal systems we are helping our clients navigate can make us facilitators of a system that oppresses our clients. It may take more than one meeting to “get to the bottom of things”, or we may never truly know the whole story, and that’s okay. Our clients aren’t liars if they don’t tell us everything.

Be on our clients’ side. Often, there are very few people on our clients’ side. We may be the only one. We still need to be smart, and think objectively about each case in order to serve the client’s best interests, but we must remember to be kind and fair, and to truly listen to what they are telling us. (This applies whether or not our client has done what has been alleged).

Tell our clients what we really think. This can be difficult. It’s hard to tell someone, “this part of your story doesn’t make sense to me”, or “your application doesn’t look strong as it stands”. Part of this is about managing client expectations, but a bigger part is making sure that we have all the information we need to make their case as strong as it can be. It’s very possible that the reason something doesn’t make sense is because we’re misunderstanding, or the client forgot to mention an important detail. Another part of this point is being open with clients about how their case is going and why. The law is

not some secret language that only lawyers should have access to (although it seems to be designed that way). If clients want to know what arguments we’re looking into, or how some aspect of the system works, or why something that seems unfair is allowed, we should take the time to explain to them as fully as we can. This is their case and their life, and they deserve to be in control of it.

Realize that we can’t be everything to

everyone. We are law students and not social workers, councillors, or health professionals. Of course the law intersects with all of these areas, but we should try to recognize when our clients’ needs cross over these lines and we need to rely on other resources. LAW is fortunate enough to have social workers on staff, but at both clinics we can make referrals to the many resources that exist in the Windsor community, where people much more qualified than us can get our clients the help they need. Reaching out and relying on others for help is also a big step in taking care of yourself and not getting burnt out.

Thank our clients. This is a tip I’m borrowing from a lawyer who spent many years of his career working for Legal Aid and who shared this insight with students training to work at the clinics this summer. In the corporate world, lawyers would never have a meeting with a client without thanking them for coming in and allowing the firm to help them with their legal matter. Just because our clients aren’t paying us, doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve to be treated with the same respect. We should try to remember to thank our clients for taking the time out of their day to

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the

powerful, not to be neutral. ” – Paolo Freire

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come in, for returning our calls, or for sharing something difficult with us.

Don’t expect a thank you. By the same token, it is important to remember that our clients do not owe us anything for working on their cases. More often than not, our clients really are very grateful for our help and will express this gratitude to us. But when they don’t, that’s okay too. Many of our clients are dealing with a myriad of issues, legal and otherwise, and while it’s nice when we are able to help in some small way, for a large number of our clients this is just one thing they are juggling. Ultimately, it is important to remember that ours is a service profession; no matter the area of law, we have all dedicated our careers to helping others.

Creating your own suffering: what I wish my pre-applicant self had listened to Brady Donohue Dear pre September 2012 self, I don’t know if you have noticed but law school can make you feel awful. Even when you are successful you have this moment of apprehension, the am-I-doing-enough complex. Don’t worry you’re not alone. We all drink the self-pitty kool-aid unfortunately spiked with unnecessary competition. Casual conversations with friends become internal check-lists “oh you applied to X firms? That’s more or less than me.” “Oh your resume indicates that you can juggle fire, get straight A’s and save entire countries? Weird me too!.” The worst is of course, “Oh you got that job! I should have applied.” (For the record, when you say that you sound like a total asshole.) Maybe not everybody, in fact definitely not everybody buys into this system but one thing is true: we perpetuate our own suffering and the best thing we can do for ourselves is stop. Stop listening to those people who preface a conversation with “Windsor was the only school that let me in” the implication being that it is somehow substandard and worthy of less respect by employers. The fear mongering is unnecessary. This discussion is like posting a “what are my chances of getting in” in lawstudents.ca, the validation is not worth the vitriol. Second, marks are important sure but they are certainly not everything and in my experience there are at least 25 people in the

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top ten. You got a C and it was okay you survived you got a summer job and an articling position. I understand the irony of getting a C in your favourite class. It was just a bad day: they happen. Maybe the real reason you struggled with interviews at one point is because you were applying for the wrong job. Also Achievement is not spelt Acheivement ( I before E accept after C get it straight). If you are going to assert diligence and attention to detail spell the country of Wales like that not like “Whales.” The bottom line: don’t let your marks blind you to other issues surrounding your application package. Third, have courage. If OCIs are not for you – they aren’t for you. Own that. Seek advice from people you respect, not from everybody and their mom. In other words, give no weight to the advice of other law students who like you are just trying to find their way. It will work out, you are more than good enough. Law school is hard on its own, stop making it harder. Love, Brady

Why law school will probably not be the “time of your life!!!” and (re)learning to trust yourself Jackie Hardy I applied to law school in the final year of my master’s degree. My department was extremely engaging, supportive, creative and most of all – progressive. Any crazy idea I threw out was welcomed with open arms, or at least an open discussion where colleagues and professors could debate. And then I went to law school. Law school was not the “time of my life!!!” like many upper year students had told me it would be. As a progressive and intuitive person that has trusted my own beliefs, feelings and path, law school and its culture deeply shook my sense of self, justice, and truth. By the middle of my first semester, I had become extremely disillusioned with the law school environment and my classes. Luckily, I was able to get back to myself and my goals by trusting what I had to come to believe as what was right for myself, my career, and my ethics. Staying close to activists, allies, and professors (both old and new) that had helped me through the years was a crucial step for combating the disillusionment associated with 1L.

Challenges for progressive students

and critical thinkers I could go on for days about the conservatizing environment of law school. I could write about how your peers will think you are ‘stirring the pot’ for critiquing the status quo, how you will undoubtedly be betrayed by people whom you thought were

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allies, and about how the “Bay Street or BUST” mentality will slowly chip away at your confidence in your own future. There are many challenges that come for students that do not necessarily meet mainstream culture and standards within the law school environment – particularly if those students have “alternative” legal careers in mind. But the focus of this article is to reinforce the fact that we all came to law school with different perspectives, experiences, and goals (both professional and personal.) Why shouldn’t we leave the institution of law school with the same diversity? Trusting my own intuition and what I have come to believe as truth or what is just, or what my path will look like, has informed much of my adult life choices, and it has served me well. Deep within law school culture is an embedded assumption that you are not supposed to follow your “gut” about career choices, classes, exams, and socializing. In fact, law school culture will seek to police every aspect of your life, slowly undermining the clear picture you had of yourself and your life when you entered law school. This policing comes in the form of upper year students “offering” unsolicited “advice,” or through a lack of non-corporate career services, or even through the pressure to attend beer-fuelled, non-accessible social events.

Strategies for survival Making sense of my resentment was integral to understanding why I was so disengaged and frustrated with law school and its culture. I deeply resented the assumption in law school that there would only be one career path to take because it is simply not true. I especially resented the attitude that any counter-discourse, critical thought, or deconstruction about assumptions underlying both legal practice and education had to be a battle against those whom believed otherwise. Much of my resentment about law school and its culture is what ultimately helped me get back my sense of what is right and just (not

without some battle wounds. The stories associated with these battle wounds are for another time.)

One way I was able to regain my sense of self and purpose was by reaching out to the people that had taught me what I know about activism, confronting privilege, and the people that had helped me get to law school in the first place (it takes a village!) This meant staying close to people like my mother, union friends, allies doing activism in the community, and most of all, supportive professors. One professor in particular helped me come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t ever going to love law school and that it would often be a place of conflict for critical thinkers like myself. When I told this professor that I had been accepted to law school, he swiftly began unpacking all of the things I would hate about law school – the conservatizing majority, anti-feminists, capitalist culture, and how staying close to what I believe in and continuing activism would be the only way to survive. When I was confronted with the obstacles that he had warned me about, I was thankful to have had that confrontation about the challenges a “no-good” leftist former graduate student in a sea of robot-like law students would have. I could navigate the waters of a loud majority that would actively seek to silence my worldview. It is by staying connected to allies, professors, friends and family that I was able to learn to trust my (formerly strong) intuition.

“When I dance my soul is free. It is sad to read about men who stop dancing, who stop being foolish, who stop letting their souls fly free… I guess for me surviving whole

means to never stop dancing.”– O’Neal LaRon Clark, excerpt from bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress:

Education as the Practice of Freedom

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Another professor also noted that if all of the progressive law students out there got up and left because they were part of a counter-culture in the profession, there would be no progressive lawyers. This, to me, was a particularly terrifying thought given the types of people that tried to confront (read: silence) my ideology in law school. With all of that said, the point of this article is not to scare any of my progressive allies away from law school and the legal profession. Rather, I want to ensure that those with a critical ideology are realistic of the obstacles they will encounter at law school, so they can adequately prepare and organize regardless of the conservatizing environment in which they find themselves immersed. Most importantly, I want to encourage students to stay connected to the strong motivators and people that brought them to law school. Trusting your abilities, worldview, remaining critical about your environment and the law, and building a network of allies will serve you well in law school, similar to the way it has served you well in other aspects of life. What is right for you and your career path may not be what is served to you in the mainstream law school culture, but trust in yourself that you will carve that path.

An argument for alternatives: being a dual at Windsor Law Tammii T Hello. Hi. How’s it going? Welcome to law school. In fact, congratulations on getting in! Welcome to the Dual program! We’ve been fondly self-dubbed “Dualies.” Always remember, we are in a league of our own and we should be proud. Although the Dual program is a baby now, when she grows up she’s going to be one hell of a kicker. Now, be forewarned - at some point during your time in the program, you will most likely be told that it’s useless unless you plan to go into corporate law. It’s a little harder to “justify” when you’re interested in something like social justice. But wait…here’s a question for you: why do you have to justify your choices to anyone else? Oh wait…you don’t. I once had a lawyer tell me that my program is a waste of time and money if I don’t plan on moving to the States. And yet, I have come across opportunities and job descriptions and people who have said that the knowledge you gain and the ability to practice anywhere in North America is an asset. One lawyer cannot make a judgement call on how useful your degree will be to every other opportunity that you may come across in your lifetime. What I’m trying to say is, don’t feel bullied into believing that your degree is useless. Remember, your degree is worth what you put into it and what you make of it. So make your own decision as to its worth. The legal field is HUGE and the possibilities open to you are ENDLESS. You will be doing twice the amount of work and learning twice as much in the same amount of time. Throw in some extra-curriculars and some volunteering, and I’d say that speaks mightily to your capacity as an effective worker. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people view this program as a fall-back choice. But it’s not. Many people come to Windsor specifically for the Dual program. For some, it is the only program they apply to. So do not come here and contribute more

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to this ridiculous idea that this program means nothing, because for some, it means everything. Help push the program forward. Voice your opinions and your ideas, your suggestions and ideas for improvement. Go talk to the admin, talk to the profs, talk to the program director. They will all listen to you. I’ve done it, several people in the Dual classes above you have done it, and many of their predecessors have done it as well. Don’t be afraid to make your voice heard, or to make your mark. Most importantly, don’t ever be afraid to voice your opinion because it goes against the status quo. In all honesty, I have met a lot of amazing people here. I love my classmates with the passion of one hundred burning suns. Seriously, I have met some amazing, fun-loving, chill-hanging, dance-floor-burning, quick-talking, food-eating, drink-consuming, bbq-ing, hard-working, ukulele-playing, music-performing, trivia-winning, exercise-doing, yoga-zenning, joke-making, road-tripping Soul Sistahs and Bros. They are the reason why I would never leave this place. And you know what...you get used to it. And believe it or not, it does become home. Pip Pip and Good Luck! Tammii T P.S. If you haven’t already, please read William P. Quigley’s “Letter to a Law Student Interested in Social Justice.” I read it just a while ago, and have since then printed and highlighted a copy for myself. It really is something to remind you of why you’re doing what you’re doing, and to keep you sane when it seems like the odds are stacked against you and your “ideological agenda” (insert laughter here).

LAWYER LICENSING EXAMS (LSUC) vs INTERESTING, ENJOYABLE COURSEWORK A dilemma you’ll eventually encounter in law school situates itself on the importance of course selection. Excluding its rigid first-year curriculum, law school offers the unparalleled privilege of learning from passionate professors, leading interesting and creative educational offerings. Yet, students are (rightfully) mindful of the examinations that await them following their three years in law school – the provincial licensing examinations in the jurisdiction of their choice. For Ontario’s Law Society of Upper of Canada (LSUC), licensing “bar” examinations can be written as early as June of your graduating year.

THE ESSENTIALS The LSUC licensing exam is structured in two key components; testing qualifications becoming of (1) the barrister; and (2) the solicitor. Eventually, at the time of your choosing, you will need to register, sit, and pass a day-long exam for each. Structured over the course of two 3.5 hour sessions, separated by a lunch hour, writers can expect approximately 100-120 multiple choice questions per session. Bound by a strict undertaking not to disclose information relating to the content of the examinations themselves, we can only direct you to the published information as it appears on the LSUC website:

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The Barrister Examination will assess competencies in the following categories: ethical and professional responsibility, knowledge of the law (public law, criminal procedure, family law and civil litigation) and establishing and maintaining the barrister-client relationship. The Solicitor Examination will assess competencies in the following categories: ethical and professional responsibility, knowledge of the law (real estate, business law, wills, trusts and estate administration and planning) and establishing and maintaining the solicitor-client relationship. Each examination will be approximately seven (7) hours in length. The Law Society will provide you with the necessary materials to study for the licensing examinations. 2

COURSE SELECTION

To the extent we can counsel you on our original dilemma of course selection, we see our role as purveyors of information. Each individual student will eventually have to decide for her/himself their preferred approach. While some regard it as essential that they enrol in the above cited subject areas in order to prepare for their eventual examinations, it is our collective position that this is neither necessary, nor is it practical. First, when one reflects on their reasons for attending law school, the excitement of new challenges and a willingness to embrace experiential opportunities such as clinics and moots often come to mind. We certainly would not counsel students to sacrifice these fantastic opportunities, for the sole reason of “bar” preparation. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2http://www.lsuc.on.ca/LawyerExaminationGuide/!

Secondly, it has often been observed that eventual career paths students entertain after law school tend to correlate to course selections while a student. It may be that some employers scrutinize an applicant’s academic experiences in the search for fit. Alternatively students are likely naturally drawn in certain areas that they intend to pursue later. It is our hope that if a specific area that you have identified as a career pursuit is not one of the defined topics on the licensing exam, that you don’t feel obliged to divert your courses to accommodate a tested subject. Career paths are proportionate to your course selections. Immerse yourself in topics you see yourself practicing in, later on. Finally, understand that the process of studying for the bar examination and your execution on test day has been described as an exercise in (you guessed it) issue spotting and the subsequent application of a set of tools – not necessarily one’s base knowledge in certain subjects. While one might sharpen their tools in the classroom, taking a course in each of the relevant subject areas is by no means a requisite for success on the bar examination. Statistically, students pass and/or fail regardless of the courses they take in law school, but more accurately how they prepare for the licensing exam.

By virtue of the examination being open book, permitting candidates to bring any materials they might find useful 3… strengthened by the LSUC’s position that they will give you the necessary materials to study for the examination, the inference can be drawn that exam questions will, for the most part, be derived from the annually updated materials provided by the Law Society, to candidates.

ENJOY YOUR CURRICULUM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!3!!!!subject!to!general!protocol:!!!!!http://www.lsuc.on.ca/LawyerExaminationRulesAndProtocol/!!

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It is our collective position that for the value of your legal education, you owe it to yourself to responsibly step-out of the prescribed subject areas that arise later, on your licensing examination. Use the profound resources available to you at Windsor Law to enroll in topics and opportunities that: (a) you are passionate about and looked forward to when applying to school; (b) that might expose you to new challenges and current debates; (c) that might situate yourself on the course to a career in an area you may/may not have yet identified; and (4) that ultimately round your holistic understanding of the law.

“It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can

walk it for you.” – Rumi

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Get your panel off my ovaries Brady Donohue Dear every panel I have been to in law school, Oh hi it’s me here, the twenty-five year old childless law student trying to find her way in the legal world. I want you to know that my uterus is stressed out. You see I thought like everybody else that there was enough stress in law school: classes, applying for jobs, will I get a moot? Should I apply for a clerkship? Why is Contracts an area of law my brain can’t comprehend? I thought that was enough. Turns out it’s not. Ya know why? I also have to worry about the husband I don’t yet have and my unborn children. Which believe me is stressful not just because I worry about whether or not they will have little afros that become mushroom cuts in the rain, but also because why am I worrying about that now? Why is it that every time I am around a young professional female lawyer, successful in her own right our conversation turns to a discussion of work-life balance. Like, wait a second can’t I get the work part of the balance before I start worrying about the life part. “Oh you can have work-life balance, I drop everything for my kids” (cue the stressed out face that says some days I don’t know how I do it.) Ya know what? I don’t know how you do it either. I often look at my parents and think, how’d ya do it guys? Here’s the thing – I get that being a mom and being a lawyer is hard. To my colleagues who are currently living that situation, I admire you. But I also admire you because of your intellect, your success in your field, your ability to connect with students. Maybe one day, five years from now (okay let’s not put timelines on it my ovaries just twisted up again) or ten years from now or never, I will

come to you heart in hand, asking how you do it. Today however, today as I sit in front of you I want this antiquated discussion to end. Unless we are going to haul all the men in for a panel discussion on “being a good husband and a successful lawyer.” I don’t want to play anymore. This isn’t a sound off against work/life balance – but if we are going to talk about it let’s talk about the vicarious victim trauma you may experience or the mental health and addiction issues you can face as a woman in the law and the resources you can rely on to help you through that process. Depression and addiction plague the field we are entering, so let’s talk about that. So please, this year if we are going to have female leaders come in let’s not ask them about their work life balance, let’s ask them the same questions we ask of all the great legal minds we bring in here: teach me, teach me about your field. The onus is on us as students as much as it on the panel. If you have a burning question about balancing story-time and responding to e-mails, don’t ask it in a panel discussion. Please. I beg you. For everybody. My future children, if I have any are grateful for the drop in my cortisol levels. Love, Brady

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Imagine no tuition: It’s easy if you try - Chris Rudnicki Adapted from Deregulation, Debt and Discrimination: Tuition Fees at Windsor Law, published by the Law Union in 2013. tiny.cc/WindsorLawTuition. This year, for the first time in the history of the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Law, tuition has broken $15,000. First year students in the fall of 2013 are paying precisely $15,284.40. It would take approximately 1,491 hours of minimum wage work to pay a first year tuition bill in 2013. OSAP will rarely cover your tuition bill, and certainly won’t cover living expenses and books, so most of us are stuck relying on public and private debt to finance our legal education. Many of us are piling debt on top of debt already incurred to finance an undergraduate degree. The adverse impact of high tuition and high debt loads is well documented. First, poor people are deterred from applying. For most, high tuition fees mean not even considering law school. Poverty disproportionately impacts disabled people, indigenous people and people of colour, and at least in part as a result of high tuition fees these populations remain underrepresented in law school. This is simply unacceptable at an institution with a mandate for access to justice. High tuition not only closes the door to students from certain populations: it also hurts those who are already here. By foisting high debt loads onto students, high tuition fees make us prioritize making an income to repay our debt when choosing courses and thinking about careers after law school. As a result, we are reluctant to pursue courses and careers that might end up paying less money. Rather than work in a small town and make the access to justice dream a reality, we are

pressured to chase high-paying jobs in large urban centres. Just as mortgages kept the middle class from stirring up trouble in the post World War II era, so do the high debt loads associated with high tuition fees keep students from activist and other ‘trouble-making’ work. We worry about crossing faculty or the administration for fear of losing out on opportunities. We experience anxiety about potential employers discovering our politics. We are absolutely petrified of doing anything – like the Québec student strike – that could jeopardize a term’s worth of tuition fees. We might be tempted to end our analysis there. But the negative impact of high tuition bills does not end when we graduate. Most of us are going into debt to attend law school. When we graduate, we begin making payments on that debt. Graduates who make more money will be able to pay their debt back more quickly, accruing less interest and ultimately paying less for their legal education than their peers working in less lucrative fields. That point bears repeating. And bolding and underlining. High tuition fees mean that rich lawyers pay less for law school than poor ones. To make matters worse, white male lawyers aged 25-29 make between $4,000 to $8,000 more per year than their female and racialised colleagues. So rich white men end up paying the least for their law degrees. This system is deeply regressive and contrary to the principles that are supposed to animate our law school. Some argue that we can solve the access issue by increasing tuition even more and setting aside some of the money for targeted grants to low-income students. This is tantamount to putting another lock on the door, handing out a few keys and calling it access. In addition to coming when we least need it – tuition bills are due months before scholarships are

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decided – financial aid never covers all of our true costs. And of course, we are reminded to thank the generous donors who invested in the grants we receive. It wasn’t always this way. In 1993, it cost only $2,448.16 for a full year at Windsor law. A student looking to attend Windsor law in 1993 would be able to save enough to cover their entire tuition bill with 14 weeks of full-time, minimum wage employment. Today, despite a minimum wage that is twice as high as in 1993, it would take 42 weeks. What happened? The short version is that the federal Liberals and provincial Progressive Conservatives slashed education funding in the mid- to late-90s. Then in 1998 the PCs deregulated tuition for law students. Feeling a hard financial pinch, universities looked to law schools to keep their doors open. Things didn’t get all that much better when the Liberals took over for the PCs in 2003. They’ve allowed exponential increases since then, and tuition at Windsor law has increased more than 150%. But high tuition fees are neither inevitable nor necessary. They can be reduced and eliminated if that’s what we want. But we will have to work for it. We will need to teach each other about tuition fees and progressive taxation schemes. We need to let the administration know that this state of affairs is both outrageous and unacceptable, and get them on our side if we can. We need to reach out to students in other faculties, to sympathetic professors and staff, and to members of the Windsor community. And we need to think creatively about methods of direct action that can make a difference. What would happen if 70% of the student body simply withheld our tuition fees? What would happen if we staged a walk-out, or a strike? We need to think critically about these strategies and put them in action if we want to make a change.

Professionalism and the politics of performance Carolina Paterson The iconographic figure of the legal professional is something with which we are all familiar. It informs an integral part of our popular culture, mirroring the demographics of power and the mythologies of class transcendence that have been reproduced over generations. Perhaps it’s what drove you to attend law school in the first place. The profession does indeed award great privilege to those who look and dress the part. But the performance of your professional identity is easily distinguished from hard-earned respect.

As you make your way through your first year and begin to forge your own brand of professionalism, your principles and values will invariably be challenged. As influencers - and otherwise privileged members of society - it is our burden to question everything, and reflect often. This duty is not a comfortable pursuit, but requires constant reframing and adaptation, and is built on a foundation of mutual respect. While a select few will have access to critical legal inquiry in their substantive law classes, for the vast majority of first year students, the pervasive expectation of professionalism will seek to thwart the skills required of competent advocacy in favour of more palatable codes of conduct involving relationships of convenience and deference to authority. Failure to comply with these standards of practice will often result in accusations of unprofessionalism. The result is an effective silencing of a spectrum of

“Rules of taste enforce structures of power.” – Susan Sontag

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voices within the law school, and a quiet perpetuation of legal traditionalism that reinforces normative prejudices and stereotypes. As part of the rhetoric of legal professionalism, you will be taught how to present yourself well to an employer. You will be given pamphlets that advertise appropriate attire, so that even if you possess “overpowering traits e.g. large size, a powerful voice – lighter colours will soften your impression.” In job interview workshops, women will be instructed not to intonate, so as not to sound less intelligent then men, improving their chances of employment. In your off time, you are encouraged to network with your future colleagues at social events that are held at inaccessible venues. You will be cautioned about the use of social media as a direct action forum, because politics are too messy and indiscrete for lawyers. You are also reminded to be wary of behaviour that lends itself toward promiscuity, as your reputation will follow you like a criminal record whilst you embark on your career. All the while prevalent legal theorists teach us that the body is an object and target of power and domination, and that linguistic norms are a product of socialization affecting the gendered communication of competencies. Nonetheless, we continue to perpetuate overly simplistic ideals of professionalism that have less to do with the ethical principles of practice and more to do with the politics of performance. Ultimately, it is up to you to keep the purpose of your professional pursuit front and center, or you will be buffeted by the turbulent tides of “the hype.” Ignore the whispers that if you smile too much or wear too flamboyant a suit you won’t get taken seriously. The signs for recognizing those most suited to this profession are not found within one’s wardrobe. Then again, in the event that you do find yourself facing accusations of

“unprofessionalism” while sponsoring principles of mutual-respect, critical inquiry, or human dignity, you might just want to flirt with sister caution, and wear lighter colours.

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Principles in practice: moving beyond the divide Hannah Bahmanpour In law school, we continuously confront the artificial dichotomy constructed between corporate commercial law and social justice, whereby students are imagined to possess certain discernible qualities better suited for only one of two streams. This is a myth. Granted, the changing nature of legal practice has resulted in the specialization of service provision. However, we must consider that it is not the path that is indicative of particular aptitudes, but the approach; how we individually and collectively conceptualize our roles and our professional and ethical obligations. As future lawyers, we play a vital role in the preservation of society as custodians of the law. The fulfillment of this role requires an understanding of our relationship to the law, and its influence on our legal system. A consequent obligation of a lawyer is to maintain the highest standards of ethical conduct, irrespective of the fields we will practice in. Whether we begin our careers in private practice, government, legal aid clinics, academia, or beyond the formal practice of law, we will take on many tasks that will force us to confront our professional responsibilities. And although not every situation we face will be necessarily foreseeable, we must have the courage and foresight to be able to shape the law in step with the ever-changing relationships of society, ethically and responsibly. A crucial foundation of legal ethics is community. The community foundation consists of the lawyer’s character, obligations

to the legal system as an officer of the Court, and society at large as public servants. From this perspective, we will be guided by a professional ideal of fidelity to the virtues of good character and to the concept of a just system of law. The ideals that come out of the community are the concepts through which a lawyer personally influences and affects people, making and shaping the community of law. Unfortunately, there is a palpable divide within the student body that perpetuates the myth that only the morally flaccid are suited for the pressures of a high-powered bay street legal career, while those who are critical of normative principles of justice will be drawn towards less prestigious or financially rewarding legal roles. However, this oversimplified approach is an unrealistic reflection of the complexities of the law, as well as of lawyers in general. The practice of law requires the same level of skill, expertise, creativity, knowledge and awareness regardless of the institutions through which we practice. Integrity, respect and strong morals are what should compel us as lawyers beyond the borders of our profession to do good. The role each one of us will fulfill as future lawyers is not indicative of our obligation to be morally and socially just. Whether we secure a position with a corporate law firm or Legal Aid Ontario, we all must take it upon ourselves to give back to society. We need to move past the myth that those attracted to corporate law are relieved of their obligation to offer services beyond their required duty of pro bono hours. Similarly, we must acknowledge that some of the most influential and socially just lawyers and judges began their legal careers from within the ivory towers. The principles that will guide your practice are ultimately yours to build. You have been given an opportunity that many strive to

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achieve, but it is important to remember that with opportunity comes responsibility. As you begin you first year of law school, you will need to begin cultivating a deep understanding of yourself and your surroundings. Be mindful of the power and privilege you have been given and ask yourself how you can best build your practice to reflect your values, while maintaining respect and integrity for your classmates, professors, colleagues, and clients. Ask yourself how do you learn and work with others? What are your most deeply held values? And in what type of work environment can you make the greatest contribution? The implication is clear; only when you operate from a combination of your strengths, self-knowledge, social awareness and cultural competence, can you achieve true – and lasting – excellence as you pursue your career in law.

An alternative vision of justice: toward a world without prisons4 Kathryn Bell As law students, we have the privilege of being able to learn the ins and outs of our legal system and to use this knowledge to help people work through their encounters with the law. Regardless of the career path we choose, if we are committed to achieving social justice we cannot ignore the area of law that overwhelmingly affects the lives of the most marginalized members of our society. As future lawyers in pursuit of all forms of justice, we are deeply implicated in the functioning of the criminal justice system. Our access to legal knowledge gives us a unique responsibility to question and challenge injustices that we see, to open our minds to those injustices that may not be immediately obvious to us, and to resist becoming facilitators of an unjust system. It is necessary, therefore, to critically examine one of the most devastating effects of the criminal justice system: prisons.

Reform vs Abolition That prisons are horrible places is certainly not news. Prison reform activists have existed as long as prisons have, advocating for less severe forms of punishment, better living conditions, or fewer violations of prisoners’ rights. But as we wouldn’t settle for less sexist hiring practices or less exploitative worker’s conditions, neither should we settle !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!4 Prison Abolition is a huge and complex topic that I couldn’t possibly address fully here. For further reading I’d recommend Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis (Seven Stories Press) and “Queering Prison Abolition, Now?” by Eric A. Stanley, Dean Spade and Queer(In)Justice (American Quarterly – available online).

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for a system which restores some, but not all, rights to those targeted by our criminal justice system. While it is easy to see where reformists are coming from, and while much of the work they do is important and necessary, their work will never be enough to eradicate the damage that prisons cause. As long as prisons exist, so will deeply damaging violations of community, culture, and human rights. We need to think about prison abolition as a serious response to our current system of punitive justice. When we consider what the goals of our legal system are (or should be), it becomes clear that any system that incorporates prisons will fail to meet these goals.

Myths About Prisons The following myths about prisons help reinforce the notion that prisons are a necessary or useful part of our criminal justice system, and that they help us achieve the goals that are central to our conception of justice. The truth about each of these myths helps to illustrate that prisons will never be able to achieve these goals. 1) Prisons deter crime. Decades of research have shown that this is simply not true. A prison sentence is the most severe form of punishment in Canada, aside from the deportation of non-citizens, yet someone committing a crime rarely considers the severity of the punishment they may face.5 When you look at the causes of crime, which are overwhelmingly related to poverty, it becomes clear that many, if not most, people who commit crimes are doing so out of a lack of other options. For this reason, the existence of this severe form of punishment does not curb future crime. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!5 Paula Mallea, “Harper’s ‘tough on crime’ bills costly, counter-productive” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (16 March 2010).

2) Prisons reform criminals. The Correctional Service of Canada’s mission statement includes that CSC “contributes to public safety by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens”.6 This is the image that many people have of our prisons; that they provide support and rehabilitation that helps criminals change the path they are on. With the recidivism rate in Canada sitting around 50%, this is clearly not what is happening, or at least not very effectively.7 With cuts to prison programs designed to educate and rehabilitate, and the recent cancellation of the only rehab program aimed at long-term offenders, our system is simply not designed to help those who are incarcerated.8 Prisoners face huge barriers upon re-entry to society, which are not addressed by our justice system. Poverty, decreased employability, constant reporting to parole officers, housing issues and addictions, to name a few issues, make it especially challenging for people to cope post-prison. Being isolated from one’s community for years with few opportunities for self-improvement, working for pennies a day, makes these issues worse, not better.

3) Prisons keep us safe from crime and criminals Crime in Canada is down in virtually all categories, including violent crime, and has been going down for 30 years.9 Despite this trend, we are kept in fear by government and media messages about violent crime, and prisons are being built at a rate never seen before. We are told that prisons are a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!6 “About Us” Correctional Service of Canada (22 October 2012). 7 Aviva Rubin, “Go to Prison, Get a Great Job” The Huffington Post (10 March 2012). 8 “Prison rehab program axed due to budget cuts” CBC News (16 April 2012). 9 Supra note 2.

“[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of

our society” – Angela Davis

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necessary part of keeping dangerous criminals locked away and therefore, our streets safe. This myth is tied to the notion that violence and crime stem from “criminals” who are inherently evil. This is a flawed interpretation of the way crime works. Crime stems from social problems like poverty, sexism, and racism. People don’t commit crimes like sexual assault because they are deranged monsters; they do so because we live in a rape culture that legitimizes violence against women. Sexual assault will not stop if one offender goes to jail, or even if all offenders go to jail. What will help make our streets safer is education, community building and community-based accountability, a shift in our culture, and the breaking down of systems that oppress and lead people to crime. 4) Imprisonment is the fair price to pay for breaking the law. The more draconian among us may argue that we are all aware of the rules that govern our society and to break these rules makes one deserving of punishment. The reality is that there is nothing fair about our criminal justice and prison systems. Many (rich, white) people break laws without ever being caught, while poor, racialised, queer and disabled people are under constant supervision by the state and are therefore much more likely to face consequences for illegal activity. People of colour are over-represented in our prison system. Aboriginal women represent only 3% of the women in Canada yet account for 32% of the women in federal prisons.10 Black people make up roughly 2.5% of Canada’s population, but just over 9% of the federal prison population.11 Not only law enforcement, but laws themselves target certain communities. Lawmakers arbitrarily increase punishment for certain types of crimes, for example introducing mandatory !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10 Howard Sapers, Annual Report of the Correction Investigator 2006-2007 Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2007) at 20. 11 Alison Crawford, “Prison watchdog probes spike in number of black inmates” CBC News (15 December, 2011).

minimum sentences related to some drugs and not others. Prisons are built on histories of racism and colonialism, and they continue to perpetuate the punishment of the powerless. 5) Prisons help give victims the justice they deserve. Surely an important goal of our justice system is to ameliorate some of the damage that is caused by crime, by helping victims of crime deal with the loss or damage that was caused. Our current system does not allow for this type of healing process. Victims in our system have little agency; they can’t decide when to pursue or drop a charge, they have no input on an appropriate remedy, and are merely a witness in the whole process. In addition, victims are often re-victimized by our adversarial system, especially those who are victims of violent crimes like sexual assault. Our sexist, victim-blaming system means that they are forced to tell their story over and over, without any inconsistencies, the whole time being called a liar, only to often have a judge ultimately decide that the accused was more credible. Our current system doesn’t take into account what remedy might help an individual or community heal after a crime has been committed; it makes the unilateral decision to burden another (or the same) community by locking people away. So What Does the Alternative Look Like? The alternative to prisons cannot be seen in the vacuum of the legal system. We need to build up social supports and address the failures of our current social systems. We need to provide people with a living wage and teach children about rape culture and racism if we hope to change current social attitudes. As lawyers, we need to use the system to advocate for people’s rights and when the system doesn’t work we need to keep fighting for justice for our clients. We need to make others aware of the injustices in

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our legal and social systems and work to build solidarity. We need to reimagine our whole system to be able to see prisons removed from it. As Angela Davis describes her vision:

…we would not be looking for prison-like substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment – demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.12

A system which values re-building and growth, and which incorporates community-based accountability, where victims and their communities are consulted in the process of holding people accountable for their actions, would be a step toward a more just legal system. Applying an Abolitionist Perspective to Law School In your criminal law classes, prisons will be discussed rarely, if at all. If you are lucky, there may be some discussion of the systemic racism and classism that fills our prisons with poor people of colour, or the current crisis of overcrowding in Canadian prisons. But even if this is the case, most discussions will be with the underlying assumption that prisons are an inevitable part of holding people accountable for their actions. It is our job as students to raise critical examinations of the status-quo. Remember !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!12 Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003) at 107.

that before us, law students learned about legal systems that outlawed same-sex marriage, jailed people who refused to follow segregation laws, and sentenced people to death if the crime was deemed serious enough. Critique, challenge, but most importantly, just think about these issues, and remember that our current way of doing things is not always right, nor does it always promote justice.

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Against “social justice” (or, taking social justice seriously) Chris Rudnicki

What is social justice? This is an important question for progressives at Windsor Law. ‘Access to Justice’ is an institutional pillar at our faculty: all students are required to take a course on the subject in first year in which they are asked to examine and critique formal and substantive barriers to justice. We should all care about social justice, say our professors and administrators. We have social justice fellowships, a social justice coordinator in the career services office – we even have a social justice career day. And yet few seem able to define the term with any precision. Some claim that social justice simply means work claiming to be in the public interest, such as prosecutorial and other government work, criminal defence and union-side labour law. Some claim that social justice is merely a framework that centers equality under the law, applicable in any field. Some see social justice as a synonym for charitable work: so long as you are giving to those “less fortunate,” on this view, you are working towards social justice. According to Duncan Kennedy, we can find the term’s English origins in the late 19th century, when socialist, communist and anarchist social movements were resisting the violence and exploitation of workers by the bosses and their political cronies during the industrial era. It was called ‘social’ justice to denote its opposition to the division of society into social classes. People didn’t like the fact that if you were born a worker, you were going to die as one. If those are the origins of the phrase, then things have certainly changed. Now, social

justice is simply one of those things that we all – in theory – endorse. You don’t have to be an anti-capitalist to be a social justice advocate today. Nor do you need to be a feminist, a prison abolitionist, a socialist, an anti-racist, or otherwise think anything about any particular issue. Social justice has been divorced from particular issues. This is its fatal flaw. You can make a career evicting the poor, jailing racialised and indigenous people, deporting refugees and busting unions and still call yourself a social justice advocate. Who’s to stop you? The law school certainly isn’t going to call anyone out. And when progressive folks try to start a conversation and develop some consensus around social justice by identifying particular issues, they are accused of “attacking” their colleagues and of being “divisive.” The conversation goes in circles until, finally, everyone is back where they started. So what should we do? The answer is simple: abandon social justice. Or rather, stop centering our progressive struggles on whether or not some person or institution is “socially just”. Social justice is like equality in that everyone likes it, but no one agrees on what it means. And as long as these conversations keep getting us nowhere, then it’s better that we spend our energy on concrete, identifiable issues. Let’s argue that so long as capitalism exists, human freedom and democracy can never flourish. Let’s denounce our horrific, racist prison system. Let’s agitate against borders and wars, and for healthcare and education. Let’s call out violent and disrespectful police officers, and let’s sue them when they violate our rights. We should commit to staking out progressive positions on specific issues, and taking action to make things change. If someone donates some money to the United Way or goes to

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build a well in Africa and claims that makes them a social justice advocate, let them. But make sure to invite them to your teach-in on the causes of systemic poverty and the need for universal basic income, or your rally against IMF and WTO ‘structural adjustment’ programs in the Global South. Let’s stop allowing ourselves to be categorized into cliques on the basis of our identification with social justice, and instead build coalitions around specific issues and start actually making the world a better place to live.

Volunteering Outside of Law School in Windsor - Justine Ajandi

Hopefully you feel like giving back to your maybe-temporary home in Windsor. Although there are a variety of great options provided to you through clubs at law school, you might be looking for something outside of the law school environment. I’ve outlined some of my favourite community organizations below, but if they’re not your cup of tea, don’t despair, there are a wide variety of organizations in the area that will happily accept volunteers.

Windsor Youth Centre www.thewindsoryouthcentre.org

The Windsor Youth Centre serves the immediate needs of at-risk and homeless youth aged 16 – 24 in Windsor. It’s a wonderful place, staffed and patronized by wonderful people.

Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Windsor

www.bigbrothersbigsisterswe.ca The Windsor-Essex Chapter can match you with a local child who needs a mentor, or you can volunteer to help out with fundraising, events or office work.

Aids Committee of Windsor

www.aidswindsor.org A Community Organization located in downtown Windsor that participates in outreach and education, as well as advocacy. The Committee has a number of open volunteer positions listed on their website.

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Hiatus House

www.hiatushouse.com Hiatus House offers assistance to families experiencing domestic violence. The Centre offers assistance to women who have been the victims of abuse, as well as children who have witnessed abuse, and group therapy for abusive men.

The Downtown Mission

www.downtownmission.com As you may already know, opportunities to serve lunch at the mission are provided through External Outreach. That said, the mission often has more than enough people to serve lunch – if you want to help out, give them a call and see what else they may need help with.

The Windsor Humane Society

www.windsorhumane.org Law school is hard, hug a dog. Or better yet – bring one home!

The Art Gallery of Windsor www.artgalleryofwindsor.com

The Art Gallery of Windsor, located downtown by the water requires volunteers to assist in the organization of their special events.

An alternative guide to social l ife in Windsor Heather Salter Windsor is a great city with a lot to offer. There are several bars and clubs that are popular amongst law students. While it’s fun to dance to the latest top 40 once in a while, there are also tons of alternative places to check out and explore. Take advantage of our close proximity to Detroit, a dynamic city with amazing people.

Windsor

• The Art Gallery of Windsor has an

extensive collection of Canadian art (and free admission!) http://www.artgalleryofwindsor.com/

• Broken City Lab is a multidisciplinary artist collective aimed at social change. Check them out! http://www.brokencitylab.org/

• Windsor Farmer’s Market happens every Saturday until October

• Phog Lounge for live music, or just hanging at the bar with the owners, Tom and Frank (the best!) www.phoglounge.com. Pssst, check out Phogfest, happening on September 14th! 15 in advance, 20 at the door.

• Milk Coffee Bar for coffee, beer, absinthe (right across the street from Phog)

• Taloola Café – good food, live music Fridays and Saturdays www.taloolacafe.com

• Villains for Karaoke www.villainsbeastro.com

• You’ll soon become acquainted with The Loop, a really popular bar among Windsor Law students. What many people don’t know is that there are two amazing places downstairs: Pogos for pool, and FM lounge for great music www.loopwindsor.com

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• Legends of 2012 – good ol’ fashioned sweaty dance party. LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer) friendly!

• Club 576 – yay more dancing! www.club576.com

• Windsor International Film Festival is right around the corner, November 5 -10 www.windsorfilmfestival.com

Windsor Yums

• Motorburger http://motorburger.ca/ • Twisted Apron

http://www.thetwistedapron.com/ • Mazaar http://www.mazaar.ca/ • Sushi California

http://menuspot.ca/The_Sushi_California_Japanese_Restaurant/

• Basil Court http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/367/1471922/restaurant/Basil-Court-Windsor

• Spago http://spagos.ca/ • Terra Cotta

www.windsoreats.com/place/terra-cotta-gourmet-pizzeria/

Detroit

• The Detroit Institute of Art - amazing

collection, $5 for students http://www.dia.org/

• The Heidelberg Project http://www.heidelberg.org/

• The Majestic – a great entertainment venue, and an awesome music venue (upcoming shows – Mudhoney, Patti Smith, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Streetlight Manifesto, Deer Tick) also home to Garden Bowl for an awesome bowling experience http://majesticdetroit.com/

• Cliff Bell’s, an historic Jazz club, open since 1935 http://www.cliffbells.com/

• Royal Oak - great cafes and bars. Jack White’s hometown

• Ferndale – very LGBTQ friendly. Wednesday night parties y’all!

• Hamtramck – check out Planet Ant, an artist collective and professional theatre. Amazing improve shows! (with people, not ants) www.planetant.com

Motor City Noms

• Slows BBQ http://slowsbarbq.com/ • Seva (vegetarian and vegan)

http://www.sevarestaurant.com/ • Mexicantown

www.mexicantownrestaurant.com • Great Lakes Coffee Co.

http://www.greatlakescoffee.com/

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DIY Legal Education Consumer Protection Ministry of Consumer Services - Your Consumer Rights: http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/mcs/en/Pages/What_Are_My_Rights.aspx Family Law http://yourontariolaw.com/ Criminal and Refugee Law http://lawfacts.ca/ Landlord and Tenant Law Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario: http://www.acto.ca/ Landlord Self Help: http://www.landlordselfhelp.com/frontpage.asp Human Rights Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario: http://www.hrto.ca/hrto/ Ontario Human Rights Commission: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en Employment Standards Ministry of Labour - Employment Standards: http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/ General Community Legal Education Ontario: http://www.cleo.on.ca/en Your Legal Rights (free legal information) http://www.yourlegalrights.ca

Recommended Readings Anders Corr, NO TRESPASSING: SQUATTING, RENT STRIKES AND LAND STRUGGLES WORLDWIDE (South End 1999) Angela Harris, From Stonewall to the suburbs?: Toward a political economy of sexuality, 14 WILLIAM & MARY BILL OF RIGHTS J. 1539–82 William P. Quigley, Revolutionary Lawyering: Addressing the Root Causes of Poverty & Wealth, 20 Wash. U.J.L. & Pol’y 101, 125 (2006). Duncan Kennedy, The Social Justice Element in Legal Education in the United States. Hosted at duncankennedy.net Patricia Monture-Angus, Thunder in My Soul: A Mohawk Woman Speaks (Fernwood 1995) !

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Windsor Law Bingo!

Two minutes into class, Facebook.

You see a friend in class 4-6 hours

after you saw them wasted.

A cute new restaurant opens

up

A cute new restaurant closes

down

One of your peers reveals their theory

on how to revolutionize A2J

Leftover pizza in the pit

A new policy is instated by admin

or SLS and a controversy erupts…on facebook.

Bryan’s Fitness Inferno Plug

“Why is Torts in second year?”

A family member asks you for legal

advice

One of your peers seriously and

earnestly references

Lawstudents.ca

Your outline is almost as many

pages as the casebook

[ FREE SPACE ]

As days before finals decrease, the number of ‘messy

buns’ spotted around the law

building increase.

Professor acknowledges obvious legal

jargon innuendo in class

Someone asks you what your grades

are without asking you what your

grades are

Someone volunteers how much time they

did/didn’t spend reading the night

before

“Does anyone have CANs for_____?”

Someone rants about Tano

Someone raves about Tano

Collective class cringe as someone

asks what the paper minimum is.

An upper year you just met buys you a

drink at the bar

“ISO Rideshare. Offering pleasant

conversation, snacks, and gas

money!”

Your peers lose their marbles when it’s announced your final exam won’t be

a hypo or essay

Someone compares law school to high school/Mean Girls