Normally I approach Famous Minority Professor's class with mixed feelings. Sometimes I'm very glad that it's so different from my other classes -- instead of frantically typing away as the prof drones on or fires nitpicky hypotheticals at quivering students, there's usually a nice discussion going on between students, as Famous Minority Professor sits and takes notes, in order to improve upon the class in future years. Groups of students create the lesson plan, around readings that have been chosen by TAs (who have taken the class) and the professor, and a different group leads the discussion every class. It's is a nice example of how law school classes could be.

But sometimes I get tired of the navel-gazing and what -- to my ear -- sounds like whining. Gosh, it's so HARD to be a lawyer when we struggle with these issues of paternalism and professionalism and adversarialism and a bunch of other 'isms. God, shut UP. It's not just the students, it's the authors of the pieces we read too, which is why I usually skim the readings, if they're theoretical or academic in nature, and reserve my full attention for the newspaper articles or first person accounts of stories.

So it's a mixed bag -- at times procedurally admirable, at times substantively tiresome.

But yesterday there was a really standstill, amazing moment. The best moment of the semester. Maybe the most impressive moment of my year.

I was part of the group leading the class discussion on community organizing, and the role of lawyers in organizing. Community organizing, as envisioned in this class, is a way to empower communities -- particularly low-income or otherwise disempowered neighborhoods -- to take control over their lives and to find solutions to their own problems. Community organizers have a difficult relationship with lawyers -- a lot of organizers hate lawyers because lawyers see problems in terms of lawsuits and courts and rules that can be challenged or manipulated in court. That's the way they're trained after all, but it's not very empowering for communities if a lawyer breezes in, assesses the problem, and files a suit to fix it, as opposed to alternative methods of solving problems. It's particularly problematic if the lawyer -- or organizer -- is not a member of the community; achieving legitimacy and being sensitive to the difficulties of representing a community that isn't your own is a major concern.

Our group's TA was a community organizer for six years before coming to law school, so when we were coming up with the lesson plan, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to ask him to speak about his experiences. He did so, and ended up by saying this:

"Now, I want to sort of preempt the arguments that often come up about lawyers' roles in community organizing, and being different from the community you're organizing. There's a piece that you didn't read -- it was in the Recommended Reading -- that profiled some community organizers. A lot of community organizers really hate lawyers. And there's a concern that lawyers shouldn't go into this kind of work, especially when they're not part of the community. There's the question of how you can do this kind of work if you're not from that community.

"But I think the question is not how you can do that kind of work, but rather how you can NOT do it.

"They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that's true, and I had people say to me, 'We don't care if you make mistakes, as long as you come back the next day.' So yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the point is: we're already in hell."

At this point, the class laughed, and the TA looked around.

"I wasn't counting on a laugh for that comment," he continued, "because it's -- it's easy to sit here, as law students, with our expensive laptops, when two floors below us -- literally underground in tunnels -- immigrant workers are scurrying around making -- basically cleaning the shit off our shoes."

The class went quiet. There was no tapping of keys on laptops. The silence hung there for a moment, tense, guilty, uncomfortable.

He went on and apologized for getting off track, but when he left the front of the room, everyone applauded.

The best part of any class here is when people tell stories from their lives. In this class, touchy-feely as it is, there have been some really memorable stories:
- The man who felt he had to work in transgender law because he used to be a woman, even though his real love was animal rights.
- The woman whose father is a coal miner, who went to a fancy French restaurant as part of a firm function, and ordered steak tartare. When she got the raw meat, she couldn't eat it. She'd only ordered it because she thought it was steak with tartar sauce on it.
- Another woman's side comment that her mother didn't understand why she was choosing to go into nonprofit work, because she could do anything, and anything to her immigrant mother meant taking a prestigious, high-paying job.
- The black man whose grandparents and parents deferred to his opinions now that he was a Crimson College of Law student.
- Famous Minority Professor's own story about being dissed by a former president for a top governmental position.

The TA's talk was the best of the best. He's normally quiet and extremely respectful of people's feelings and opinions, so his comment about the maintenance and cleaning staff was even more powerful. It was ... electric. Completely devoid of the bullshit and the complicated theories and the hyper-intellectualism of this place. It was real.

The members of my group and I missed a great opportunity after he spoke to explore people's reactions -- we stuck to our lesson plan and had Famous Minority Professor speak, and then heard from two students we'd asked to talk, but no one had the effect that the TA did.

I think probably everyone in this class (and hopefully in this law school, though I'm doubtful) struggles a little bit with our roles in society when we comes out of this place. We're so privileged, and so powerful relative to many segments of the population, and yet the vast majority of graduates work at corporate firms when they leave law school. Probably an equally vast number leave those firms for other jobs after a few years, but I don't know how many end up in nonprofit work, or any kind of work that addresses social inequity. Certainly the percentage that go into that kind of work right away is very, very low.

I don't mean this as an attack on corporate lawyers -- lord knows I'll probably be one for a few years myself -- or a criticism of the different priorities people have. Jobs should fit the talents, skills and goals of the worker, and not every job has to directly address social problems. I think the TA's comment struck a nerve with a lot of people, though, because there is that nagging feeling that we should be doing something more. Few people say, "I'm working for a firm" with unabashed pride -- almost everyone says it almost bashfully, as if they know they should be doing something more socially redeeming. Like I said, there are a lot of new lawyers who leave corporate work after a few years. But there's a sense of guilt about doing it in the first place. And there's also the frightening ease with which we all get used to creature comforts, and become creatures of our habitat, so that the guilt slowly dissipates under the weight of pressing deadlines and projects, so that the image of immigrant workers scurrying around underground while we type frantically away on our expensive computers slowly fades, so that it's hard to remember why we are already in hell. Here. Now.