First we put all the lawyers in Jail...

Friends and I have been talking about whether people who are naturally competitive enter law school or whether law school (and the practice of law) forces people into a competitive mode. I have always thought that the culture of law schools deserves its own study, since people generally walk around stressed out and looking over their shoulders at others’ marks and achievements. It does not breed a team atmosphere. And since everyone is bell curved against each other, it forces people to feel like they are in a competition with people who are, inarguably, smart and academically accomplished.

Then, it would appear that people leave law school and go into a very competitive occupation by its nature, since law is founded on an “I win, you lose” proposition. And, perhaps that is why many lawyers are unhappy people. A lot of lawyers I meet are unhappy. And many lawyers thought I needed a very long stretch on a psychiatrist’s couch when I first broached the idea of going to law school.

Typically, as I was thinking about this, I came across a study that sheds some light on the answer:

In the early 1970s, a group of social scientists at Stanford University decided to create a mock prison in the basement of the university’s psychology building. They took a thirty-five-foot section of corridor and created a cell block with a prefabricated wall. Three small, six- by nine-foot cells were created from laboratory rooms and given steel-barred, black-painted doors. A closet was turned into a solitary confinement cell.

All the volunteers selected for the experiment were the most normal and healthy on psychological tests. Half of the group were chosen at random, to be guards, and were given uniforms and dark glasses and told that their responsibility was to keep order in the prison. The other half were told that they were to be prisoners. The scientists got the police department to “arrest” the prisoners in their homes, cuff them, bring them to the station house, charge them with a fictitious crime, fingerprint them, then blindfold them and bring them to the prison in the Psychology Department basement. Then they were
stripped and given a prison uniform to wear, with a number on the front and back that was to serve as their only means of identification for the duration of their incarceration.

The purpose of the experiment was to try to find out why prisons are such nasty places. Was it because prisons are full of nasty people, or was it because prisons are such nasty environments that they make people nasty? What the social scientists found out shocked them.

The guards, some of whom had previously identified themselves as pacifists, fell quickly into the role of hard-bitten disciplinarians. The first night they woke up the prisoners at two in the morning and made them do push-ups, line up against the wall, and perform other arbitrary tasks. On the morning of the second day, the prisoners rebelled. They ripped off their numbers and barricaded themselves in their cells. The guards responded by stripping them, spraying them with fire extinguishers, and throwing the leader of the rebellion into solitary confinement. “There were times when we were pretty abusive, getting right in their faces and yelling at them” one guard remembers.

“It was part of the whole atmosphere of terror.” As the experiment progressed, the guards got systematically crueller and more sadistic.

“What we were unprepared for was the intensity of the change and the speed at which it happened,” the lead scientist said. The guards were making the prisoners say to one another they loved each other, and making them march down the hallway, in handcuffs, with paper bags over their head. Five of the prisoners had to be released early because of their emotional reactions to the experiment. Many of the guards and prisoners could not believe how they would react in such a short period of time.

The conclusion of the study was that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions. There are certain times and places where all the normal influences that helped develop our behaviour (environment, parents, friends, school, neighbourhood) are swept away. There are instances where you can take normal people from good schools and happy families and good neighbourhoods and powerfully affect our behaviour merely by changing the immediate details of their situation.

That makes sense. The law students (and then-as-lawyers) are the guards who are placed in a situation so powerfully competitive that it might overwhelm their inherent predispositions. I know this is true of me – I don’t like the win/lose of the law (although I can be good at it when placed in the arena) – I’d rather come to an amicable settlement that solves the problem for both parties. However, I will be competitive when the situation dictates, although it’s not a natural trait of mine.

Or is it? What do you think?