One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

by Scott Turow

  It was true that there had been moments when Nicky was less kindly than he should have been. He frequently seemed to belittle the best student remarks, implying they were unoriginal or routine. I never wholly set aside the feeling that Nicky was competing with us, trying to prove that he was still, as billed, the greatest law student at HLS since Frankfurter. Yet over time I’d also recognized that competition between professors and students is just within the nature of the Socratic method. In May, I went to an open meeting on legal education in which one young professor characterized Socraticism as “placing a premium on being able to outdraw a student at twenty feet.” I imagine that it is a taste of that kind of daily confrontation which draws many former law students back to become law professors.

  In singling Nicky out for criticism on this score, I thought I saw in my classmates a reaction which mirrored what had gone on with me after I had been called on by Perini. Only when I was less desperately frightened could I feel my resentments of him; only toward Nicky, the least fearsome of our teachers, did many people dare express their anger over some of the most consistently offensive aspects of law-school life—the antagonism between teacher and student in the classroom, their distance outside of it, the indignity of being examined and marked. It was dangerous to feel hostile toward Perini or Isaac Fowler—they seemed capable of any retaliation. Nicky, on the other hand, was committed to liberal tolerance; and like me with my Contracts reading, there were students in the section who could not resist the temptation to abuse. Whenever time was short, it was Nicky’s assignments that were ignored. People would pass when called on, smirking like adolescents. And because Nicky was so patient, students brought him grievances that never would have been aired elsewhere. They pushed him. They challenged him. They tried to manipulate. And Nicky remained good-hearted, responsive, sincere, which was what led to his announcement on that last Friday in April, at the start of class—the announcement which sent the year into decline.

  “There is a lot of concern,” he said, as he paced at the front of the room, “that some study groups are producing huge outlines and course guides for the exam. A lot of people apparently feel that they’re really up against it, competing with these collective efforts. So, if the class agrees, I have decided to change the plans for the exam a little bit to allow the collectives and the individuals to go at it more evenly.”

  Nicky’s purpose was to ease tension, but as had happened so often, his effect was exactly the opposite. Much of that had to do with the state his audience was in already. By the end of April things were rapidly becoming overheated within Section 2. Although we now had experience with exams, the demands were greater this term. There were four courses to review for, not two. And the schedule was a more formidable obstacle. Exams would begin only a few days after classes ended on May 14. In January, most of us had had the comfort of Christmas vacation before the tests. That had given us the opportunity to escape the trips and neuroses we all laid on each other. Now there was no release. Exams would begin a few days after classes ended. In the dormitories, I heard, they were already crawling the walls; we were all feeling considerable heat. Gina claimed that the only way she was keeping herself whole was by leaving school promptly after the day’s final class so she could escape the anxiety-ridden conversations now so frequent in the hallways.

  Under that pressure, the bonds within the section were starting to yield. For much of the year, the members of Section 2 had been strongly supportive of each other. True, there were petty jealousies, but we’d held together well enough for Mann to pay us that compliment about mutual protectiveness, in the last Criminal class of the first term. But to a significant degree, I think that first-semester grades had had an atomizing effect. We were no longer on equal footing. There was genuine envy now, and a real race for the Review, and in the next ten days, I would see and hear of and take part in conduct which was shameful.

  And Nicky’s announcement sent us off in that direction. The actual content of what Morris said fit the intent he’d described—to even things up between groups and individuals. He restricted the scope of the potential questions he might ask on the exam and that, in theory, should have made it easier for people to prepare without the aid of study groups or group outlines. But in the section’s current state of anxiety, it was more the emphasis, the implications, of Nicky’s announcement that people took hold of. By his calling attention to what study groups like ours were up to, students felt as if Morris had tacitly endorsed, even urged, group work. And by altering his plans for the exam, Nicky seemed to acknowledge the potentially powerful effect of the study-group outlines.

  Thus panic set in at once. People who’d remained convinced that groups were no longer worth it for them, quickly lost that conviction. Within twenty-four hours some groups long dormant had revived, and other persons were casting about nervously for groups to join. Now everyone began outlining Civil Procedure, as well as some of the other courses, especially Property, where it was becoming clear nobody understood Estates in Land.

  The most vigorous new study group was headed by Kyle Schick. Over the first weekend in May, Kyle put together a huge sixteen-person cooperative which became busy at once outlining Property and Procedure. Some people thought that was treacherous—because, as I later learned, it was Kyle who had gone to Nicky in the first place to complain about the group outlines.

  As exams neared, I was told many times that Kyle was openly confessing his desperate desire to make the Law Review. He felt Review membership was indispensable in getting where he wanted to go in a career as a law teacher, and I imagine that he was driven to Nicky by a fear like Weiss’s—that those with outlines had an advantage he could not overcome. Before exams were over, Kyle had lodged similar complaints about other people with other professors. In each case, I’m sure that Kyle . Got a good hearing, because he had gone to great lengths to cultivate our teachers all year. He’d involved a number in consultations concerning his on-campus business; he’d had the teachers to his house for parties. He’d even tried to assuage Perini’s wounds, sending him—as only Kyle would dare—a long congratulatory note after Perini had finished a series of lectures in our class on “conditions,” a complicated subject involving questions about those contract terms whose violation creates a breach.

  I know that Kyle did not like Nicky Morris much. He’d told me that. He voiced the familiar complaints about Nicky’s ego. But he still invited Nicky out on weekends to play softball, and visited him in his office to talk over deep issues in Procedure. I’m sure Nicky trusted Kyle; and in case he didn’t, I was told that Kyle induced Phyllis Wiseman, who was normally quite reticent, to come with him the day he lodged his objection about the group outlines. Phyllis was a sympathetic figure. She had a family to look after, kids. Nicky had kids too. When Phyllis told Nicky that these study-group efforts frightened her because she could never spare the time to match them on her own, I’m sure Nicky understood. Phyllis’s problem—genuine, sincere—made the situation clear. Nicky did what he should have, and I imagine Phyllis was grateful for his announcement. I imagine Kyle was too.

  Kyle then formed his study group. He built it around a nucleus of his friends from Harvard College, but he seemed to choose the people for it very carefully., Gina told me that he reached her by long distance in Vermont to ask her to join. And Kyle never included Phyllis Wiseman.

  As I had listened to Nicky Morris on that Friday when he’d announced his change in plans for the exam, my heart had sunk. Not because I felt we’d wasted all our work. The Procedure outline would still be quite valuable. But that was not the first thing on my mind. For some reason, I had not noticed the deepening discomfort in the section over our outline. I had realized that people were growing tense; I realized that one or two persons like Weiss were irritated with us. But as Nicky spoke, I suddenly recognized that my friends and I, and the few other groups engaged in similar projects, had apparently been the cause of great anxiety. I felt guilty and badly embarra
ssed.

  Stephen received Nicky’s announcement in a different mood. He took the altered design of the exam as a new challenge. He came charging back to my seat at the end of class.

  “All right,” he told me, “all right. Now, we’ve worked hard on this thing, but now we have got to hit it; we have got to give it the fanatical intensity it deserves.”

  I tried to calm Stephen as we went to lunch. Aubrey and Stan and Terry were also there, and together the four of us acquainted Stephen with the news he had still not absorbed—that it was we and our outline and “fanatical intensity” that, in good part, had led to all of this.

  Stephen puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.

  “People are scared of us?” he asked. “I’m incredulous.”

  “Scared and resentful,” Aubrey told him. He was nonchalant. Both he and Stan felt that the outline was our business. We weren’t trying to harm anybody and owed no apologies for wanting to reap the rewards of our perseverance. But Terry felt sheepish that we’d thrown everyone into such consternation. And I was increasingly upset by the whole business. By the time I left school on Friday, my reactions to Nicky’s announcement had broadened. In the intensified atmosphere I felt a new pressure to do more work. And more surprisingly, I also found that much of my initial embarrassment had begun to give way to some resentment of whoever it was who had gone to Morris. For some reason the outline was important to me. Throughout, I’d assumed I was doing it mostly for the sake of my friends in the study group, but now it seemed to have been converted to a purpose far more personal. I realized that I might even have been trying to overlook that rising current of resentment. Stephen, too, was disturbed, now sorely in conflict with himself. He is a kind man, no matter how consumed, and it bothered him a great deal to think he’d been the source of anyone’s discomfort.

  “It’s my grades,” he told me before I left school Friday, explaining—I think correctly—why there’d been such attention to our group and thus to our outline. “I wish I’d never gotten those goddamn grades.”

  By that Monday, Stephen had hit upon a more tangible expression of his concern. It had been quite a weekend in the dormitories. Members of Section 2 who had no access to outlines and study groups were becoming desperate. They were certain they’d fail. Even if that was not so, I’m sure it was no picnic to feel that panic abroad and to know you were in this onyour own. On campus on Sunday, Stephen had been approached at different times by two men, John Yolan and Malcolm Bocaine, who, according to Stephen, almost begged to be added to our group. On Monday, at a study-group review session before class, Stephen proposed that we indeed invite John and Malcolm to join.

  Terry agreed quickly. He saw it as imperative that the study group add members, just to provide others with the aid and peace of mind. Aubrey and I were also willing. So was Stan, the man who’d replaced Kyle in the group, but he had a proviso.

  “I want a quid pro quo,” he said.

  What Stan meant was that he wanted new members of the group to do some work in exchange for a copy of our outline. Stephen had considered that point, too. In March, when we’d divided the Procedure book for outlining, we’d never assigned anyone to the last chapters of the casebook. There seemed no need, since the material would be fresh. But Stephen, in his tireless preparation for exams, had been bothered all along by that omission, and now he proposed that John and Malcolm do that work. He had a kind of comprehensive plan concerning John and Malcolm, I saw. He had found a way to reconcile his worst impulses and his best. We all had. Let them in, but make them work. Quid pro quo. We quickly agreed.

  As I went through the day on Monday, I saw that the section seemed to have gone wild. People had been cramming all weekend, already pulling all-nighters, memorizing, outlining, reviewing. Nobody seemed to have a moment now for conversation. We were all jumpy as cats.

  I was no more collected than anybody else. I had gone through April feeling stable. I was working hard and there seemed to be no more to ask of myself. But Nicky’s announcement and the attendant pressures had thrown me for a loop.

  That congested fear of failing and screwing up, and on the other side, of wanting desperately to do well, had knotted inside me again, more powerfully than at any time since last November. Over the weekend I began to smoke again. I woke up one night in a sweat.

  And today everybody’s panic seemed to be working on me and making all that worse. My control over myself was deteriorating rapidly, and somehow the business with the outline was still at the center of it. When Stephen brought the news that John Yolan had no time now to do outside work, I replied, “Screw him, then. He wants dessert without making dinner. You heard Stan. Quid pro quo.”

  Stephen nodded cautiously. The next morning he announced that Ned Cauley had enlisted in the study group in the place of John. Ned and Malcolm were now busy working on their portions of the outline, and indeed, in the next few days, the two of them appeared to have virtually dropped out of school in order to get it done.

  Other dealings were in the works. Stephen was gossiping with everybody now, perhaps so that he would not miss any other ground swells of feeling like that which had occasioned Nicky’s announcement. Tuesday afternoon he consulted with Jack Weiss. Jack was still concerned about our outline.

  “He wants to trade,” Stephen told me Wednesday. “Their group’s got a Property outline. I saw a little. It looked pretty fair. What do you think?”

  I could see Stephen was interested. It was more information, one more angle, a little more security. And there was another complication here. Terry had not gone to Property classes all term. He considered Fowler a waste of time. He had promised himself that he would master the stuff on his own, but he’d put it off too long. The Estates in Land were hard to pick up out of Gilbert’s. I knew he would have valued a comprehensive outline.

  “What happens once we give the outline to them?” I asked. “They Xerox it and hand it all over the section?”

  “Maybe,” Stephen said.

  “No dice,” I answered. “We’ve worked too hard.”

  “What about Terry?”

  “Terry took the gamble. He’ll just have to pay.”

  “You’re right,” Stephen said after an instant. He laughed a little. “Hochschild’s in Weiss’s group. Can you imagine what would happen with our outline in Hochschild’s hands?”

  People were skipping classes now to outline. Everytime I passed the copy center under Langdell, I saw another member of Section 2 in line there with a sheaf of papers and a distrustful look-people whom I’d felt close to. We were in warring camps now, different study groups.

  Late Thursday afternoon, following classes, Stephen and Terry and I stood in one of the Pound classrooms talking about how bizarre it had all become.

  “Man,” Terry said, “I’ve been thinking. We should give everybody who wants it a copy of our outline.”

  “With a quid pro quo,” Stephen added.

  “Screw the quid pro quo,” Terry said. “I mean, hey, I asked myself why we did this. To review, right? To learn. That’s all we have to worry about.” He looked at me. “Right?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. I was still overwrought. It had been a miserable week.

  “Man, you’re the one who was sayin’ give it away.”

  “But look at the situation,” I said. “Kyle’s trying to screw everybody. Half the people in the section think we’re crazy.” “Hey, listen, what do you care about Kyle?” Terry asked.

  “What’s the difference, if we can help some folks out?”

  I thought a second. Then suddenly I was speaking from the frenzied center of everything that had gripped me in the last week.

  “I want the advantage,” I said. “I want the competitive advantage. I don’t give a damn about anybody else. I want to do better than them.”

  My tone was ugly, and Stephen and Terry both stared at me an instant. Then we quietly broke apart to find our separate ways home.
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  It took me a while to believe I had actually said that. I told myself I was kidding. I told myself that I had said that to shock Terry and Stephen. But I knew better. What had been suppressed all year was in the open now. All along there had been a tension between looking out for ourselves and helping each other; in the end, I did not expect anybody—not myself, either—to renounce a wish to prosper, to succeed. But I could not believe how extreme I had let things become, the kind of grasping creature I had been reduced to. I had not been talking about gentlemanly competition to Stephen and Terry. I had not been talking about any innocent striving to achieve. There had been murder in my voice. And what were the stakes? The difference between a B-plus and a B? This was supposed to be education—a humane, cooperative enterprise.

  That night I sat in my study and counseled myself. It had been a tumultuous year, I decided. I had been up. And I had been down. I had lost track of myself at moments, but because of whatever generosity I’d extended my own spirit, I had not lost my self-respect. But it would not stretch much further. I knew that if I gave in again to that welling, frightened avarice as I had this afternoon, I would pay for a long time in the way I thought about myself.

  It’s a tough place, I told myself. Bad things are happening. Work hard. Do your best. Learn the law. But don’t suffer, I thought. Don’t fear. And for God’s sake, don’t give up your decency.

  The madness in the atmosphere, the battle between the study groups, persisted. People continued to surreptitiously hand each other outlines in brown-paper bags. Jack Weiss kept making insulting remarks. Our study group met one afternoon to go over one of Perini’s former exams and we soon discovered that none of us could even begin to answer it; for a day Stephen fretted that we would all fail Contracts. In Kyle’s group, Gina reported, there had been an insurrection because no one could understand Kyle’s remarks on collateral estoppel, a crucial subject for the exam. Karen Sondergard cried one day when she decided she preferred to be in our group rather than another. Fearful rumors spread that a group had stolen a copy of one of the exams. At another point, Stephen became convinced that Aubrey and Stan had made a backstage deal with Kyle’s group and were receiving information which they were not sharing with the rest of us. And all along our own group continued to swell. Stephen always found ways to employ the new members. By the last week of classes the group had grown to eleven or twelve.