Lawyers, like boxers, are forged through adversity, not affirmation. At West Point, I boxed on the women’s boxing team. I spent hours drilling footwork, shadowboxing, and stepping into the ring to spar. I learned I was a terrible boxer, but I loved the challenge of testing my body under pressure and learning, albeit painfully, from every mistake.
I expected law school to provide the intellectual equivalent. At the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, I expected to intellectually spar with classmates who were smarter than I was. Law school, after all, is supposed to prepare students for a profession built on adversarial testing of ideas. Instead, I found an environment that avoided intellectual conflict. Law schools should not teach students what to think about the law before teaching them how to think like lawyers. Their responsibility is to prepare students to test competing legal theories through rigorous adversarial debate.
