Cathaleen A. Roach

Excerpted from: Cathaleen A. Roach[1], A River Runs Through It:  Tapping into the Informational Stream to Move Students from Isolation to Autonomy, 36 Arizona Law Review 667-678, 697-699 (1994) (154 endnotes omitted).

            "Isolation is the worst possible counselor," wrote an early 20th century writer and those timeless words are particularly apt in modern legal education.   The generic first‑year law student experience‑‑described by at least two authors as "the dark night of the soul" ‑‑leaves many first‑year law students isolated and very alienated.   Much of the literature has discussed the psychological effects of isolation (e.g., alienation , withdrawal, and hostility );  however, too little attention has been paid to the important academic effects of isolation.

             There should be an increased awareness that the "distress" many law students experience is not limited to how students feel.   Isolation has important academic and institutional repercussions as well.   Institutionally, this isolation results in uneven testing and a potentially inaccurate, skewed grade distribution for all students.

            Additionally, isolation can especially burden minority and other non‑traditional students, causing them further prejudice.   This Article suggests that isolation often leads to poorer grades regardless of academic ability. This is because exam grades do not necessarily measure ability.   Instead, to a large extent they may measure who has access to the essential survival information which is not generally taught in the first‑year classroom. Moreover, not only can isolation prevent minority and non‑traditional students from a fair assessment of their actual academic ability, but isolation may also disproportionately impact minority students' job opportunities with law firms  and law school academic appointments  as well.   Thus, if perpetuated by law schools, isolation in fact fosters continued long‑term segregation in the legal and academic communities. 

            Section I of this article explores the problem of isolation in law school, particularly as it affects minority and other non‑traditional students.   It challenges the assumption by most law schools that once a student is admitted into law school she competes on a level playing field.   Ostensibly, the playing field is level because as a result of the standardized first‑year Case Method instruction, presumably all students have roughly equal access to the same type and amount of information upon which ultimately they are all tested. Consequently, it is assumed, students with superior knowledge of the material and greater ability will perform better and receive higher grades.   Section I suggests, however, that those assumptions are no longer valid.  * * *

            Section II moves from the research on isolation and academic performance and explores the voluminous new research on learning theory and "methods" instruction.   Section II suggests that unfortunately, much of the disparate research on psychological and academic isolation, as well as the new research on learning theory and methods instruction has been conducted in a vacuum, without sufficiently acknowledging the interrelationship of each separate branch.

            Thus, for the sake of synthesis and simplicity, Section II attempts to unite some of this invaluable but insufficiently interconnected research.   It fashions a bridge, which I call "Creating a Context for Pedagogy," to formally unite the two bodies of important and useful research in "learning theory" and "methods teaching."   Thereafter, it suggests that undergraduate and graduate academic support programs ("ASPs")  are the new laboratories where all of the disparate *669 research on isolation, learning theory and methods instruction appears to come together.   The success of some of these ASPs suggests that it is time to replace legal education's outmoded Langdellian Laboratory  with new laboratories that respond to the lessons learned in the ASPs.

            Using a wonderful phrase borrowed from another discipline, Section III urges the law academe to acknowledge its own educational "Methodolatry"  which is evidenced by an unwavering devotion to Langdellian Case Method instruction.   It urges the law academe to relinquish this methodolatry and fashion a new hybrid approach to first‑year instruction.   This new approach produces better law students and ultimately, much better practicing attorneys because students are fully grounded in the skills of learning how to learn, as opposed to simply learning what to learn.

            Specifically, this Article confirms that in fact, isolation is the worst counselor.   It also suggests that it is only by abandoning an outmoded methodolatry that we can begin to move law students to the subterranean, bountiful river of information that currently exists beneath, atop, or outside most of their experiences as law students.

            Ultimately, there are three goals for this Article:  first, to refocus on isolation as a root cause and not merely an effect of psychological distress; second, to use a new model, "Creating a Context for Pedagogy" to provide a working bridge between learning theory and methods research;  and third, to illustrate how undergraduate and law school ASPs successfully integrate all of the disparate research in the three areas of isolation, learning theory and methods instruction.   Consequently, the ASPs provide a greatly enhanced learning environment, particularly for minority and other non‑traditional students who tend to be the most isolated.

            Ultimately, my thesis supports the following conclusions:

            First, isolation produces profound academic and institutional ramifications in addition to psychological ramifications;

            Second, law schools must acknowledge that frequently they neither "test what they teach,"  nor give the proper type of feedback that is required for successful learning;

            Third, the institution must recognize that its own Langdellian methodolatry promotes psychological and academic distress;

            Fourth, that potentially all students suffer needlessly as a result, but that non‑traditional students [i.e. minority students] are likely to suffer much more acutely and as such, the institution may unwittingly promote continued discrimination and segregation even beyond its law school corridors;

            Fifth, that a just and fair‑minded educational institution should not make grades, prestigious appointments and future job opportunities dependent upon the mere fortuity of access to the river of survival information;  and

            Sixth, that a new instructional approach‑‑one that brings students to the river of information‑‑will genuinely free many students psychologically and educationally, and thereby move them from isolation to empowerment and autonomy.

            In short, accepting these premises requires a law school to become more accountable to its students for the psychological and academic distress which exists.   It must also recognize that in light of new research on psychological injury, learning theory, and methods instruction, blind adherence to an outmoded pedagogy severely hampers the fairness, integrity and accuracy of the first‑year grading system.   It hits hardest minority and non‑traditional students‑‑regardless of their academic predictors‑‑who perhaps are the furthest outside of the mainstream of information. * * * *

B. Minority Law Students, Psychology, and Academic Isolation

* * * *Moreover, in addition to psychological consequences, racial isolation also has academic consequences. Students of color are often excluded from important yet informal networking systems, which means that the student is "often shut off from the intra-institutional methods by which white students tend to acquire information about how to function in this new role, including advice from upper-class students and faculty members."

Minority students are often shut out of the more formal networks, such as study groups. One author suggests that the majority students' frequent categorization of all blacks as affirmative action beneficiaries, i.e., unqualified to be in law school, along with the reluctance of many blacks to speak up in class, results in "fairly common exclusion of blacks from white study groups." As a result, blacks and other minorities are less likely than majority students to be exposed to successful upper-class students or sons or daughters of judges and other professionals. Isolation (intended or unintended) denies them access to the pivotal survival information including outlines, flow charts, and practice exams to a higher degree than a typical majority student. Finally, due to isolation, some minority students miss the benefit of a more competitive and high achieving study group, and thus, some minority students stay adrift either studying alone or amidst lesser achieving study groups.

* * * *  In my opinion, isolation will disproportionately affect students of color, older students and other non-traditional students regardless of index numbers. In other words, even if a student arrives with excellent predictors, those numbers cannot predict success if the student is isolated and thereby not exposed to successful new learning strategies. This may frequently explain why a disproportionate number of minority students with excellent undergraduate records either fail or perform below their ability during their first year. Isolation may also explain why LSAT numbers overpredict first-year performance for minority students but not majority students. * * * *