“It's a zero sum game – somebody wins, somebody loses.” While this cut throat attitude may have served Gorden Gekko well on Wall Street, it would find him alone and, more importantly, jobless after Law School.
In our Structured Study Group last Friday, Paige Hamby, a 2L and Academic Fellow, wrote out the GPA distribution and class rankings of last years 1L’s on the whiteboard. Just the presence of those numbers increased the tension in the room. My eyes and my pride were locked on that top 5%. Those numbers served as uncomfortable reminders that our “friends” in the room are our also our competition. The moment I started to feel myself plotting and scheming, I remembered what we had learned just two days prior in Professor Arnold’s lecture on Negotiation: getting what you want doesn’t have to mean getting a bigger piece of pie than the other person, it could mean making the pie bigger. That way, everyone gets more.
In today’s economy, there’s only one way for us law students to find a high-paying legal job: know someone on the inside. And unless that “someone” is your mom or dad, you’re going to have to find them yourself and make them like you.
Refusing to give your notes to someone who missed class, refusing to come to their rescue when they stumble on a question in Civil Procedure, or simply trying to intimidate your fellow classmates may mean that you graduate with a higher rank, but Louisville is a small world, and when the day comes that you cross paths again in the professional world, I’m sure they’ll be happy to return the favor, or the lack thereof.
On the flip side, if you help your classmates to get better grades, you will gain their trust while, at the same time, expanding your network of connections and reserving for yourself a better spot in the job market.
So don’t tear others down thinking it will help build you up. Instead, build relationships in Law School. Help and encourage your classmates because regardless of what Gorden Gekko would have you believe, almost nothing in life is a zero-sum game – especially not your legal career.
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