Gunners
Everybody who’s been to law school knows these people…
Kevin was what law students call a “gunner,” meaning he ran his mouth off like a machine gun through every class. Law schools still attempt to emulate the Socratic Method used in The Paper Chase. The professor stands before the class, selecting students at random to provide “outlines” of lengthy, incredibly dull cases the student was supposed to read the night before. The student, in turn, is supposed to recite the legal issues in the case while the professor peppers him with questions designed to trip him up.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, in theory. In reality, most students bring laptops with outlines on them, or casebook Cliff’s Notes published by a company called Emmanuel’s. If they’re unfortunate enough to be called on by the professor – ripped from out of a daydream or a hangover – they pitch back a clumsy recitation of the crib notes on the case. It’s not much different than standing in open court, making a real argument, where most lawyers don’t half the answers to the questions the judge is asking. But if the process is supposed to train a student to “prepare, prepare, prepare,” well, it’s pretty much a farce. The average semi-intelligent student sleeps through class, crams at the end of the semester and only really shows up for exams.
In the vacuum of class participation are the gunners, a subset of student who came to the law looking for purpose. The gunner reads the actual cases. He reads a treatise on the cases. He reads biographies of the judges who wrote the opinions and analyzes every issue, from every angle. Armed with endless niggling observations and more interpretations of any given case than have been cast on Shakespeare, he raises his hand in response to every question the professor asks, debating his every point, finishing his sentences and volleying back his every closing comment with “Yes, professor, but what if…?”
This was Kevin. He couldn’t help his obnoxiousness. It was unconscious. He’d thrown himself into the gunner’s world – a black hole of endless dicta-parsing and mind-numbing midnight arguments with his fellow Trekkies about obscure Supreme Court dissents and the legislative intent behind constitutional amendments. He must have thought knowing everything, throwing every fiber of his being into the concept of law studentry and soaking up every irrelevant detail of every case we studied would render him the world’s greatest legal mind. Maybe he assumed the brain was as simple as a bicep – more curls, more strength. My guess is he just wanted to have something to be, other than what he was.
The Perils of Waking and Baking
No, it’s not a good idea.
Of all the “office highs,” “waking and baking” is the worst. My buddies Les and Martin had been ardent fans of the therapy, and when either of them saw me out, guzzling bourbons and bitching about how much I hated being in the office, it was always the same proselytizing… “You’re way too stressed. You need to bake before you go in. It makes the mundane shit interesting. The work becomes a game.” To me it seemed a horrible idea and terrible waste of dope. I couldn’t blast Traffic or Zeppelin in my office or swap favorite scenes from Trainspotting with my secretary. And what if a partner roped me into some awful meeting? “Hey, __________, can you sit in on a strategy meeting in the Rocco’s Industrial Meats case? You know… The one where the guy claims he lost an ear due to an improperly designed conveyor belt. We need a new set of eyes on it.” The cost/benefit ratio was terrible. Yes, the “wake and bake” did work, and yes, it could make the morning amusing. But when it failed, it made an already annoying situation fifty times worse.
“Hey, can you do me a favor and write a reply to this motion?” Angela, a partner from down the hall appeared in my doorway a little after 9:30. “I’m getting ready for an arbitration and it needs to be done a.s.a.p.”
“Huh?” I’d just been settling in, flipping through the newspaper and reading emails. I wasn’t Cheech and Chong stoned or anything, just comfortable, happy – in that placid zone where the idea of even getting up to take a piss seemed like too much work to bother. Oh, please, please, let this be a joke. I almost cried when I saw her shuffling legal papers in her hands.
“It’s self explanatory.” She laid the papers on my desk. “Thanks. I really appreciate this.”
I read the words on the pages, but none of it made sense. The text was just a pile of geometric black designs on a white background. I processed the prose but the meaning didn’t register. Why now? Why does every day here have to be torture?
Staring at the motion, I immediately flashed back to Business Law 101, a college course I’d taken years before. For one reason or another, a friend and I decided to smoke a spliff before writing a presentation we were to deliver the next morning. I remembered how typing the damned thing seemed to take forever, and how awful the text had been. How I stood in the front of the auditorium the next morning, struggling to deliver it to the class, stumbling through all the typos, run-on sentences and pointless, incomplete phrases, looking at the professor’s frown and thinking, Shit, I’m going to have to beg this fucker for the ‘Gentleman’s C.’1
Some people can write just fine when they’re baked, some better than they can sober. These are people who’ve smoked enough that they can do just about anything in that condition, from taking LSATs to skeet shooting to giving a best man’s speech at a wedding. A roommate of mine in college used to rip bong hits before exams, explaining that he needed “to be in [his] natural state to do well.” Normally, I’d say these people are mad, but dope’s different, unlike any other drug. Nobody admits it, but there are people who can all but perform surgery stoned. For some it just seems to regulate the mind, like a sort of black market Prozac.
I am not one of these people. There was no way I could punch through a legal argument with a stitch of clarity in that condition. Still, as a matter of general decency, I couldn’t leave Angela with nothing when she needed a hand. Of all the lawyers on the floor, she was the nicest and most decent of the bunch. I chugged a couple coffees and whipped together the best argument I could. It might have been coherent, or it might have been gibberish. It might have been both or none or a lot of other things but I’ll never know because I didn’t stick around to find out. As soon as it was done I got the hell out of the building, to avoid having to run into Angela again. And she never followed up with me, which I took as a Gentleman’s C.
———-
1 It was a well known fact that some professors would convert a ‘D’ or ‘F,’ to ‘C’ if you groveled hard enough and promised it would never happen again. You usually had to be a senior and demonstrate anything under a ‘C’ would imperil your chances of graduation, but I’d heard of it working for sophomores and juniors.
nice read….
“argument, where most lawyers don’t half the answers”
just curious to know if you meant… “dont know half the answers”
PL: Thanks, brother. Nice call.
One of the many things I enjoy about working in a creative job is the fact that waking and baking enhances the experience dramatically. My girlfriend likes to say that all I do is “draw pictures all day” and that is why I can get away with this.
You know, as I read this, I can’t help but stand in awe at willpower required to actually live the lie that we all live every day. That lie that these sycophantic excercises that we subumit ourselves to each day are a reasonable and acceptable way to live. That we ultimately succeed in convincing ourselves that our “lie” is the “truth” (that “freedom is slavery” if you will). The strenght of the human spirit, the triumph of will over reality… we really are amazing animals. I can’t help feel uplifted by the potential innate to each of us. It’s a triumph of the human spirit… Pizza! Pizza!
PL: Jesus, man… You’re getting ahead of me. I can’t keep up. On the other comments to the last piece, you still have me looking for a live version of “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” and the best I can muster is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxGcAm0EkTU
As to your comment, I’ve nothing to say. One of those best left alone. What can I add?
Thank you PL for another wonderful post. I truly enjoy reading your words.
PL: Thanks. Glad to provide them.
since philalawyer.blogspot.com days
good stuff. liked these nuggets the best so far
PL: Thanks. These are fun to publish.
I know exactly what you mean. Staring at the paper like you’re in a trance. Kind of like if you stare long enough, an image of a castle will appear.
PL: Or a monkey scratching its head.
Great analysis of the Gunner (though I seem to remember a lot of them were more about hearing the sound of their own voice than anything more complex).
also a fan since the blogspot days
PL: Good point. I missed a huge aspect of the personality there. But I think I nail it in the book.
The real problems are the Socratic Method and lecture structure of law school. They encourage participation by the most argumentative elements in the room.
Three things need to happen with our law school system:
1. It needs to be shortened to two years. It’s simply outrageous that students subsidize fat salaries for those naval gazers.
2. It needs to be focused on law as a trade instead of clinging to the ludicrous theoretical angles it employs. Law is not philosophy. For 99% of students it’s a job, nothing more, nothing less. They need to stop trying to train the next Oliver Wendell Holmes and start training students pragmatically, with more courses focusing on the types of tasks they’ll handle in the job.
3. It needs to teach marketing, management and sales. Law is a business. Nobody needs to know fees that haven’t been used in property law since the days of Queen Anne. But they do need to teach lawyers how to run a business, market and yes, sell. It’s outrageous that law firms hire consultants to teach grown people how to socialize, which they do. What were the schools paid to do?
Regarding Hank:
Basically, you’re saying that there needs to be a BA in law, probably offered by the business school of a college, and then a JD for people who want to be judges and high-level prosecutors and trial lawyers?
PL: I’m advocating an MBA in law.
I don’t think anyone should limit themselves to studying something as narrow as law in undergrad. There’s already a crisis of small-mindedness in the legal field caused by people who have no work experience or understanding of anything outside a Poli Sci degree and three years of law school entering the profession. The same holds in the medical fields. Minds micromanaged through self-limitation or overbearing parents who push children toward certain professional degrees from early childhood often place rigid adherence to organizational, theoretical or procedural strictures over practical problem solving. That’s dangerous to everyone.
When I was a Freshman I groveled my way from a F to a layman’s D. So I think it all depends on the teacher.
PL: You should get an automatic pass to any law school in the country if you can prove you’ve successfully argued for the Gentlemen’s C.
“… to giving a best man’s speech at a wedding.”
funny you mention it- I had my share of MDA, crown and ice’s, and smoked a J before toasting the new bride and groom just last weekend. You are a motherfucking badass.
PL: No. I’d say you are. That’s a dicey state of mind in which to take the stage.
And I could never, ever stomach Canadian whiskey.
What I always found amusing was that there was a specific sub-class of gunner who wasn’t very bright, would raise her hand and throw out a comment or answer and the prof would pause, give them a long look, and then continue on as if it didn’t happen. The hilarious part was that the gunner apparently never got the memo and continued doing it. I hear she’s a partner now.
I had to give up weed, while it’s great fun, all it really did for me was make me stare at a motion or other filing for an hour like one of those magic-eye prints.
No Canadian for me either, gives me a headache. I’m a simple guy, Makers on the rocks.
PL: Try Basil Hayden. Perfect summer bourbon. Trust me.
It’s not just the law, though, there are gunners everywhere. I majored in Comp Sci and still saw my fair share of them. It’s like there’s some douchebag template that you just need to feed a different field into. There’s nothing more grating than sitting in class, trying to fight of a crippling hangover and having some dildo preface all his questions with “Well, I know that…” and “I understand the concept of ____, but.”
PL: It’s particularly grating in law, however, where people are encouraged to argue a dead point into the ground.
Really, what point isn’t arguable if you have a decent vocabulary and some basal level of intelligence? A friend of mine has joked for years that “arguably” is the stupidest qualifier in English.
Great Post, praticularly about Gunners. Survived 3 years of Socratic Method with Gunners persistently spewing their self-congradulatory analysis.
I had one Prof. who underminded the Emannuel’s route by creating his own homemade text. You bought it directly from him, came in a 3-ring binder, and was $90.00. What a scam. On top of it all, 8am class Mon, Wed, Fri. Hang over + homemade text + 8am created many opportunities for said professor to make Kingsfield look like a piker.
PL: There was an 8:00 am in law school?
I hate fuckin gunners dude. I also hate law school.
PL: Well then stand up in class the next time one starts running his mouth off and say, “Wait. Stop. Everybody… Everybody raise your hand if this dude annoys you as much as he annoys me.”
You want to know why lawyers are allowed to annoy the shit out of our culture? It’s because no one stands up the way kids did on the playground and punches these people in the mouth, rhetorically speaking, of course (though it’d do most lawyers well to be physically beaten, which I’ve written about elsewhere).
I ran my mouth off as a kid and was beaten for it. Taught me more valuable lessons than any I recall from a classroom.
Believe it or not, law is not the only field to harbour this kind of attention-whoring intellectual snob. I did a five-year honours BA in English (spec. rhet. comp.) at the University of ________, and that program was stuffed to capacity with students just like the ones you’re describing. In the English discipline, these are the folks who have read the entire Western canon and can recite from most of it by rote…the kind of people who study Barthes and Kierkegaard for the sole purpose of dropping multi-syllabic theory terms into everyday conversation…the guys who will find a way to link the topic of any in-class discussion to Milton or Alghieri just so they can quote “Paradise Lost” or “The Divine Comedy” (the latter in the original Italian) from memory. I HATED attending courses with these people. It’s not an ego thing — I’m not jealous of their admittedly extensive knowledge — I just have better things to do with my time than watch a gunner and a professor jerk each other off for forty-five minutes while extolling the virtues of Faulkner’s unnecessarily-verbose prose.
Unlike some of the professors I’ve seen described here, the profs at U of T absolutely ate this shit up. It was ennervating in the extreme to watch some guy with the social skills of a retarded four-year-old basically stand up and deliver his OWN lecture, to a class full of students who had paid to hear the lecture delivered by the guy standing at the podium — you know, the one with nine degrees. It didn’t help when the prof did nothing to discourage this behaviour — and in fact seemed willing to hand the floor over to these arrogant little sophists.
The only time I have ever seen any professor take a stand on this issue was in my third-year Colonial American Literature course. This gunner waltzes in on the third day of classes, announces that he hasn’t read the assigned text, but of course he has opinions on everything. Keep in mind — he HADN’T READ THE TEXT YET, but he still launched into a five-minute diatribe linking it to Immanuel Kant, early Nietzsche and I believe Dostoyevsky. You think I’m kidding. The best part — the assigned text was Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
At the end of this bullshit session, the professor (who I would love to publically applaud for this, but for whom my respect is too great to risk getting him in trouble) stared at the gunner for a good thirty seconds, and I really thought he was going to start clapping or something, until he said this:
I think you’re absolutely right. (pause) I think you need to read the text.
My friend and I cracked right up in the back of the lecture hall. Best part was this continued to be a pattern with the same gunner throughout the semester, and each time, Dr. (redacted) would intellectually bitch-slap him back down to size. The guy never caught on, and it got to the point that the whole class would be laughing at him as soon as he put up his hand, in anticipation of Dr. (redacted)s response. I felt kind of bad for the guy at the time, but in retrospect, he got exactly what he deserved.
This was a great post; I’ve read the whole archive and I’m deeply impressed with everything you’ve posted. Looking forward to the book — you ought to get out of law and do this full-time if the sampling on this site is any indicator of what the book has in store.
PL: Thanks. That’s very kind. I removed your name and school to be sure your professor wouldn’t be discovered. The angle you’ve taken sort of dovetails into the point I was struggling to make in an earlier post regarding “industry speak.” I think gunners and lingo abusers are superficially related, but very different in terms of psyche and motive. The lingo abuser’s a lazy cynic; the gunner’s a tragic figure.
I’m a current law student right now (3L), and I have to say, I completely sympathize with your experience with these gunners. I’m a big fan of your writing style, and I frequent your essays whenever I need a laugh to escape the stress of school. But I have to say, there is an enjoyment that I get from law school, and I have enjoyed the experience of working summers at mid size firms and around the law in general. So I have to ask, seeing as how it is a general motif in your essays, if you hate working where you do so much, or around the law in general,
i.e. “Why now? Why does every day here have to be torture?”
why don’t you do something else? your a hell of a writer, your creative and witty, and you must have another idea of something pertaining to the law that you could do that would be so painful!? Let me know PL
PL: “Pertaining to the law”? Not exactly.
By the way, I’m glad you enjoy your experience and I hope you continue to do so. It’s not so much the career as the people that makes law so bad. And the city. Philadelphia’s a pretty foul legal climate.
I spent half of the year working for an executive partner at a major DC firm blazed out of my mind. I could walk home from work and thus spent my lunch breaks enjoying myself and trying to coast through the rest of the day with minimal interaction. Luckily my boss was a lot like some of the characters described in your posts, awful social skills, head down, get the job done and get home beaten. I’m glad I spent time working there, I did shit, got paid well and got off at 5:30 every evening. Now I’m giving referrals to poor people at a bar association as a summer job.
Anyway, point is, thanks PL for your insights, when ever I think about law school and forget how incredibly awful I would be in a law office I read your posts and get brought back to reality. I think every potential lawyer should read this stuff. Alot of the dorks will balk and go on with their legal education, but I’m sure this will save the ones who really need to be saved from the life of drudgery. Thanks man
PL: That’s the hope. I hope you enjoy what you’re doing and get some fulfillment out of it.
At a minimum, DC’s a great town. I spent a lot of time there and kick myself for not going there right after college. I really limited myself going to a shit hole like Philly. Selah. Live, learn, right? Have a great weekend.
I will concede that Canadian whiskey falls short of Irish whiskey or bourbon, but it ain’t bad. I’d rather have VO or 7 Crown than a cheap Scotch.
Oh, and Dar Williams and Marshall Crenshaw do a great version of Mr. Young’s classic “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.” Probably a little too granola crunchy chick-ish for you, but you really do need to free your mind, you goddamned plutocrat. No video, but you can listen for free here: http://music.download.com/darwilliams/3600-8975_32-100785881.html
PL: Nothing – absolutely nothing – on Earth is worse than Cutty Sark or J&B. I wouldn’t use that shit to clean my tires. “Cheap scotch” is like “amateur violinist” or “part time surgeon.”
Plutocrat? This from a Bushmills drinker who buys his cds at Starbucks? You lace curtain prick.
Actually, I have no problem with Dar Williams. Anyone covering that tune’s got to be good people.
Man, this is a damn impressive subblog you’ve got going here… I always liken your comment about “shouting shut the fuck up” to Caeser… the first ape that said “NO!”.
My brain is named Brian. Pizza! Pizza!
PL: Brutus would be bourbon?
The same rules for the old subblog apply. The first link to pictures of boys swimming and you’re banned…
I fall into the same camp as your two friends – waking and baking before work makes the tedium a little more interesting. Also, similar to the reason a nervous man might throw back a shot of absinthe at the bar (apparently absinthe just recently became legalized where I live, cool huh?) before approaching some girl, the chronic loosens me up a bit. I get a little goofy, and I’m a salesman, and I find it much easier to sell shit to people if you can make them laugh first. If only I could offer them a bong hit, instead of for me. Then we’d all be laughing!
But seriously, I’m very excited for the book. It reads great so far. I can’t wait to see how all these nuggets tie in together.
PL: You’d be surprised how many people would accept the bong hit offer. When you can speak plainly with people, or when you get drunk and honest, you find a considerable number of professionals or all stripes are recreational users. If I could go back and change one thing in my habits over the years it would be to drink a little less and smoke a little more. It’s really much more sensible and healthy over time, for endless obvious reasons.
Um, isn’t the proper Roman numeral for 9 IX?
Anyway, great post.
PL: Was that number 9?
My first experience with a “gunner” occurred during law-school orientation. The chief justice of our state’s supreme court addressed the incoming students, and took a few questions afterward from the crowd. Unfortunately, the judge called on the guy who would eventually become our class’s most notorious gunner. This asshole proceeded to ask a 2 1/2 minute question that included a reference to two Supreme Court opinions and a lengthy quote from the Federalist Papers. My outlook on life would never be the same.
Regarding “the gunner”: It is incredible how different the Law gunner is from the corporate big shot gunner.
It may be the difference in industry, but in my company the trend is as follows: The higher up you are, and the more you speak and argue…the less you actually know what the hell it is that you are talking about.
It’s a wonder we have survived as long as we did, in a company where the COO of an ISP has no idea about the basics of technology, yet will spit out acronyms and lingo with the best of them.
I’m sure that happens in your field as well; an argumentative bloke who essentially attempts to filibuster the opposing argument, or the nervous newbie who simply does not yet know the concept of brevity.
Anyway, good post, and I look forward to the book.
Nope, you’re right, it wasn’t.
That settles it, I need to go to the optometrist.
I never comment but am a long time reader and thoroughly enjoy all your stories. Thanks for sharing!!
PL: Happy to do so. More to come soon.
You say gunner…we weren’t as nice…podium whore was the term of art where I did my three year sentence. Still don’t get why people can be impressed with the piece of paper hanging on my wall. If they only knew the truth.
Great read.
I’ve been a fan of yours for awhile now. I loved this post in particular, so I decided to comment on it.
I agree 100% with your analysis in one of the other comments about legal education. I have just finished my first year of law school. About half of the students I can stand, the other half are absolutely terrible. It’s as if becoming an attorney empowers them; like it is some great, honorable profession that they read about in John Grisham novels.
I knew coming in I wanted to work for a small to mid-sized firm. This past year has driven that point home. 98% of the students who clerk for big firms are terrible. I’m convinced none of these people knew how to get laid before being able to tell people, “Oh, I’m going to be a lawyer.” This is why big firms need social consultants: look at the general social make-up of the people who finish in the top 10% of each law class.
Look forward to the book.
PL: The average uber-law-student is what I’d call an “aggressive insignificant.” They’re overcoming something, and I’m not sure what it is, but think about it… What sort of person would want to spend his life fighting over minutiae? In fairness, however, transactional lawyers tend to be a more decent sort. The kinds who want to work in litigation, and live for it often have serious issues. You have to be a sick ticket to want to spend your life arguing and bickering all day, and all of it over mostly worthless procedural gibberish.
In fairness, also, litigators I’ve worked with in other areas, specifically New York, seem to be a better sort. Philadelphia has this “fight, fight, fight” mentality. Many people in the city tend to be unnecessarily quarrelsome. It’s fucked up, pathological. If you drive thirty miles to Wilmington, DE you’ll find a much more pleasant bar. And New Jersey isn’t bad either. But Philly… I don’t know why, but it’s a mean, mean place.
Kevin is a hero. Constitutional law is the most important in this country, and it is being ignored. Haha -I know- but apathy isn’t funny.
PL: Apathy is wildly underrated. Let’s face it – most people don’t have much useful to add to our discourse (including, I’m sure many would conclude, me). We’d be better off in this country if 99% of the opinionated or “involved” weren’t. If there was one quality I wish I had more of it would be apathy.
How many hours of cable news are already devoted to people sniping at one another about nothing, never listening to what the other side has to say and always focused on that one simple end – looking like they’re “winning”? A person who’d pay to be encouraged toward that skill has little basis to consider himself intelligent enough to excel in anything, including debate.
Great read as always. A girlfriend’s dad used to work on nuclear missiles for the army, and always went to work stoned. Apparently the rehab guys call what you’re describing here “state-dependent learning.” Somehow being stoned requires you to re-learn skills you picked up sober; that being sober requires you to re-learn skills you picked up stoned.
PL: This explains my scotch drinking problem. I’m twice the advocate after a scotch as I am dead sober. It seems to smooth all the edges and cause me to forget all the little things I absorb in the moment, causing me to veer off point. Only works with scotch. Bourbon and beer and vodka, no way. And baked? Forget it.
I can’t add any comment that would improve the fact this person works on nuclear missiles. That’s better left to stand on its own.
If you go to the right school, the “Gentleman’s C” is given without asking–if you’ve done it right, that is.
My school had a “course forgiveness” policy – if you got a D+ or worse, you could retake the course with zero consequence. I had a finance course that was horrifically mundane; even the dumb kids were bored. Attendance was also 30% of the grade. I was fairly vocal to my prof regarding my opinion of him and his class (Really, no finance major needs an entire project devoted to teaching “the time value of money”) and I was kind of hoping for the failling grade.
He gave me a C-, which I can only assume meant he hated me and thought I should fail, but did not want to see me ever again.
PL: My school was notorious for a similar non-failing policy. But every now and again you’d run into an idealist…
oddly enough, after reading all of your stories i have nearly changed my mind on my career path and decided to move towards law. i have no idea why or the reasoning behind it but the more i think about it, the more the idea of the profession intrigues me. before reading your posts i had dismissed law completely in my mind and decided that finance was the way for me. any comments you have or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
PL: If you have the grades and ability to get into finance and you choose law in my estimation and the estimation of probably eighty percent of the people in both fields you are card carrying crazy.
Instead of going into law school right out of college, which is the worst move any person can make (law school should only be entered after someone has worked a while), why don’t you work in finance first and decide if you like it? That’s a win/win. Blowing cash on law school to learn you don’t like it and should have gone into finance is doing it ass backward.
Never go to law school without knowing exactly what you’re getting into and that it’s exactly what you want to do. That’s the worst decision in the world, and the reason so many lawyers are so wretchedly unhappy.