M. Todd Henderson, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, addressed this year's incoming class with extended analogies between the practice of law and the practice of magic--and with a magic trick. Here's part of what he said after performing the "disappearing scarf trick".
Believe it or not, this trick is a metaphor for your law school education. Let me explain by violating what my magic teacher, Bafflo’ Bill, told me is the first rule of magic: never tell the secret....First, the performer sets up the trick with context that demonstrates its importance while purporting to use only basic tools to accomplish it.
Second, a volunteer from the audience is used, and this makes some uncomfortable: Should I raise my hand? Will other people think I’m a gunner or a brown nose or even a plant? What if I screw up? Although perhaps well meaning, the volunteer often has the role of victim—someone designed to play an unknown role in the little play that is about to transpire.
Third, the performer distracts the audience with rhetoric and extraneous information that appears to be germane to the issue at hand, but is actually just meant to obfuscate and distract from the real essence of what is going on.
And finally, the magic happens. The audience sits in awe, well maybe not awe, but at the very least bewildered amusement, at what happened. This is where the performer’s role stops.
The audience then goes away, and the real value of the trick starts. The show is intended to be a stimulus to the true work that needs to be done, and every magician hopes that the audience talks about the trick in the hall, on the ride home, under the covers, and for weeks to come. How did he do it? Did it go up his sleeve? Did it go under his watch? Where there multiple scarves? And, perhaps best, could I do it?
One of Professor Henderson's points is that a great deal of what magicians do, and what lawyers do, is showmanship (or in this gender-neutral world) showpersonship. It's performance. It's knowing what to do, and how to do it.
Of course, the analogy isn't perfect. Where it breaks down, is that magicians don't reveal the secret. Magicians take their oath seriously, and they simply don't tell their secrets. Ever. Not even for really, really good homemade chocolate brownies with extra chips baked in. [Not that I have tried to bribe my favorite magician, you understand. I'm simply assuming that it wouldn't work].
A lawyer's oath is quite different. It's an oath to uphold the law, justice, the Constitution. The secrecy involved is to maintain a client's secrets, which is something altogether different. A lawyer's oath is not intended primarily to keep people from not learning how to do what she does. That's just one example in which the magician-lawyer analogy is imperfect.
Additionally, magicians can shun other magicians for breaking their oaths, but they can't prohibit them from performing. If a willing audience wants to see an oath-breaking magician perform, then someone is free to hire her and she performs. (Although judging by the rapid downturn in the career of the Masked Magician after those infamous Fox Network telecasts that may not actually be too wise a choice). The IBM and the SAM do not have the same kind of control over the magic profession that the various state regulatory authorities have over attorneys. A lawyer in trouble with her state's disciplinary authority might not be able to practice law. Again, the magician-lawyer analogy may break down.
Professor Henderson is quite aware that the analogy isn't perfect.
Our job is not to trick you, and this is where the magic analogy breaks down a bit. A magician might be satisfied at the awe generation, since not everyone in the audience wants to be a magician. What we want, what we demand, is that you apply the awe. To use it as inspiration to figure out how to do it yourself. Law, like life and like magic shows, is pretty simple—it requires only that you be inspired, work hard, and think on your own.
His talk is very clever, and very thoughtful. Read more of it here.
[Thanks to Jacob Loshin for alerting me to Professor Henderson's speech].
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