One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School

Turow claims that the events of these chapters comprise the rising action of the book’s narrative arc, as the conflicts intensify and Turow experiences his lowest moments as a first-year student. Several major events occur back-to-back that deteriorate his mental wellbeing and exacerbate The Psychological and Physical Stress of Rigorous Academic Programs. The first incident is his incorrect answer in Mann’s class: “I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t blunder of the year, but I felt horribly embarrassed—worse than that, corrosively ashamed” (103). The blow to Turow’s ego makes him retreat into himself, and he refuses to speak up in class again. Later, he does poorly on two key assignments, intensifying the feelings of shame that come to dominate his law school experience in this period. The consecutive failures nearly break Turow, and he goes so far as to set up an appointment with a psychiatrist. The competitive pressure of the school places him in a double bind: When he prepares thoroughly for all the tasks expected of him, the pressure is overwhelming; however, when he tries to give himself a break by studying less, he exposes himself to the shame of a poor performance. Ultimately, he counsels himself and vows to work sensibly while also prioritizing his mental health. To demonstrate the development of this skill, over the Christmas break he balances both his studying and family time, but he also allows himself to cram when he needs to.

A major event of these chapters is the Incident, which follows the students of Section 2 throughout the rest of their first-year education. Perini is usually harsh, but his uncharacteristic rudeness to Mooney and the other students causes him to lose the students’ respect, and they band together to fight back against their mistreatment. This incident illustrates the unspoken contract underlying the often-adversarial relationships between students and professors: Students sometimes resent Perini’s harshness, but they respect him for it so long as he treats them with respect. The moment he behaves disrespectfully, the students’ perception of him shifts. Rather than accepting him as a demanding mentor, they reject him as a bully. Turow describes the protest as novel, since “organized rebellion by a first-year section was virtually unheard of at Harvard Law School” (138). Although the students understand the specifics of the incident concern only Mooney and Perini, they also know that any of them could’ve been the victim, so they feel emboldened to protest, even as supporters dwindle. Tensions in the Contracts classroom grow, though Perini tries to reign himself in and move past it, but when information about the Incident and criticisms of Perini become public, many supporters of the original letter, including Turow, feel guilty for pressing the issue. The Incident influences not only the students’ behavior in the future, but also influences the professors, as they understand the power the students can wield in return to hurt their reputations.

With the threat of exams and grades looming—as well as the prospect of making the Review—Turow senses a reserved but strong atmosphere of competition among his classmates. Looking back, Turow uses this competitive atmosphere to explore The Link Between Competitive Ambition and Identity. Turow points out a cultural paradox within the student body: All the students are obsessed with rising to the top of the school’s competitive hierarchy, but no one wants to be seen as trying too hard. A complex performance emerges, in which students strive to be the best while hiding both the effort they put into their courses and the pride they take in their success. Despite the pressure to avoid appearing arrogant or overeager, students find that academic excellence is one of the few ways to claim an individual identity in a system that values measurable academic performance almost to the exclusion of all else. 

In such a large classroom, students feel like they become little more than numbers: “For many of us, then, the feeling had grown pronounced of being faceless, lost in the mob—and the only kind of distinction available was to be known as good, bright, quick, adept with the law” (104). Other kinds of distinction—being funny, or kind, or creative—are not available because the school environment offers no space in which to develop them. Students thus speak up in class both to prove themselves and to regain a sense of individual identity. Observers evaluate one another’s performances and take hints for themselves as to whether they are doing enough or need to be doing more to surpass each other. The competitiveness of the class elicits reactions of envy and loathing, especially toward those snidely nicknamed the “stars” who frequently interact positively with professors. Turow uses the example of Sandy Stern breaking the cardinal rule of not doing outside research to show the lengths to which the students will go to stay ahead. Sandy consults external sources when reading about the day’s case, and though the other students initially hiss this exertion, they too begin consulting historical records and legal scholarship to keep pace: “Many people felt a new pressure to consult sources other than the casebook, and to put even more time into study” (106). Such pressures destroy work-life balance, and students begin to build their entire identities around their studies.

The frenzy of trying to learn the language of law and to keep up with class reading gets exchanged for the frenzy of exam season, developing the theme The Psychological and Physical Stress in Rigorous Academic Programs. Turow watches as his classmates wear themselves thin from study, and he hears reports of the extreme lengths some of the students in the dorms are going through to master the course material: “The students who lived in the on-campus dorms reported that people were running up and down the hallways, shouting questions to each other, at all hours, night and day” (156). Turow highlights the additional pressures from his study group due to the Criminal Law course outline project. The outline is meant to help make sense of the course’s overall concepts and distill the most important information, but Turow thinks the scale of the project—due to Stephen’s strict standards—is greater than what will be useful in the exam. The outline compounds the normal stress of exams and causes in-fighting in the study group, leading the members to accuse each other of slacking off. Turow’s restless night before his first exam also exemplifies both the physical and emotional toll of facing the law exam. He resorts to mixing sleeping pills and alcohol to try to sleep, and even “began to flail at the mattress” (167) to get rid of the anxious feelings. When exams are over, Turow can’t feel fully relieved because the sheer exhaustion he experiences leaves him too wasted for anything other than numbness.

The other emotion Turow feels after exams is a nagging sense of disappointment. Compared to the extreme preparations, the exams were relatively succinct—only three or four questions each. Turow describes the exams as “quick-draw contests” (172) that hardly evaluate a student’s cumulative knowledge of the course. Some teachers try to mitigate this problem with the eight-hour take-home exam, but Turow still finds himself unable to outline a coherent, thorough answer for all the questions in the short amount of time. Turow also criticizes the exam structure, which he sees as one of The Weaknesses of Traditional Legal Education. Rather than testing the more abstract, higher-concept discussions that were had in class, the standard “issue spotter” exam focuses on identifying rules, which students hadn’t been asked to do throughout the year. Turow finds this to be a strange disconnect between the class content and exams, especially when so much weight is given to the exam for determining a student’s grade. Turow offers a suggestion to mitigate this issue: more assignments and tests that evaluate students throughout the term. To Turow, this will not only alleviate the pressures of exam season, but will also allow for a diversity of topics to be tested.