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Lawyering In The State Of Nature: Instinct And Automaticity In Legal Problem Solving , Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

This article explains why lawyers do not think or talk like other people, how they got this way, and why this is both a good thing and a bad thing. I have watched hundreds of law students leave their old ways of thinking and talking behind and begin to sound like lawyers. One marker of the progress from lay person to lawyer is the emergence of the ability to tell a coherent fact and law story about a new legal problem. I have sometimes celebrated this professional progress and sometimes lamented the loss of common sense, but my lawyerly analysis …