Law school sets one upon a path, a journey that brings a new identity. When we take the path, talk about the journey, and discover an identity for ourselves, we become lawyers. The identity an education and training in law makes possible is as much social and political as it is personal and psychological.
Stories give meaning to common and shared experience.
A common motif found in the law school story told by students is the sense of solidarity experienced in the first months when the experience is new and there is a sense of togetherness. One element of the plot of the legal education story is how law school rites of passage induce a sense of community and togetherness. The law school story identifies us as a particular kind of public actor and connects disparate elements and fragments of a life into a meaningful, but incomplete and inadequately scripted plot. By seeing the story in what is happening, I begin to see what words mean, and what my self-composed life is all about. A life story can, even if it sometimes does not, embrace an identifiable theme.