Legal Commentary

Every month our faculty sends around a report discussing the months? positive accomplishments.  I believe other law schools have a similar monthly report.  This recent accomplishment report is a really useful way to keep the faculty connected and let others know what conferences you?ve been speaking at, what law reviews you have published your most recent works in, and what other impressive things you have been up to.  This type of report isn?t always something that junior faculty look forward to.  It can actually be quite painful.  Memories of all of the rejections, the lack of any phone calls or visits, the month of loneliness of toiling in your office in obscurity all culminates with racking your brain to come up with something (anything!) noteworthy to tell your colleagues.

On a particularly bad month, after being rejected by two symposiums in one week (with one of them stating that her near complete article was ?in too early a stage? for their conference), my sister used this moment to share this ?unreported accomplishment? with me.  In the spirit of this excellent idea, I?ve collected some of experiences from other colleagues at various law schools, and came up with the following list of anonymous Unreported Accomplishments:

* Taught an entire [ x ] Law class with his fly down.

*In her first semester teaching, caught her high heel on a step and fell down on her face in front of her class, not to be faced with student laughter, (which may have actually helped diffuse the situation) but with many worried faces.

*Overheard student trashing him after class.  Intersected with student moments later.  Indescribably awkward conversation ensues, during which all parties were excruciatingly aware of what just happened.

*In an evaluation, a student said: ?[X law school] should pay for him to go practice law for a year so he knows what he?s talking about!?

*After student slipped a note under her closed door, got up to open the door. After inviting the student to come in, realized that the note was supposed to be an ?anonymous? one that included a laundry list of problems that a large group of students had with her teaching.

*Student in her office trying to write down her explanation to his question complained that he has a hard time keeping up. Jokingly tells student that maybe he needs to type a little faster. In response student lifts up his right hand, which is missing a finger and explains that he would type faster if only. . .

*Heard a loud g-chat message sound in class and rebuked the 70+ person class for using internet in violation of school policy to be quickly corrected by students that the noise had come from his computer and learned that someone had actually g-chatted him during class.

*Presented his paper entitled ?x, y, and z? at ?x symposium/forum? and received very helpful feedback, including ?I couldn't get through the first few pages of your article.  You should consider starting from scratch.?

Many of these experiences above have never been shared with colleagues out of pure fear and utter embarrassment.  I believe that sharing our ?Unreported Accomplishments? may actually be an excellent way to laugh at ourselves and build camaraderie and trust among colleagues.  But even if we never share our Unreported Accomplishments, it may help us to know that we are not alone when we completely misstate a holding in a case or botch the answer to a question and we can collectively know that it could definitely have been worse.