Law School

Rio Lisboa and Law Faculties

By Jeffrey Harrison

I am not sure how to describe Rio Lisboa because what do you call a bakery, deli, grocery store, juice bar, snack bar, and outdoor café that never closes on a street in the Leblon section of Rio. What?s great about the RL is the constant feel of action, movement and goodwill. Grilled ham and cheese $3.00. Two eggs, $1.50. A complete roasted chicken cut up and packaged to take home $8. All that helps too. Bakers wrapping pastries in two layers of paper all tied up with string. Waitpeople moving in and out and around people as though they had done it eons. Smooth efficiency. No one seems to be trying but everything gets done. Unlike its closest counterparts in the US, No one seems stressed and no one is yelling.

No one ever appeared to be shirking at RL. If you were waiting at the pastry counter for a slice of the amazing Brazilian version of French toast, you did not wait for long. No one appeared to be too busy chatting it up with another worker to do his or her job. Professionalism. Yes, even Adrianna serving a $1.50 cup of coffee did it like it mattered to get it right. Frequent embracing between the workers and between the customers and workers. No sign of strife. I saw no hints that anyone was interested in anything other than doing his or her own job the best it could be down. Envy and efforts to undermine seemed not to exist. I could be way off but these seemed like secure happy people and, at what I assume were modest wages, they were not being paid to fake it.

This made me thing of the recent books and articles about happiness and about law schools as a place to work. Or put differently, what do Rio Lisboa, Denmark, and Iceland have in common that law schools generally do not. For one thing smallness. It is not smallness per se that counts but the sense that you are in control of what happens in your life and have a real input into more general policies. Knowing what to expect is important. Another thing is the absence of envy. No one worries that someone else is getting more than he or she deserves or that being a butt kisses pays off. A relative lack of a fear of failure. In Iceland, for example, according to one report it is acceptable to fail. It does not define a person more generally. At Rio Lisboa I am sure that if anyone dropped a dish or served the wrong dish both customers and coworkers would have simply smiled about it. At law schools I think people often take pleasure in the bad luck of others.

Full post as published by Class Bias in Higher Education on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).