Much of the scholarship on legal education has sought to articulate how professional training in law school reproduces dominant ideas about existing social relations. Several researchers have been occupied with the power of the capitalist marketplace and the expansion of large law firms in relation to the idealism of law students. Not surprisingly, much of this research tends to focus on the fate of public interest idealism in law school. Missing from much of this work is a systematic analysis of how social class privilege, not just professional dominance, is reproduced within professional socialization. While the reproduction of social class privilege is implicit in much of the work on professional socialization, including my own, the bulk of this work has not been as attentive to the subject of social class reproduction as it perhaps could have. Herein lie the contributions of Debra Schleef's new book on professional socialization in law school and business school. In this book, Schleef presents an analysis of the formation of elites in which she investigates how these “elites-in-training contest, rationalize, and ultimately enthusiastically embrace their dominant positions in society” (p. 4).
Data for Schleef's study are drawn from randomly selected law and business students entering “Graham University” (a large elite and highly selective private university) in 1992. Interviews were conducted with 37 law students and 42 business students during their first year. Eighty-five percent of these respondents were re-interviewed in their second year of training. She also interviewed each of the deans and engaged in participant-observation of the “formal and informal educational processes” over the course of four years. In addition, Schleef distributed a survey to her sample in 2000, receiving completed questionnaires from 82 percent of her total sample. This follow-up survey collected data on job history, current employment, occupational goals, and marital status. Using these data, Schleef seeks to illuminate how the habitus of elite professional education contributes to the reproduction of social class privilege.
As Schleef illustrates, student motivations for entering Graham reflect their elite social class background. A significant number of the students in Schleef's study indicate being from the upper-middle or upper classes. She finds that students came to Graham primarily by default, not because they had a commitment to law or business but because of the cultural and social capital available through their entering an elite profession. As she notes, what appeared to students as a defaulted decision actually translates into class continuity.
This social class privilege is also articulated in the expression of collective eminence among students that they are able to surmount the challenges and rigors associated with this elite academic environment (Reference Granfield and KoenigGranfield & Koenig 1992a). While most of these law and business students experienced some degree of anticipatory socialization related to the “horrors” of attending the school, Schleef suggests that such experiences actually serve to solidify elite social class status by reinforcing an ideology of meritocracy. By constructing a “worst-case scenario” about the challenges of professional education at Graham and then overcoming them, students come to accept the legitimacy of their own elite status without necessarily seeing their educational and future occupational achievements as being largely a function of their class privilege.
However, part of elite training is to develop a consciousness that students have not really bought into the goals and values communicated through their elite educational experience. Schleef finds that elite law and business students practice forms of ritual resistance to avoid identifying too closely with the class-based values of the university and their training. Students frequently claim that they are not learning anything, that grades are of little importance, and that the environment is not characterized by intense competition, engendering in students an esprit de corps that is exhibited among the social elite. The resulting “surface cynicism” serves as a form of resistance that “allows students to critique certain elements of professional schooling without examining the other legitimizing elements of professional ideology” and, presumably, their own privileged position within the social hierarchy (p. 90). This symbolic trashing of their professional socialization cultivates an identity that allows them to believe that they are rejecting the image of themselves as corporate tools while simultaneously preparing themselves for exactly that eventuality.
Another trait of elite socialization in law and business, as Schleef argues, is the adoption of norms regarding social responsibility. However, as Schleef illustrates, students develop a “reasonable” definition of social responsibility, including taking on public service causes only when time and resources permit, compartmentalizing normal work and one's public service, and redefining responsibility as any action that is not irresponsible. The establishment of professional monopoly derives not only from reliance on specialized knowledge and collegial controls, but also from invocations to contribute to the public good (Reference AbbottAbbott 1982). As Schleef illustrates, part of the socialization into the professions, especially at the higher echelons, involves learning to maintain status while serving the needs of others. However, much of this public service ideology amounts to little more than rhetoric, as there is scant attention given to discussions of public service, and ethics and ethical dilemmas associated with practice are largely ignored. Ultimately, as Schleef contends, among elites, the vocabulary of public service and ethical responsibility is more important than its actual practice.
Related to the rhetoric surrounding social responsibility is the discourse on jobs. Not unlike the elite lawyers I studied at Harvard Law School, Schleef finds that law and business students at Graham similarly gravitate to the jobs of least resistance—those jobs in the elite sectors of law and business. What is perhaps most interesting about the socialization into elite jobs is that students construct elaborate narratives that justify taking the path of least resistance. Keeping options open, paying off student loans, the belief that “everyone is doing it,” presenting an image of not being motivated by money, and the sense of being “helpless” in finding any other job but those within the elite hierarchy are all forms of ideological work that channeled students into elite jobs.
In the end, hierarchy is preserved. As Schleef concludes, “[e]lite professional schools contribute to the maintenance of social inequality by solidifying and legitimating previous beliefs, by providing a better articulation of elite values, and by seriously prodding individuals in the right direction” (pp. 199–200). By examining the modes of resistance and accommodation in law and business schools, the author demonstrates the daily practices of elite social reproduction. These students are not so much learning a career as much as they are learning and consolidating their place at the top of the status hierarchy. Indeed, the power of elite socialization is that students come away from the experience feeling as though they have learned very little, that they have become more socially progressive in their values, and that they have not and will not become bureaucratic drones or capitalist tools (Reference Granfield and KoenigGranfield & Koenig 1992b).
The value of Schleef's work lies not only in the fact that she focuses on the identity transformation of elite students more generally and not just those with public interest orientations, but also through her close analysis of the day-to-day socialization experience of elites. She provides data that convincingly demonstrate that elite socialization is patterned and frequently imperceptible, so much so that those receiving its benefits are largely unaware of its power.
