2024: A Space Trilogy―Part III

A Hero’s Journey?

“Gattaca” (1997)

Vincent Freemen: For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of going into space.

Head janitor at Gattaca: What about you, Your Majesty, you dreaming of space? Come here [hands Vincent a bucket of spray bottles] you can start by cleaning this space right here.

Genetic profile of Vincent Freemen

Neurological condition―60% probability

Manic depression―42% probability

Attention deficit disorder―89% probability

Heart disorder―99% probability

Early fatal potential/life expectancy―30.2 years

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What if it were all centrally planned and engineered? Imagine some social architect who comes up with a proposal for who should work in a futuristic society’s “legal profession.” Who gets placed into the upper tier of those who work with society’s laws and get to resolve disputes under those rules?

In terms of talent and skill, the architect decides that we should have citizens with high competence in reading, writing, and logical reasoning. In particular, the top tier should demonstrate proficiency wending through boring, arcane, and even contradictory material. The architect wants those who are undeterred and maybe even inspired by towering levels of tedium and esoterica. And those who can explain the key points well are especially prized.

In terms of personality and temperament, the architect demands those with a substantial propensity for fear of failure, insecurity, risk aversion, material motivation, feelings of inferiority and imposterism, obsessiveness, social anxiety, substance abuse, and depression. And those who remain metronomically productive notwithstanding those traits are especially prized, as are those who exhibit sheepish charisma leveraged from or in spite of those flaws.

It’s all presented to some central committee for review. And the chairperson queries the architect:

I get the reading, writing, reasoning, and exposition skills, and I can see where a certain amount of competitiveness, even if categorized as fear of failure, is desirable. Same with the obsessiveness if it is care and attention to detail. And we don’t want weirdo revolutionaries. Stability is good. But what’s with this other stuff? Is it important to have panicky, insecure depressives with tendencies toward drug and alcohol problems? That doesn’t make much sense.

The architect responds:

I patterned this after the #1 most powerful, successful rule-of-law democratic republic in the history of civilization. I can only imagine what it was like at #4, much less 8, 15, 16, 23, or 42.

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I had never seen the movie “Gattaca.” I watched it after I offered up to AI various thoughts I had about the legal profession and requested a sci-fi movie that could illustrate my points. (It’s like using a rhyming dictionary to write songs, which Bruce Springsteen admitted to for “Blinded By The Light.”) I found “Gattaca” an incredibly insightful suggestion, just not for the reasons AI offered.

I don’t see oppressive, conformist villains or a heavy-handed master class. To me, anyway, legal culture is not an actively evil empire (banality of evil, perhaps). But these things are in the eye of the beholder. George Lucas’s poor dad just wanted him to return home to Modesto to run the family’s hardware store, and years later we got a super-powered “dark father” asking his very talented dreamer of a lost son to rule the galaxy with him―or die.

Just a hardware store in Modesto, it was. Just a hardware store.

What so struck me in “Gattaca” was the panicky, ambitious, neurotic need to fit in and not be found out. All while knowing―or thinking you know―that you don’t fit in. Take a coarse stone and scrub, scrub, scrub off anything that would reveal you. Something as small as an eyelash could do you in.

And so we replicate what’s safe, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Legal writing today―briefs, memos, mediation statements, etc.―looks about the same as when I started, notwithstanding insane technological advancement and the devastating, large-scale, eyeball-activation evidence from the Internet and social media.

And to my mind, the stubbornness of legal style is mostly because of the temperament and personality of lawyers as tim’rous beasties. I say that as one of them. And some of those timorous types can get beasty indeed to show how well they belong. Scrub, scrub, scrub.

If we saw them clawing their forearms to the point of bleeding, we’d think they needed help. But if they do it to legal documents, we applaud all those scratchy, non-brief-improving, traditional-style-imposing billable hours. (And someone somewhere says that all that maniacal insistence upon self-defeating typographic choices shows that so-and-so is a “great writer.” As if mere obsessiveness were beauty or eloquence.)

What exactly am I bemoaning? I’m bemoaning what Butterick systematically picks apart in the handed-down house style of the profession. I’m bemoaning the lack of creativity and innovation in general. I’m bemoaning the hostility toward even modest changes, or the corrosive conformism that snuffs them out.

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I can imagine several objections:

Professional tradition. Dude, handed-down style is like wearing a dark suit to court. Wear purple or a kilt if you want, but you’ll look like an idiot. There are norms and expectations. Didn’t you say ethos matters, i.e., being trust-worthy? And maybe in some cases we want to be sort of plain.

It’s the substance, stupid. Dude, as long as the thing looks “normal,” the substance is all that counts. And the substance has changed. It has gotten significantly more conversational and fun, just like judicial opinions. It’s not as stuffy as it used to be, and with the rise of textualism, it’s a lot more logical and coherent. The stuff that actually matters is better than ever.

This is just your own biases. Dude, you just want to impose the Butterick stuff no differently than others impose their aesthetic preferences. Tuh-MAY-toe, tuh-MAH-toe.

All of those seem hollow to me (though I agree that, at the highest levels, the substance has improved). The objections don’t defend the choices in the first instance or against any standard based upon readability, pleasure, or persuasiveness. The only potential exception would be the ethos point (don’t be so different that it hurts your trustworthiness), but there is a lot of room before that occurs if a brief is otherwise solid. And if it looks great and is super-readable, the substance will shine even more.

None of the objections can explain the disturbing conformity out there. Hundreds of briefs are filed every week that are so incredibly similar in their flawed choices, along with a stunning lack of filers trying anything even remotely creative or different. If it’s all just taste preferences, that’s impossibly uniform taste for the same crap. The objections don’t explain it. But I think what’s inside a lot of lawyers does.

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If I could revise “Gattaca” to make it an inspiring fable for the legal profession, I’d make it so that Vincent learns that there are lots of other “degenerates.” That he’s simply wrong about the others. There are nervous, neurotic fakers everywhere trying to conform. Even among the most tormenting. Perhaps especially among them. He’s not different, much less inferior, and it’s all going to be fine. Stop scrubbing yourself raw, try to be authentic, and good things will happen.

But maybe that is too much of a fairy tale. The profession abounds in anxious, conformist, emotional contagion. And unfortunately, there can be advantage in pointing out those risky non-conformists and warning of anyone doing something different. Not good for a hardware store, they are. Fit in Modesto, they do not.

I say this mostly for the up-and-comers, but I suppose there are also some middle-aged types walking grocery store aisles in their pajamas wondering what they can do. (Accipe ab eo qui scit.) There ought to be a hero’s journey in there somewhere. At least I hope there is. For the space cowboys and cowgirls. For those who look out to the stars and beyond legal Modesto. For the creatives and the brave. Cleaning up the space and getting to know and apply Typography for Lawyers is just shooting the womp rats. Much more is possible.

From where I sit, thinking about the newest lawyers, the price of complacency seems very high. If your special skill is reading dense texts and explaining them in a tired, boilerplate format, you might as well live on Alderaan. Because Generative AI is your planet killer.

So to the anxious dreamers I say, boldly go. Use the Force, and try to abide. I am on your side.