Affect and Legal Education: Emotion in Learning and Teaching the Law edited by Paul Maharg and Caroline Maughan

• Date: 01 January 2012
• Author: Lawrence Donnelly, Manager, Public Interest Law Alliance

AFFECT AND LEGAL EDUCATI ON :

EMOTION IN LEARNING AND TEACHING

THE LAW

ED ITED BY

PA U L M AHAR G AND CAR OLIN E MA UG HAN

Ashgate, November 2011

ISBN 978–1–4094–1026–3

Lawrence Donnelly*

Lawyers’ work a t its best is ardu ous. Its intellectual content i s

challenging, for lawyers contend with the rule structures that regulate

the affairs of our civilization, its citizens and the market. Though less

recognized, the emotional content of law work is at least as taxing as

the cerebral, because lawyers deal with the effects of law on peoples’

lives. At times, the effect of law is to bring joy—as with the completion

of a transaction, a vindication of rights or giving voice to the muted.

Yet law is commonly engaged not with beauty, rather with problems

caused by misunderstand ing, greed and fear. Time and aga in, the

effects of the law on peoples’ lives are troubling, grief-filled or violent.

Law students must learn to handle this grief and joy, the emotional

and rational aspects of lawyers’ work. They have an uphill battle.

Research is revealing that lawyers are particularly prone to depression,

addiction and emotio nal distress. Legal edu cation, in fact, may be

deleterious to the emotional well-being of law students and lawyers. It

seems likely that legal education’s emphasis on mastery of the rational

and its avoidance of emotions such as grief and joy are related to the

finding that lawyers are under stress.1

This introduction to an American law review article written in 2005

accurately reflects my own general thinking on th e topic considered in a

new book, Affect and Legal Education: Emotion in Learning and Teaching

* BA, JD, Attorney at Law. Manager, Public Interest Law Alliance (www.pila.ie), Dublin,

Ireland. Lecturer and Director of C linical Le gal Educat ion (on leave September

2010–September 2012), School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway.

1 Ann Juergens, “Practicing What We Teach: The Importance of Emotion and Community

Connection in Law Teaching,” 11 (2005) Clinical Law Review 413, pp.413–414

(internal citations omitted)

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