You remember the Golden Rule, as your mother taught you on her knee:  He who has the gold, rules.  What?  Do unto others?  No, that’s the golden rule for losers.  Just ask David Friedman’s law student.

My student evaluations for an upper-level class arrived last week in my mailbox.  The evals were benign and unremarkable with two exceptions.  One student wrote, “Nothing to improve, except for clothing.” That’s feedback I can act on.  I can change the outside easily. Men’s Wearhouse, here I come.

One student refused to dignify the front page of the evaluation with any markings, except for the word “OVER ->” On the back, the student wrote “WE PAY YOU. YOU DON’T PAY US.”

The birth of the law student tea party?  Consumerism taken to the extreme?  Or perhaps its the Slackoisie view of the world, that education, like the purchase of a third generation iPad, is cash and carry.  And this law student will soon become a lawyer.

If you pay to attend my school and allocate your time toward my class, you have to follow my [very reasonable] rules to earn credit.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Well, that’s obvious.” It’s not obvious to all students. Why is that? We can play the old “it’s generational” song on our violins because we know the tune well, but I think students today consume all services differently.

I suspect he’s right, that there is a very different attitude of students as consumers.  But then, we called our professors “Professor” when I went to law school.  We knew they had first names, but had no use for the knowledge.  If we had a question, we stood outside their door at office hours.  We did not know their email address.  There was no such thing as an email address at the time.  We politely inquired whether we could speak with them, lest they scream at us to go away from their door.  And we prayed our question wasn’t too stupid, or they screamed at us that we were too stupid to ever become a lawyer.

It’s can’t be chalked up so neatly, however, to consumer trends of youth.  Missing is the element of respect toward someone who has obtained a degree of knowledge to which they aspire.  Missing is that recognition that they are in law school by their grace and a low draft number.  Missing is the basic comprehension that tuition is not the same as buying songs off iTunes or Juicy flip-flops. 

Friedman is obviously bothered by this response, enough so that he wrote about it.  But not enough to come clean, apparently.  He still finds a way to trivialize the problem, despite being bugged by it.  He can’t bring himself to say that to a generation weaned on narcissism, they are always doing you a favor. 

The evaluation form is terrifying, as it reveals the internal workings of a mind that will soon be responsible for thinking of resolving the legal problems of others.  Will this mind contort its responsibility into an obligation the client has to the lawyer?  Will this mind rationalize its failure, neglect, incompetence elsewhere, as it did here to the professor?  This response doesn’t reflect the mind that should be allowed such an important responsibility. 

Doesn’t Friedman worry about this?  As a lawprof, does he have a responsibility to weed out those who should not be allowed to hold such awesome responsibility?  Certainly, he can’t think that this attitude represents the makings of a good and decent lawyer.  Yet he makes no mention of the need to identify this bad seed and yank him out before he infects others.  Or is it too late, since this is a reflection of students in general, and not merely one bad student.

If I were a lawprof, this would concern me greatly.  Not about the student, but about those who could be harmed by the student.  It’s hard enough to deal with an unethical lawyer, one whose moral compass and world view are so badly askew that they can’t be trusted with the lives of clients.  Shouldn’t the lawprof, and law school, be alarmed and identify this person before he harms people?

Oh, but that would mean that they wouldn’t get his tuition.  Well, he’ll be interviewed before admission.  If they have a problem with him, they can always deny him a ticket.  In the meantime, the law school can continue to cash his tuition checks with a clear conscience, knowing that there’s someone else down the road upon whom it can dump the responsibility.

The Golden Rule.  It’s alive and well.