Educating Students About the Emotional Factors That Can Undermine Their Analytical Thinking

Abstract

One of the quintessential lawyering skills we teach in law school is how to “think like a lawyer.” Traditionally, we have sought to teach this important skill by appealing almost exclusively to the analytical mind. Unfortunately, this strategy is based on a 19th Century understanding of the human brain that is both outdated and inherently flawed.

Modern neuroscience reveals that the ideal of a dispassionate analytical mind untainted by emotions and personal biases is a fallacy. In fact, the limbic system (the “emotional” brain) is so intertwined with the neo-cortex (the “thinking” brain) that we literally cannot “think” without its influence. However, the emotional brain is not only overly simplistic in how it views the world (black/white; right/wrong; good/bad), but also self-confirming (discounting evidence that suggests our initial instincts might be wrong, and over-emphasizing “evidence” that proves we’re right). Left unexamined, the emotional brain’s pre-conscious agenda often subverts the thinking brain, offering tainted justifications and biased rationalizations to appease the thinking brain’s need for logic. As a result, students often become enmeshed in viewing legal problems through a myopic lens that reflects their limited worldviews, leap (and cling) to often inaccurate conclusions, and have difficulty grasping the bigger picture. In short, all too many students lack the judgment and perspective that are a necessary foundation from which they can accurately evaluate the law and assess its impact on clients.

One reason students struggle is because poor judgment and a myopic perspective can’t be solved through the logic of the analytical mind. Instead, modern neuroscience suggests that such problems can be overcome only by first understanding, and then addressing, the hidden emotional biases and selective perceptions that are the root cause of the problem. Drawing on lessons from neuroscience and psychology, Legal Reasoning, Writing & Other Lawyering Skills seeks to reach first-year law students in a new way. This textbook aims to deepen students’ understanding of themselves and others, and of the emotional biases and filters that undermine their efforts to think clearly and to advise their future clients effectively. Sample Chapter 4 of the textbook, while written for law students, illustrates one way in which we as educators can expand our efforts to help students develop the judgment and perspective that are integral components of “thinking like a lawyer.” This paper is excerpted from Chapter 4 of Legal Reasoning, Writing, & Other Lawyering Skills (3d ed. 2011).