Will We Ever Get the Gold Medal?

In our reading “Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy”, Kennedy talks about how professors in a law school are in a hierarchy. They constantly want to move up and they are always worried about the rankings of their schools. They are even willing to make sacrifices in order to move up in the rankings. Kennedy then talks about how it is like this as well for law students. They change the way they dress and act in order to succeed in law school. Preserving their class status becomes a high priority and they only want the best job they can get within the law field. Kennedy states that law teachers are willing to practice affirmative action when selecting which students to admit but are completely against it when hiring faculty; therefore, they are hypocrites when it comes to hiring possible competition. The law teachers get so involved in the competition, doing anything it might take, just to receive tenure which is the grand prize. Kennedy states “law schools are a good preview of what law firms will be like.”

I think Kennedy was correct when he made this statement. I also think it applies to many other companies. There is always competition between colleagues for the higher position and the higher salary and that’s the way it will always be. The competition begins before you even have the job because you’re competing against others who applied for the same position. Competition has always been a part of our lives since elementary school when you did a series of tests to get into the gifted program, and in middle school when you were put into different levels of math classes, and in high school when you applied to colleges. There will always be competition no matter where we go; we will always compete for the best class, the best college, the best job.