Also eels, skinks, glass lizards, slow worms, and caecilians.
I’m sorry Miss Jackman, I am four eels.*
Law student gossip mills both domestic and abroad, unimpeachably reliable online sources (lawstudents.ca), and word on the (Bay) Street agree—U of T Law is full of snakes. No other Canadian law school is as infamous for the integrity, or lack thereof, of its student body. U of T law students are rumoured to tear pages out of textbooks, take in-firms for jobs they don’t want to deprive other candidates of the chance, and deliberately spread misinformation. Within every joke there is a kernel of truth and this is said kernel: the Jackman Law Building is infested with cold-blooded, venomous, literal snakes. I personally exhibit many typical traits: I yoked academic high-performance to my fundamental sense of self. I pursue HHs like my life depends on it. And I am a legally incorporated person made up of four ectothermic, venomous, cerebral cortex-deficient moray eels. (Part of the human empathy instinct is based in the cerebral cortex’s supramarginal gyrus. The cerebral cortex is notedly underdeveloped in eels and other fish).
It’s about time I said what everyone knows to be true. UofT Law is full of fellow snake and snake-adjacent high-performers sucking up all the jobs, the grades, and the extra-curricular positions with our pharyngeal jaws. My identity as four eels in a human suit has allowed me to succeed personally and professionally, at…
INTERVIEWS
The pressure-cooker environment of the law school, the deep financial burden of tuition, and the impending spectre of another recession pushes many people into the most high-strung versions of themselves during the recruits. I, on the other hand, do not falter. I lack a prefrontal cortex to process complex anxiety-inducing stimuli (a crucial neurological component of anxiety is the input of complex sensory and cognitive information into deeper brain structures responsible for primal fear responses), and hence have never frozen in an interview, gaffed, or hesitated. In fact, I have never felt any anxiety in my life, ever. Plus, as an eel-identifying person in a snake-identifying majority profession, I score major diversity points with recruiters.
LANDING JOBS
I have already accepted four 2020 summer associate positions (one for each eel), and I am holding onto an additional 35 offers. This has the benefit of denying 35 worthy candidates the spots while, at the same time, holding onto just enough to secure positions for an entire hypothetical brood of elvers. I feel no loyalty to anyone in a position of job uncertainty, just as I feel no loyalty to any of these firms. I am using the firms strategically as launchpads (into the Hudson River, to pursue my ten-year plan of making partner in The Sargasso Sea LLP).
ACADEMICS
Every map, course summary, past exam, or set of notes I’ve ever sent to a colleague or junior has been injected liberally with deliberate legal errors to undermine students’ understanding, destroy their academic career, and grease my slippery body to straight-HH success. I also like to take all the books out of the course reserve section at peak hours, and cram them full of unfertilized eel eggs.
*Liberties taken with the gender of our law school. ‘Miss’ accords better with my desire to promote genuine affirmative action, and to follow the primary source. I realize it is Mr. Jackman, named after one of the greatest living minds found in all common law jurisdictions, Hugh Jackman.
