“I’m the child of immigrants, so they taught me important values such as working hard, being dependable, and resourcefulness.” This is how I answered firms when the inevitable “tell me about yourself” question came up. I know I am not the only one who frames part of my answer this way, an attempt to showcase that my background will make me a harder worker than others and provide value to the firm. Brown, Black, Asian—all marginalized peoples are situated as units of labour that will increase the surplus value for the firm because of our backgrounds. It is time we agree that this acceptance has not helped us and has only benefited the ingrained upper class of the profession.
As I enter my last year of law school, I am critically reflecting on all my experiences and the education I have received. Law school is sold to marginalized groups as providing the opportunity for tremendous social mobility and equipping us to advocate for the communities from which we hail. The latter, however, is an outright lie, and I think it’s time to question the role of marginalized groups in this profession and the impact it has on society.
Law students experience a bifurcation of being. We split ourselves into a unit of labour for the organizations we work in, and we also become members of the privileged ruling social class. We become both the base and the superstructure of society. This tension is what kills our ability to reform the profession into something progressive.
As units of labour, we continue to experience marginalization within firms. Marginalized people are only permitted to enter these environments because they do not ever question or disrupt the status quo. While more marginalized people might be employed on Bay Street than ever before, if we look at those who earn a coveted position in firm partnerships, we can clearly see it is still a group that does not reflect the overall diverse character of law firms. Entry-level employment does not mean anything—nothing has genuinely changed, and we continue to provide massive surplus value to those whose capital is invested into the firm.
The issue of identity politics also creeps into our place within the superstructure. The law has been structured in a way that depresses the workforce and increases the value of capital. Students work at immigration firms to help large organizations bring in workers through streams that place them into modern servitude. Criminal defence lawyers, much like social workers, benefit and exploit marginalized people who are criminalized and ordered to become productive members of society. Marginalized peoples carrying out this work obfuscate the systemic problems that exist within the legal system. Our participation in the legal profession is used to manufacture consent in which the legal profession continues to create downward pressure on marginalized peoples–does it matter what colour the oppressor is?
I think these issues start with the indoctrination we receive in law school. All our actions must be confined within the system that we seemingly want to reform, which creates an acceptance of the same systems that have previously oppressed us. We aren’t ever allowed to think radically within these walls—and we certainly aren’t allowed to act radically, either. Because we continue to engage with this legal system as authoritative, we fail to understand how we reproduce inequalities.
When we bring ourselves together as labourers and oppressors, we come to a crossroads. The system obviously rewards economic participation and is structured in such a way that we do not even realize we are at these crossroads; even when we do, many capitulate in the name of social mobility. When we have equity-seeking groups refraining from discussing the genocide in Gaza—solely to appease law firms—we have lost the plot. We are not even reading from our own scripts. The oppressive regime of law forces us to be silent to avoid reflecting on our identity beyond the surface.