There are many aspiring law students at UVA and at universities around the nation. Some of these students have opportunities to engage with their aspirations directly during their undergraduate careers through established pre-law programs. While UVA is home to a sizable number of pre-law students, however, the University offers no established curriculum for the purpose of preparing undergraduates for law school. As a result, most students at UVA who believe they want to pursue law may, in fact, be uninformed about what law school really entails, even though most law schools in the United States have the same first-year curriculum. To remedy this fact, the Blue Ridge Center has begun bringing speakers to Grounds to discuss each of the primary topics of first-year law school classes. After attending one such event, I discovered that working with even the most seemingly uninteresting parts of law can be equally as fascinating as being a trial attorney.
When undergraduate students think about becoming a lawyer, their perceptions of law may be influenced by popular television shows such as Suits. However, there are many facets of the law that one must be familiar with in order to earn a Juris Doctor degree, most of which are not as exciting as one might think. In fact, some aspects of the law are better as a result of their mundanity. For instance, legal contracts are often considered to be boring pieces of paper that we must sign to rent an apartment or to get a job, but they are an integral part of the law. Without contracts, legal deals between two individuals would not be possible in most cases. Most importantly, though, a good contract is a boring one. Still, I believe contracts represent one of the most intriguing parts of law.
In late September, the Blue Ridge Center hosted Cliff Iler, Senior Assistant Attorney General at UVA, for its first event on first-year law school course topics. Iler served in private practice for 16 years before entering higher education law, first at the University of Kentucky and then here at UVA. A notably tall man, Iler introduced himself by preemptively addressing the “most important question” he regularly gets from people, the answer to which is that he is 6’6” and wears a size 15 shoe. Iler then spoke about why, despite being perceived as boring, contracts introduce a unique facet of the legal system that is applicable in everyday scenarios. According to Iler, there are clear advantages to contracts being written, rather than purely verbal, because it is easier to determine at what point and how a contract was broken if it has been well documented in concrete language. If someone breaks a written contract and there is blatant evidence of this based on the language of what they signed, they can be taken to court for civil procedure by the entity with whom they signed the contract. This applies even to a proposed contract that has been amended by a counteroffer—if this counteroffer is accepted, it is the same as signing a contract with the suggested changes.
As such, writing a contract is similar to writing a law, albeit a law that applies only to the parties who agree to it. Signing a contract is like signing up to be a subject of this unique type of law. I believe that many aspiring law students would be vastly more interested in something like contract law with the true scope of its implications in mind.
Moreover, there is something philosophical about contracts that Iler did not as pointedly address—the idea of implied contracts. For instance, when we pay at a coffee shop, there is bound to be a question of how much we want to leave as a tip. Despite the pushiness of these machines, there is no contract here, but there are social expectations. I believe another overlooked aspect of studying law is determining where intuitive lines such as this one can be drawn, and in which social cases legal procedures are staunchly unnecessary. For Iler, social cases such as offering a reward for anyone who retrieves a lost dog enter two parties into a type of ambiguous contract, whereby the person who finds the dog can reasonably expect the reward as promised. However, if there is no definitive contract at play, the details of this situation can quickly become skeptical insofar as the law upholds a reasonable social expectation. It is up to those who love learning about how law really works to decide how to handle cases such as these, and contract breaks are one example in which ambiguities in the language or nature of the contract can cause tricky–and exciting–lawsuits.
Iler continued by talking about the many examples of legal contracts that fulfill social expectations regarding the University’s continued improvement and expansion. Construction, as all students are sure to have seen, is a prime example of this. Other examples of contracts that UVA is involved in include advertising for athletics, study abroad agreements (involving international law), and healthcare. Students themselves are also involved with many contracts; leases for apartments are familiar to many. These types of housing contracts often involve a security deposit that establishes a power dynamic, as the signer is already in some sort of financial deficit that is meant to assure that they will not break the contract before its term takes effect.
After attending this talk, I have come to conclude that contracts are, contrary to common perception, quite an interesting facet of law. We essentially have the power to create our own laws with others that are enforceable through civil litigation. This trust of power granted to us by the state makes for a complex society that operates smoothly, so long as every contract is taken seriously in terms of the power it creates. Therefore, the study of contracts is one that exemplifies how those on a pre-law track as an undergraduate have more to look forward to in law school than they might imagine.
The opinions expressed within this piece represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jefferson Independent.
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