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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

49

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Intuition-a process of "rapid cognition" that offers foresight and helps with creative problem-solving-is a powerful tool that lawyers can use to inform strategic decisions, avoid ethical pitfalls, enhance communication, and increase career satisfaction. However, many law students come to law school after decades of being taught to trust only external sources-such as data and authority figures-and out of touch with their internal, intuitive resources. Law schools exacerbate this disconnect by prioritizing grades, awards, rankings, prestigious jobs, and other external sources of satisfaction and meaning. Indeed, the study of law is primarily the study of external sources of guidance, such as rules and standards articulated by various bodies. Even the study of ethics in law school often focuses mainly on ethical rules, rather than students' inner resources. In contrast, "[t]he intuitive mode is characterized by engagement of the will, involvement of the senses, receptivity, a quest for understanding or meaning, and a facilitative tension between subjective certainty and objective uncertainty." One important book on intuition in education posits that "every person has the ability to think intuitively and that intuition invariably yields truth." Another author suggests that the power of intuition "is not a gift given magically to a fortunate few," but instead "an ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves." Beyond legal education, educational theorists and scholars propose that intuition is a quality that can be nurtured and taught through various deliberate strategies, including intuitive arrangements of curriculum and instructional materials, acknowledging and discussing intuition in the classroom, and avoiding classroom dynamics that discourage students' internal wisdom by, for example, conveying that there is only one right answer, known to the teacher and to be discovered by the student.? This article will explore the meaning, applicability, and promise of intuition in the context of effective, ethical lawyering and propose that law schools can and should-teach students how to access their own internal guidance systems. Part I will define intuition and trace its history, as well as discuss its value to effective lawyering. Next, Part II explores the ways that Western culture and traditional legal education discourage and repress intuition. Finally, Part III proposes concrete ideas for teaching and supporting intuition in law school in an effort to help students become more ethical, more effective, and more satisfied lawyers.

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