Law students’ past and its relevance for legal education

Abstract

In this paper we conduct a qualitative analysis of law students’ experiences with authorities when they were high school students. Through a psychoanalytical framework, we seek to understand the relational dynamics underlying those experiences and their possible impact in the construction of the law students’ «regulatory self», that is, in the way they live within regulatory systems. Then we explore the different manners in which that past could be present in the way law students live legal education and then their profession. Finally, we suggest diverse attitudes that law schools’ authorities, professors and students can develop in order to avoid authoritarian relational dynamics and to construct a «regulatory ethos» which can contribute to the growth of students’ «regulatory self».