Legal Issue Doesn’t Cow Prospective Law Students

The problem was a cow.

And students sitting in David Becker’s law class were giving it serious consideration.

You see, there was a hole in the fence, and four farmers were laying claim to her calf.

One farmer owned a pasture where the cow had grazed through the fence, another owned the bull that impregnated the cow, a third was the cow’s owner and the fourth owned the land where the calf had been born.

Who Owned the Calf?

Who owned the calf and how could you prove it?

Becker was looking for an answer from prospective students who had come to the all-day event called Law Day to get a taste of what life is like for students at Washington University School of Law.

If you have ever toyed with the idea of going to law school, consider this information from the St. Louis school.

--- Cost can be high, up to $25,000 a year to survive. Tuition per year is $10,500, books $1,000 and living costs for nine months about $13,000.

--- Most lawyers start their careers well in debt. “Sixty to 70% of our students receive some sort of aid,” said Annette Pederson, assistant dean.

--- For every hour spent in class, expect to spend three out of class studying.

--- Your grade-point average must be high--well above 3.0 (equivalent to a B on a 4.0 scale), and so must your score on the Law School Aptitude Test, known as the LSAT.

--- Competition is tough. “The pool of applicants is up 20% here, 16% nationally,” said Ron Van Fleet, director of admissions.

But those numbers didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of Karen Burr, who had come from Nashville to attend Law Day.

“I’ve had people tell me I looked like a lawyer,” said Burr, 33, “but that’s not important.

“I like to argue, take a position,” added Burr, a 1981 graduate of St. Louis University with a degree in medical records administration. “This is something I have always wanted to do.”

Her husband, a radiologist, is willing to relocate if the school she chooses is too far for her to commute.

Along with other prospective students, she learned that salaries from the 1986 Washington University law class ranged from $20,000 for a clerkship to $65,000 for a job in a New York law firm with a minimum of 100 attorneys.

Education costs can be considerably less at a state school than at Washington, Burr said. “At SIU (Carbondale), tuition is $3,000. It’s also easier to get in; the standards aren’t as high.”

Van Fleet said law schools are looking for students who had been out in the work force for a while.

“We want a diversity in the class,” Van Fleet said.

Marcia Montgomery, now a second-year law student, had been out of college 16 years, taught high school and raised three children before she entered law school. She was determined to do well among her younger classmates.

“They could think of me as an old lady, but not as a dumb old lady,” she told a group of hopefuls.

“We educate problem-solvers, communicators and leaders here,” Prof. E. Thomas Sullivan said. “We look at who wins and who loses and why. . . . You have to have a gift of speech and enjoy it. You have to learn to partake of the give and take.”

And what about the wayward calf?

Well, one student tentatively suggested, the calf and the cow should be tested to see if they matched genetically. Becker discarded the idea as taking too much time and asked the class to come up with a fair “cow rule.”

After several proposals and a roller-coaster ride through legal logic, a young lady who owned a farm came up with a simple answer. Prove ownership through the mother, she suggested. Tests weren’t needed, nor lassos.

“Follow the calf, and if it goes to its mother--which it naturally will do to nurse--then the calf belongs to the cow. And whoever owns the cow owns the calf.”

Becker smiled.