They have drama. They have breakdowns. Law school and reality TV already have some similarities. But what if law school was a reality TV series? Enter Law School: Textbooks, Tears and Trauma.
In reality shows, there’s always one person who looks bad due to editing (or so they claim). The reality villain. The antagonist. The one that people love to hate. In Textbooks, Tears and Trauma, it would be a tough call. It might be a lecturer who only gives generic ‘refer to page 834’ answers to everything, or the one who *gasp* refuses to give any hints about the final exam. Or maybe the villain would be one of those students who is so dead set against helping anyone else that they even hide textbooks in the library. Oh the textbooks.
And every reality TV show needs breakdowns. At least there’s no shortage of those at law school! The student that *only* got a distinction for contracts? Breakdown. The student that finally passed Contracts? Happy breakdown, with undertones of anger towards distinction student. Six thousand words due in three days? Breakdown. The student who got three clerkship offers and doesn’t know which one to accept? Breakdown. Campus café(s) closed? Mass hysteria. (On a side note, spare a thought for those of us at small unis that only have one café!).
Of course we also need the ‘weird guy’ (or girl) who, once the series is dead and buried, goes on to do something completely unexpected, in this case, leave all traces of his (or her) law degree behind to become a misunderstood artist.
There would need to be romance, too. Maybe even a forbidden one, like *gasp* a first year and fourth year. And if the plot was starting to get boring and everything was going along too smoothly, BAM, the producers would ensure the uni’s WiFi went down or that the cafes closed (see above).
The central plot would of course have to revolve around clerkship offers, with a peppering of assignments, lectures and bad law school fashion. And there would have to be at least one law school function, like a ball. A notable guest speaker would have to come along (perhaps Michael Kirby?) and everything that could possibly go wrong would.
While we would all cringe and never admit to watching it, it would be a guilty pleasure and the high ratings would ensure it came back for a second (albeit inferior) series that we’d still guiltily lap up.
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