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34 J. C.R. & Econ. Dev. 151 (2021)
How to Look like a Lawyer

handle is hein.journals/sjjlc34 and id is 163 raw text is: HOW TO LOOK LIKE A LAWYER ANN JULIAN01 Law schools often claim that they are teaching students how to think like a lawyer. What is less touted, however, is that students are learning how to look like a lawyer. They receive this message from multiple sources (faculty, alumni, peers, the career office) concerning a variety of situations: class, interviews, moot court, trial team, symposia and con- ferences. For law students who are first generation, these sources may be the only avenue (apart from the entertainment industry) of deter- mining how to look like a lawyer. For law students who are transgender or gender non-binary, dress code advice dispensed along men/women categories reinforces that they are outside of the typical framework. After discussing the role of attire in joining a community, I turn spe- cifically to the concerns of law students of what to wear. Are they re- quired to wear certain clothes? I review the formal dress codes (or lack thereof) of over 100 law schools and summarize the findings. Focusing on Title IX,2 I discuss the possibility for litigation as a method to chal- lenge dress codes. After concluding that litigation, at law schools, is an unlikely source of change, I then describe the unofficial, informal advice given by career offices. Finally, I conclude with the personal experiences of law students and graduates to conclude that many of us in the legal academy should take a moment to consider what messages we are send- ing about how to look like a lawyer. Dress codes have been increasingly in the news, often around prom season.3 Most commonly, these stories involve issues at middle schools 1 * Professor of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Many, many, MANY thanks to Abigail Wilson, Class of 2020, for her outstanding work reviewing the websites of 103 law schools, among other research, and to Hannah Schroer, Class of 2021, for her comprehensive work gathering academic sources. This essay is one part of an ongoing project to discuss dress codes in schools at a variety of levels in light of shifting fashions and developing legal frameworks. 2 See infra Section The Law and discussion of Title IX. 3 See Nadra Nittle, An Alabama Girl Had to Fight Her School to Wear a Tuxedo to Prom, RACKED (May 22, 2018, 9:00 A.M.), https://www.racked.com/2018/5/22/17377734/alabama-girl-fight- school-tuxedo-prom-splc. One commentator has referred to a pervasive panic over dress in high schools throughout the United States. Shauna Pomerantz, Cleavage in a Tank Top: Bodily Prohibition and the Discourses of School Dress Codes, 53 ALTA. J. EDUc. REs. 373, 373 (2007). 151

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