I think understanding Tupac’s life experience and poetry could be very valuable to lawyers. The arts offer us windows to different perspectives, making us more empathetic if we are willing to learn and willing to feel. Empathy is a critical quality for lawyers to have, though it is rarely treated as such in the legal profession. All of Tupac’s poems have the potential to deepen a person’s empathy, but the ones in which he directly addresses systemic injustice are especially important for lawyers to read. As lawyers, we have a level of power in our country’s injustice system, and we have a responsibility to understand and care about how our work impacts people. We can learn about systemic oppression from reading newspaper articles and academic papers. However, Tupac’s poetry brings us raw emotion, and raw emotion brings us much closer to reality.
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