Legal consciousness is the basis for the legal system; within the framework of legal consciousness are Before the Law, With the Law and Against the Law these concepts are represented within the story of these three women. The three women involved in this story all have the same problem with the principal of the school they work at, they are all being harassed mostly in the same way. The three women’s names are Alicia, Clara, and Bella; they all go about handling their similar situation differently. I came to see that each woman represented Before the Law, With the Law, and Against the Law. Alicia went about solving her problem Before the Law, Bella solved her problem Against the Law and Clara was With the Law. I will analyze each of their specific situations and explain how each is represented in each case. Firstly, Alicia has been a teacher for a couple of years and the assistant principal has being causing serious problems for her. I believe she went about handling her situation by using the Before the Law legal consciousness. I believe she represents the Before the Law legal consciousness because she follows the rules of the system, she collected her data and took notes about the situations that the assistant principle put her in. She very quietly started to find out how to go about filing a legal complaint about her colleague. She then learned all she can learn about how to go about the situation and waited for the best possible moment to file the complaint. Once she filed the complaint she got the outcome that she wanted when the assistant principle was suspended without pay for two years. I believe that Alicia represented before the Law legal consciousness because she followed the analytical framework for it. She represented Normativity because she was impartial in her criteria. She had a principle objective and stood by her decision by setting up a plan on how to go about filing a complaint and did not just go and file a complaint with no evidence or a weak case. She represented Constraint and Capacity by following all the rules and not straying from the correct procedure because she followed the legal systems’ rules she go the outcome she wanted which was the principal got suspended. If she did not follow the rules Alicia would of not got the response that she wanted due to the Constraint of Before the Law. The Time and Space that Alicia used was that she waited for the perfect time to file her complaint, which was when the assistant principle was going through the annual negotiations with the teacher’s union, which meant that he would be too busy to try and correctly go about his harassment charges. Bella had a similar situation but she went about it in a completely different manner. She was not as confident as Alicia with going about it by filing a complaint against the assistant principal. Bella wanted to take care of her situation herself and she asked the assistant principal to stop but he continued to harass her. After Bella met a women who quit because she was harassed by the assistant principal she had a change of mind and decided to take him to court and get justice for all of these women, she then spoke to her lawyer and waited for the court date. After she presented her case with the lawyer she waited for the results and still is waiting. Bella represents the Against the Law legal consciousness I believe because of the representation of time and space because she does not immediately go and press charges against the assistant principle but instead waits and gets a lawyer. In a way she is dragging her feet and hopes that the case works out because she got a lawyer who represents her. She represents normativity because at first she tries to avoid the situation by not pressing charges against the assistant principle. Constraint is involved in this because it is overwhelming in her everyday life and she tries to handle the situation for herself because she asked the assistant principle to stop but he did not stop. She then uses capacity by using the hierarchy of the legal system by getting a lawyer and letting him use his tactics to win her case. Clara disagreed with what Bella and Alicia have done and in fact calls them “suckers”. Clara has had this problem before she got to the school Alicia and Bella worked at. Her approach was that she would never file a complaint because it would not get anywhere. She has tried to file complaints in the past on other principals but her cases never turned out the way she liked it too. At this school she promised that things would be different and she would switch the roles and play a game against the assistant principle. She then took an approach by volunteering to do some extra work for him and waiting for the last possible minute to hand in the reports that she had to file. This drove the assistant principle crazy. He even filed a complaint against her and Clara just dragged the process out in order to drive him crazy which was the point because she figured if it drove him crazy he would be too busy to bug any other teachers. Clara represented the With the Law legal consciousness because of the way she went about taking it right to the assistant principal. She represented normativity because she tried to corrupt the assistant principals life when she put an ad out in the newspaper saying he was a local strip club looking for girls. This drove the assistant principle mad and made him kind of off guard to other situations. She has constraint for With the Law legal consciousness because she promised herself and the other teachers closure and used a non-legal form of behavior by taking on responsibilities that the assistant principal had but she did not do this in a timely manner she waited for the last possible moment to hand in the reports she had to file for him. Capacity in the With the Law legal consciousness was represented by playing the by the rules so the assistant principle could not fire her but did not do it in an orderly manner. She used a collective manner by driving him crazy in his life outside of the school. Her Time and Space use was a strategic use of time by taking her time by handing in her reports and making the assistant principle crazy to the point where he filed a complaint against Clara. This is one way to interpret the legal consciousness that was represented in Ewick and Silbey’s analytical framework. I personally do not think that this is a good way to analyze personal everyday life situations. I believe this because in the three stories I felt like you can argue the point for the With the Law and Against the Law legal consciousness because the lines get blurry. While somebody might be against the law and try to help the situation themselves they also might want to ask for advice from somebody such as in the case with Bellla. She tried to handle the situation herself but she could not so she had to go get help from a lawyer and take the assistant principal to court. Law is ubiquitous it is everywhere. You cannot avoid law no matter where you go. I also learned by looking at these stories that people really do go about handling situations differently and I think the best approach would have to be to blend With the Law and the Before the Law concepts. If you follow the rules and get as lawyer as a commodity I feel like that would predict the best outcome and probably get the outcome that you want. In conclusion, I feel that if I had this data I would go about it in the way that Alicia did. She was smart about it and handle the situation in the best manner. I feel like Bella was not a strong enough person or aggressive enough to get what she wanted in the end. I also feel that Clara went about it in a completely immoral way because she attacked him personally. I also feel like it was not worth it because eventually she will probably be fired from her job if she continues to do what she is doing, if I was put in the situation of the assistant principal and I knew what Clara was doing I feel like he would just make her life a living hell.