The Socratic Method

[Please see my original post here.]

Let me reassure all of you aspiring--and even current--law students: the Socratic Method is not that bad. It's a great way of learning and it's not as scary as it seems.

If you mess up when the professor calls on you:

1. We don't really care. We're too busy focusing on what the professor says.


2. We don't remember. Unless you keep bringing it up after class.


3. We're not laughing at you. We all know that next week the professor might be drilling us and we may not have the answer. It's not funny and we're not laughing.


4. We don't think you're stupid. You just got caught on the one thing you didn't know. Or you got flustered. Or you misunderstood the question. Or any number of things that don't involve your intelligence. Law school is hard--for all of us.

I've been on both sides--knowing the answers and not knowing--and life goes on.

Move along; there's nothing to see.

Being what it's being

[Please see my original post here.]

Studying law using the case method can be fairly discouraging and saddening.

The guy who was found in his car with a stack of pictures of children in sexually explicit poses? He got off on a technicality.

The woman who watched her dying daughter being pulled from the wreckage of a really bad car accident? She recovered no money. Then there's adverse possession, in which individuals who intentionally inhabit others' property get to keep it after the statute of limitations runs out. Good doctrine; bad people. Morgan v. Kroupa: a kid lost his dog. Five years later he found the dog living with a new owner and the dog jumped into the boy's truck as he drove away. The finder got to keep the dog.

Then there are the encouraging outcomes resulting from outrageous behavior. The couple who kept a sick old man on their weather-exposed porch until he died of starvation while they stole all of his money: convicted. The black kid who directed his friends to attack a white kid based on his race: convicted and sentence enhanced because the event was a hate crime. The woman who, along with her boyfriend, consistently beat her five year old daughter until she died: convicted.

Law school lessons include the understanding that there are bad people all over the place. Sometimes they get off and sometimes they get punished but they're still bad and they're still out there. And they're probably out there doing bad things while I'm learning the objective theory of contracts.

But still. We have laws and they mostly try to care for us when really awful things happen, or moderately awful things, or just things that are beyond annoying but not necessarily in the realm of awful.

When I was in my early twenties a guy broke into my apartment and spent two hours frightening me before taking some cash and leaving. Even though the police did next to nothing to catch the guy, I'm encouraged to know that we have a law and it says that burglary is a felony: breaking/ and entering/ the dwelling/ of another/ at night/ with the intent/ to commit a felony/ therein. We have laws to smack this guy down.

Then there was the milder event in which a pet sitter, T., let my sister's indoor cat escape in the middle of winter. The cat spent two days cowering beside the house and was attacked by a wild animal. The vet bill was something like $2,000. My sister took T. to court but lost the case. Now I know that T. was indeed guilty of at least breach of contract and possibly negligence. She fractured the duty of ordinary care required of a bailee and if my sister had argued the case before a different judge and had brought just a little more knowledge of the law she would've owned that pet sitter's arse.

The study of law is the study of people, and the study of what people do wrong and what people do right. It's also obviously a study of the law, and what it does wrong and what it does right.

The burglar still got off and the pet sitter is probably still out there caring for people's pets. I have no moral here; I have no conclusion. It just is what it is.

Still Shaking II. The first one's the hardest...

...and I did fine, I'm happy to report.

PLEASE SEE MY ORIGINAL POST HERE.

Contracts is my most difficult class. Professor Wittenberg tells me that it's a really hard subject for most 1Ls. Even those students who lean back and chat before class while the rest of us frantically pore over Step-saver v. Wyse are probably just so confused that re-reading a case is pointless. Or they're faking an easy understanding of the parol evidence rule and UCC 2-207 because they don't want the rest of us to smell their fear. Or they have some other excuse for covering their confusion that I don't have time to determine because I need to re-read Step-Saver v. Wyse. (Alternatively, they may actually have a fabulous understanding of contracts, in which case I dismiss them entirely. I'm too busy re-reading Step-saver v. Wyse to re-align my paradigm.)

Since the class is so hard I've been fretting about the possibility of a cold-call from the very beginning. It happened yesterday, and I'm still alive.

I'm not sure how long I was Socratic-methodizing with Prof. Wittenberg; when doom impends time nearly stands still. I'm guessing the interrogation conversation went on for between 10 and 15 minutes. I attacked a hypothetical case using UCC §2-207. Yes, THAT 2-207. The one that addresses contracts between merchants or non-merchants concerning the sale of goods that involves the battle of the forms with an offer/counteroffer that includes additional terms that may or may not materially alter the contract to the extent that they should be dropped from the terms of acceptance.

My hands were shaking and my throat was tight but I surprised myself with an ability to think quickly and give prompt and thoughtful answers. I even managed to throw out a couple of mild jokes in the process. I wasn't sure how to measure my performance but a few classmates approached me afterward and told me that I did a great job.

The good news is that the class numbers 90 students, so I think I'm off the hook for a few weeks.

P.S. Holy crap. When did I become the person who could write this:

...The one that addresses contracts between merchants or non-merchants concerning the sale of goods that involves the battle of the forms with an offer/counteroffer that includes additional terms that may or may not materially alter the contract to the extent that they should be dropped from the terms of acceptance.

?

What do I wear to Law School? Law School Answers

PLEASE SEE MY ORIGINAL POST HERE!

At my law school the answer to "what do I wear to class?" is "whatever you want."

Most of my classmates wear comfortable, casual clothes. As in: jeans and t-shirts or shorts and flip-flops. A handful of us come to class in business attire or business casual attire.

I have reasons for dressing nicely for class:

• All of my professors attend classes wearing business attire. They're showing respect for the profession of law and scholarship and for their students. I recognize that deference and return it.


• I'm preparing myself to enter a profession that maintains certain standards. One of these--like it or not--is a requirement for professional attire when conducting business. In the business of law school I dress as I would for a casual day at the office. I don't wear business suits but I rarely wear jeans.


• I'm altering my perception of myself. I don't think of myself as a professional, but I'm pushing myself to reconsider. Don't clothes make the man?


• I take myself seriously when I'm dressed nicely. I'm attacking law school with all that I have and the clothes I wear remind me of that. Being a lawyer is serious business that has serious consequences. I joke about law school and poke fun at myself and my classes. But when it comes down to it I know that I'm here to learn how to advocate for those who can't advocate for themselves. That's a big deal and I don't wear jeans and sneakers to a big deal.

The short answer, though, is "whatever you want." The three years of law school may be your last opportunity to make that choice.

Boom-boom-pow

Please see my original post here.


Law school is this giant thing that grabbed me and spun me around. It's two weeks into my first year and everything has changed. Mens rea has rocked my world. (Yes, but did you desire the social harm your actions would cause?) Thanks to dear Professor Cooper I'm walking down the streets chanting to myself:

Breaking/and entering/the dwelling/of another/at night/ with the intent/ to commit a felony/ therein. (It's ok; I used to hum Christmas carols as I walked. The definition of burglary is much more exciting.)

Contracts class is still trying to smash me but my head remains above water for now. Torts (the 'boom-boom-pow' of the world, as Professor Robertson puts it) is moving slowly but on the verge of speeding up. I've got my course outlines started and case-briefing has become a simple procedure I use to try to understand complex concepts. (Believe me, one doesn't have to be a prodigy to learn how to brief cases.)

My goals now are the simplest: schedule regular breaks during the day; get enough sleep; exercise as regularly as possible; and fight back against Contracts. I'm not going down that easily, Professor Wittenberg. (And now that I know you're a sweet person you don't scare me. As much.)

1L...here we go.

A fiery ring

[PLEASE SEE MY ORIGINAL POST HERE.]

So after just two weeks of law school it's clear that I'm on a path to burnout. Most sources recommend spending around ten hours a day on schoolwork, and that includes class time. Suffolk University Law School's academic support program suggests that students spend between 60 to 70 hours a week studying. I looked back at the last 14 days of schedules I kept and updated in real time. (I really did update them: I plan out my studying and class time in one column and then write out what I'm doing as I do it in another column. This does not count as studying time. This counts as 'breaks.') My schoolwork has been snagging an average of between 12 and 15 hours on weekdays and around ten to 12 on weekend days. For those who are keeping track, the math adds up to an insane number of hours.

I'm not really doing it intentionally. On August 26 I didn't wake up at three a.m. and think, "I'm going to work from now until 11 p.m." It just sort of...happened. I was reading and briefing and re-reading and briefing and going to class and looking over my notes and in all this I wasn't paying attention to the time. Thus, it was 11pm before I made it to bed. A 20-hour day.

When I first started school, I was worried about falling behind. Now I just want to be sure I understand the material. I read everything two or three times; I look up unfamiliar terms online (thank you, Wikipedia); I read cases twice, brief them, and then re-read both the cases and the briefs; I go over my notes after every class and condense them into sweat sheets; and I spend some time with study aids to fill in the gaps. Now I'll be outlining on weekends, too. I don't know how to be more efficient.

I'm going to try to schedule in regular non-law-school events. Blogging (hello) is a nice break from CREAC. Blogging is creative in a way that the legal profession's Conclusion-Rule-Explanation-Application-Conclusion standard never can be. I also used to run and paint every day. There's gotta be a way to squeeze some of this into some of my days.

Any suggestions?

idk

[Please see my original post here]

It turns out that Professor McClurg was right. I had no idea how hard law school would be.

I understood that the time commitment would be enormous. I got that. And the time commitment is huge, but I was completely prepared for the time suck.

The thing I didn't know--the thing that should make law school daunting--is how intensely hard law school is.

Things would be crazy enough just with the fundamental problems of beginning a legal education. Understanding law requires learning: a new vocabulary (including tons of Latin); lots of statutes; common law rules; the structure of courts and jurisdictions; zillions of legal-system basics; the ABCs of briefing cases; and writing with CREAC and IRAC (more on that later). But after the first few days of school I started to realize that the true difficulty comes in synthesizing all of it and seeing these things as part of the larger picture of Law. Which is hard for lots of reasons, not least of which is the fact that I don't know what the larger picture looks like. As Professor Glannon (yes, that Glannon) said to me, "when you start law school you know NOTHING." I might add that some of my professors sometimes forget that about me, and the plethora of poli-sci majors in the lecture hall doesn't help matters.

The hardest part of school isn't the memorization; it isn't the workload or the reading; it isn't even the speaking up in class or the scary professors. (Professor Wittenberg, when you're not crushing me in Contracts you're making me prepare and read and memorize. I'll thank you later.)

The hardest part is the thinking and analyzing and hypothesizing and knowing what questions to ask (myself and the professors).

Thus: my body is rejecting law school even while my mind wants to forge ahead. Hives, rashes, hair loss, lack of appetite, poor sleep--these are all symptoms that my body wants to return to the nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday routine. I'm turning pasty-white from living inside the law building and my apartment during sunlight (and even moonlight) hours. My circadian rhythm is messed up. If you are following me on Twitter, you'll know that I was awake at 2:50 am today working on a Contracts brief.

But I guess it's all good. I signed up for this and for now I'm not planning on going anywhere. Bring it.

jk