Various Styles of Conducting a Class at a Law School

There will be as many different styles of conducting a class as there are professors at a law school. One traditional approach which is customarily emphasized in first-year classes is the famous Socratic Method. The professor poses a question and calls a student's name from the class roll. If the student's answer is satisfactory, the professor may throw a second more specific or penetrating question to the student or may move on to a different student. Through this type of Socratic dialogue, a legal theory or the principles of a case will be developed. Other professors will combine the Socratic Method with a more traditional lecture format, while still others will call on students simply to ensure that the class is staying awake. Some professors will closely follow the casebook, discussing and dissecting the assigned cases in detail. Others will assume that the cases have been read and understood and will immediately launch their discussions on a more theoretical level. There are professors whose lectures will readily fall into clear outline form; there are others whose presentation might make the student wonder whether he bought the correct casebook or is sitting in the proper class.

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Often the full dimensions of a professor's style will only emerge in a gradual, period-by-period and week-by-week process, so that merely by attending class and observing the professor in action the student will not be able to adapt himself to the class as quickly as necessary. For instance, it may be that a professor is such a confusing speaker that whatever the student will learn must be derived from assigned and independent reading. Or, for exam purposes a professor might expect a class to recall very specific bits of information he presented. These are traits of which the student should be aware from the start of the semester. Given the diversity of teaching styles and the need to adjust one's preparation, at least to some extent, to a professor's individual approach, an immediate problem the law student faces is to learn something about his professor.

The best source of the necessary inside information is from upper-class students who have had the professor, and preferably who have had the same course from the professor. Whatever information is imparted should always at first be treated with some caution. What students consider an easy or hard course, or a good or poor professor, can vary significantly and care must be taken to determine from what basis the speaker is offering his opinions. A professor who delights his class with machine gun bursts of one-liner jokes and a casual attitude toward the course may, for instance, be liked by all, but the upper-class student might neglect to add that at the end of the semester all found themselves confused and uncertain about major areas of material covered in the course. The first-year budding barrister shouldn't hesitate to press in with his questions to try to elicit the unique characteristics of the professor and the course and to determine what can be expected from the class and the exam. The student should seek a number of second- or third-year opinions about the same professor until a clear picture begins to develop.

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Some law schools do a good job of soliciting student evaluations of professors at the end of each semester. These are then compiled and made available to the students in the law library or central administrative office. Depending on the specificity of the evaluation forms and the percentage of students responding, these compilations can provide a wealth of information based on student reaction to the professor and his course. If there is any administrative control over the compilation process, the student should be aware that he may or may not be getting a complete picture; steps could have been taken to clean up the compilations, especially the sections for open comments, so that no professor was mortally wounded. If the student does sense that there could be some negative factors lurking behind a particular professor's profile, it will be time, again, to seek out some students who can supply the candid details. Professors have been known to mend their ways from year to year, often in direct response to a hostile set of evaluations, so it is always possible that student opinion or evaluation information is already somewhat out of date.

A helpful source of objective information is the Directory of Law Teachers, published annually by the Association of American Law Schools. These volumes, which will be shelved in the law library, contain the vital statistics on every law professor in the United States, including academic background, career history, books published, and positions held. The Directory is useful not only in verifying student speculation about a professor's past, but also in determining a professor's areas of expertise and interest, and, incidentally, in discovering facts that might help a student in becoming personally acquainted with a professor.

Finally, if the student sought an opportunity to talk to a professor about a specific question concerning the class, the conversation could open up to the course in general, or at least give the student a glimpse of the professor's out-of-class personality. In such an informal setting the professor might even be willing to talk about another professor's course, although he could well be wary of making any critical comments or of revealing another professor's game strategy.

These types of sources should be mined by the first-year student within the first week or two of classes to gain general insight into each professor and his course with the aim of discovering the best approach to a particular class. And, parenthetically, after the first semester or first year when the selection of courses and professors is the student's responsibility, the same sources should again be worked to make intelligent selections.

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It is said that a student, in designing a curriculum, should pick the professor and not the course. While if a student wishes to take securities regulation and only one professor teaches it, the student has little choice but to sign on and take whatever consequences befall, in many instances it is possible to be more selective and exercise preferences:

• Does he want a tax professor who concentrates on the practical lawyering skills of tax law, or a professor interested more in the theory of taxation?
   
• Would a course in which the professor focused on an economic analysis of a subject, or a class in which not a single piece of economic jargon was ever uttered be more comfortable?
   
• Is he looking for an easy course to pick up a couple of credits, or is he anxious for a rigorous exposure to a subject because of the relation of that subject to his career plans?
   
• Does he want a professor who demands a great deal of student participation or has he had enough Socratic interrogation in the first year to be ready for a more peaceful atmosphere?

All such factors which differentiate professors should go into the decision-making process involved in selecting a semester’s courses. In this process, a professor's advice and opinions can be a most valuable source of information. The student can talk to the professor who will be offering the course to get an idea of what it will entail and to find out what type of person he is. And, he now might freely seek a professor's general counsel concerning what courses he should take and what, for instance, are the differences between Professor X's, Professor Y's, and Professor Z's constitutional law classes.

As strange as it may seem, in addition to finding out some basic information about one's professor, it is often immediately necessary, or helpful, for the first-year student to determine some basic facts about the subject of the course. There are professors who spend the first, or the first several, class periods developing an overview of their course in general terms: its subject matter, areas that will be covered and omitted, its special characteristics, and its place in the fabric of the law.

To ascertain what ball park one is in and to gain a very general picture of what a course is all about, the student might look up its definition in Black's Law Dictionary, study the introductory material to the casebook and become familiar with its table of contents, or survey any other sources that might be available in the law library-such as the introductory pages of a legal treatise on the subject-that provide a thumbnail sketch of what a tort is, or the purposes of civil procedure, or the types of interests that fall under the heading of "property." As the semester progresses with an interminable flood of cases, the student should make every effort not to lose sight of how these specific cases fit into the general structure of the course.

Even with the establishment of law schools, training for the bar remained-well into the nineteenth century-primarily through the apprentice system and self-directed reading.

A professor will plan to cover a certain amount of material during a class period. He could either present this material directly as in a college lecture course, or he could use the Socratic method to make the presentation more of a dynamic exchange between professor and class. In employing the Socratic method, the professor might pose relatively concrete questions, as in asking for the facts of a particular case, the issues involved, the holding of the case, and how the court reached such a holding; or, as is more often associated with the Socratic method, he might pose a hypothetical problem-a fact situation based on a case or line of cases, but with the critical facts or issues altered in varying degrees from those with which the student is familiar-and then ask a student how he would deal with the new case. By exploring a subject in this manner, the reach of the law and the principles behind it begin to emerge and focus.

The benefits of this system, if properly utilized, are an intense exposure to methods of legal reasoning and analysis and the development of an ability to quickly come to grips with legal problems. In calling on a student for the statement of the case, that is, the facts and most narrow holding of a case, the student begins to learn the difference between a lawyer's accurate and intensive reading of material and the average layman's style of dealing with the printed word. The student will begin to develop the power to analyze, compress, arrange, and reduce ideas to clear expression, both orally and in writing, and to separate the court's ruling from the less important language of the opinion. Similarly, the testing of a student's formulation of a holding by a series of hypothetical situations which push the formulation toward the realm of the absurd allows the students to perceive the boundaries and limits of a rule of law and how it may be expected to stand up under later events. And a professor's probing of how a case could have been presented or argued so that the court would have decided for the losing party focuses the student's attention on the type of problem a lawyer encounters-the persuasion of a court to reach a desired answer in a new case as yet undecided.

The use of the Socratic method-more specifically, the fear of hearing one's name resounding in a crowded classroom, appended to a question only partially understood, concerning material only vaguely recollected-can account for some of the tension first-year students experience during their initial months at law school. If it becomes obvious that a professor is hitting every name on his class list in no special order, the constant realization that your tame could be next can sometimes have more of a paralyzing than a motivating effect, with students wiping their moist palms as they try to anticipate what will be asked and what to answer, rather than following the course of the class as it unfolds. This is unfortunate, for it often inhibits proper note-taking and a full understanding of the class.

One remedy for this problem is to get into the habit of becoming a voluntary participant in the discussion. In addition to the formal calling of names, student participation can be a great help in making a class as lively and meaningful as possible. When the student feels he can make a contribution to the discussion, he should volunteer an answer, a comment, or a question (although with the latter, the student should be aware that the professor will probably turn around and ask, "And how would you answer that one, Mr. Smith?"). The experience of talking in class on one's own initiative can be a cure for the dreadful anticipation of the day when the student's name on the class list catches the professor's eye. Also, by continually seeking opportunities to participate, the student will ensure that he is carefully following the class. At the other extreme, it is entirely possible to say too much or to volunteer too frequently during a class period, and the student should retreat before the professor's, or the class's, boredom with his voice becomes obvious.

Lacking the courage to become a voluntary class participant, the student should merely accept the fact that his name is on the professor's list and that one fine day he will be called. If the student has kept up with the reading and has a basic understanding of the material the professor is covering, a minimally satisfactory response to any question will not be difficult.

It should always be kept in mind that the room does not really become as hushed at it seems when your name is called, that all eyes in the classroom do not focus on you, and that you are not going to be judged by your peers by the profundity, or lack thereof, of your answer. Quite the contrary. Most students will be so busy with their notes and attempting to follow the course of the discussion that the only fact they will be aware of is that the name called was not their own. Others will be so relieved that they were not called that they will collapse once again into a momentary stupor. In any event, understanding the fickleness of fate, the sympathies of the class will be with the student. And as there are few genuinely sadistic professors, the professor's aim will not be to try to demonstrate the student's ignorance or to ensnare him in the limitations of his logic, but rather as quickly as possible to advance the line of thought he wishes to develop. The student should therefore answer to the best of his ability and not worry about the long-range consequences of his answer, for there are none. Most members of the class will not even remember that a particular student was called during a period, and if they do, will be unable to recollect what type of answer he gave. And rarely does a professor include the extent, or content, of class participation in his formulation of the student's grade.

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