By nature, I am a highly verbal, nonvisual person. I learn best by reading books or listening to lectures. I rarely benefit from looking at tables, charts, pictures, and the like. I’m the kind of guy who can’t drive to an unfamiliar destination without a detailed mapquest itinerary telling me exactly which turns to take; otherwise, I’m sure to get lost. This learning style is hardly unusual for a law professor, or indeed for most humanities and social science academics (with the exception of those who regularly use quantitative methods in their work). Unfortunately, when teaching, we lawprofs often assume that all the students have the same learning style as we do. Most of the time, we operate either in pure lecture mode or use the Socratic method. Yet at least some of the students are not like us. They may be visual learners, or otherwise diverge from the pure oral learning style. For visual learners, it helps to have handouts, tables, graphs and other tools that go beyond oral lecturing. Yet, in my experience, many law professors either don’t use these at all, or only do so very rarely.
The traditional law school reliance on the the Socratic method, which I criticized on other grounds in this series of posts, is part of the problem. Many professors and students assume that it is the only correct way of teaching law classes, especially large intro courses, and therefore don’t bother with anything else. Not only is SM a purely oral method of teaching, it is a particularly difficult one for non-oral learners to follow. Even for the orally gifted, it is often hard to pick out the really important information from the morass of indeterminate questions posed by the instructor and often flawed answers given by the student in the hot seat.
Fortunately, there are many possible solutions to this problem, not all of which involve giving up the Socratic method entirely. For example, professors can use SM during only part of the class, and use handouts, tables, power point or other visual displays during other parts. I find that the simple practice of summarizing the key points about a case or article at the end of the class discussion of it also helps students who might otherwise be lost catch up. I also use handouts with tables and draw on the board more than most law professors do, though probably not as much as I should. There are many different ways to skin this particular cat, and mine aren’t the best for every professor. But the beginning of wisdom is to at least recognize that there is a problem. Fortunately, many lawprofs have begun to move away from SM in recent years, and some have also begun to make greater use of visual materials.
Of course all of this proceeds on the perhaps naive assumption that the goal of class is to convey the subject matter to the students, and get them to understand it as well as possible. I know that SM and other purely oral teaching methods are sometimes defended on the very different ground that they teach students to “think like a lawyer.” I addressed these arguments here and here. In brief, I don’t believe that legal reasoning is fundamentally different from other types of logical reasoning; I don’t think that SM is a particularly good way to teach legal reasoning, relative to other methods. Finally, I believe that the primary objective of law school subject matter classes should be to teach the specific subject at hand rather than general legal skills such as trial advocacy, which are better conveyed in specialized courses taught by experts or in extracurricular activities such as clinics.
At bottom, I don’t want to teach my students to “think like a lawyer.” I’m not even convinced that any such thing exists. Instead, I want them to be able to think in an informed, rigorous way about the subject I’m teaching. That is the best contribution a subject matter expert like me can make to their legal education. Achieving that goal requires paying attention to different learning styles in order to ensure that as many people as possible come away from my classes with a genuine understanding of the material we covered.
Mark Field says:
I agree with you entirely and think it’s great that you’re willing to experiment with other ways of teaching. Have you considered extending the change to the grading system? For example, you might have part of the grade depend on a multiple choice test, part on an in class essay, part on a paper, part on an oral presentation (or class participation), etc. That way you’d give each student the chance to demonstrate their (used intentionally, just for the prescriptivists) strengths and weaknesses.
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November 20, 2009, 7:12 pmFantasiaWHT says:
Before law school I taught for a few years in a private school that focused heavily on Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences, even to the point of having a separate Honor Roll for each intelligence. It’s nice to see some attention being paid to other teaching styles, focusing on other types of learners, who display strengths in other types of intelligence
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
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November 20, 2009, 7:28 pmDavid Welker says:
I am in 100% agreement with your post and think it is awesome that you are reaching out to students with different learning styles, even though this is more work for you. Keep up the good work.
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November 20, 2009, 7:36 pmbob says:
I thought the “socratic method” was just so much mental masturbation.
That’s why I seldom attended classes in law school.
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November 20, 2009, 7:41 pmSandy MacHoots says:
It’s good that you’re teaching to all the different learning styles, but practicing lawyers know there is such a thing as “thinking like a lawyer” which is not the same thing as “thinking like a really good sociology Ph.D.”
The Socratic method is a cheap and not terrible way to teach that set of skills to many students, but using the problem method in class is (IMHO) even better. Give students factual problems. Have them read the statutes and the relevant cases. Then spend class time having them argue and discuss the resolution of the problem in light of the law, not spending time trying to figure out how Justice Stevens’s concurrence in some case differs from Justice Breyer’s dissent or Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion (yawn). In too many law school classes the first time the student has to apply “the law” to a given set of facts is the final exam.
Crafting legal opinions is like building furniture; you have to learn the techniques, which are different from doing research in economics or political science. Having students learn to use the tools of the trade in class is (I’ve found) the best way to prepare them for what they’ll be doing on behalf of clients when they get out. Teaching them the “subject matter” is relatively unimportant, even for experts. The subject matter will be different five years from now.
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November 20, 2009, 7:51 pmJon Rowe says:
The traditional law school reliance on the the Socratic method, which I criticized on other grounds in this series of posts, is part of the problem. Many professors and students assume that it is the only correct way of teaching law classes, especially large intro courses, and therefore don’t bother with anything else.
And that should illustrate how stupid unquestioned tradition for the sake of tradition often can be. This isn’t to say change for the sake of change is good either. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; but the pure Socratic method probably is in need of some fixing.
it is often hard to pick out the really important information from the morass of indeterminate questions posed by the instructor and often flawed answers given by the student on the hot seat.
That’s what needs fixing.
Fortunately, there are many possible solutions to this problem, not all of which involve giving up the Socratic method entirely.
This is how I, as a community college professor, who like a judge instructing a jury of ordinary people on the law, having to explain these things as clearly and simply as I/we can, see it:
The Socratic method is valuable in that it helps to better involve the students in the lecture. If one gets up and lectures without regular, integrated Q & A, students have a greater chance at getting bored and lost. If you ask the students to answer the questions about the rule that you wish to teach, you have a better chance at capturing their attention and involvement. That doesn’t mean picking on someone who may not have done the readings, but rather posing questions to the class generally.
The professor should quickly use the students’ attempt to answer the questions as a dropping off point to explain the rule. In other words, explaining/articulating the proper way to understand the law/rules/reasoning should be overwhelmingly the task of the professor, NOT the students. The students/Socratic method should be used as a foil for the professor to do the articulating.
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November 20, 2009, 7:52 pmA. says:
Jon Rowe, why do you, as a community college professor, think that you know ass from elbow about the instruction and practice of law? Might it not be that professional and remedial education have different goals and require different pedagogical techniques?
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November 20, 2009, 7:58 pmJon Rowe says:
BTW: I did my best learning while listening and taking notes. Re reading the cases, I enjoyed doing that ONLY when the subject matter really interested me. If not, I found the reading to be totally unnecessary when the teacher was good. In other words, I could follow the class lecture and while there may have been some soft Socratic, obligatory, calling on a student, Q & Aing on the facts and other aspects of the case, that was really just a foil for the professor to explain what was really going on.
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November 20, 2009, 7:59 pmyankee says:
No discussion of the law school Socratic method is complete without mentioning that it is nothing like the real Socratic method, which goes like this:
Socrates: [States the answer.] Isn’t that right?
Student: Yes, Socrates.
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November 20, 2009, 8:00 pmyankee says:
I should add that the Socratic method plus the case method leads to a perverse form of instruction in which neither the teacher nor the textbook explain the actual subject matter of the course, which students are expected to learn from third-party outline or hornbook.
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November 20, 2009, 8:03 pmRPT says:
Yes, my contracts professor at UCLA taught right out of Gilbert’s. If only more of his colleagues had followed that example. Sorry, EV.
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November 20, 2009, 8:08 pmSandy MacHoots says:
And when you practiced law did you have a professor handy so you didn’t have to read the cases you were citing?
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November 20, 2009, 8:55 pmJustin says:
I’m all for different kinds of learning styles, but if you just give students the answer, they’ll never learn how to creatively examine a legal issue. Making people work for it is part of being a good (if not beloved) teacher. We’re sliding from a society of “question authority” to “just give us the authority” — don’t think that is a good thing.
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November 20, 2009, 9:07 pmbogart says:
“extracurriculur activities such as clinics”
There are a variety of legal clinics, but what they have in common is reliance on a different learning style than the socratic method. Typically they require interviewing clients, investigating facts by talking to witnesses and reviewing documents such as police reports, medical records, etc., framing the issues, understanding the other side’s framing of the issues, and finding applicable statutes and caselaw. This hardly seems “extracurriculur,” particularly in a discussion which critiques the socratic method and concludes it is barely useful as pedagogy.
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November 20, 2009, 9:21 pmLibertarian1 says:
Congratulations on recognizing that there are indeed many different ways to learn. I almost exclusively learn visually not aurally. In medical school, many years ago, I took verbatim notes of what the professor taught and then rewrote them and read them repeatedly at home.
Fortunately, for me, I found a medical specialty, Dermatology, that is overwhelmingly visual. That is so appreciated that on our National Board exam a major section was to examine the patient but not to take any history, do not talk to the patient.
So it should be no surprise that one of my heroes is Sherlock Holmes, we observe but do not see. BTW, I dropped out of Berlitz because they insisted on the immersion method and I never could learn that way.
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November 20, 2009, 9:49 pmsitzpinkler says:
That’s correct.
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November 20, 2009, 9:54 pmsitzpinkler says:
That theory is a bunch of nonsense.
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November 20, 2009, 9:56 pmJon Rowe says:
Sandy,
Most legal practitioners don’t have to read cases; their areas of practice don’t require that. But, I never said I didn’t read cases. I read them quite a bit in my 1L “Legal Decision Making” class and, off and on, in other classes.
What’s false is the idea that you have to read all (or even most) of the cases in most of your classes to do well.
Rather, in this day and age, I could go to this blog and be fed the brilliant case crunching of Eugene Volokh. However, if it’s an area of law for which I am passionate, I’ll read those cases very carefully.
For instance, give me a religion clause case and I’ll be able to decipher every jot and tittle of it better than 98% of licensed lawyers.
But that doesn’t mean I had to read almost all of the cases I was assigned in law school. I read maybe 20% of the readings (of which, by the way, weren’t even the entire cases, but excerpts thereof). But I read a great deal more of the First Amendment and a few other areas of law type of cases which interested me.
I graduated in the top 1/3 of our class and passed two bar exams with flying colors on the first try. I don’t think my story is a-typical.
And though I didn’t graduate from Yale or an Ivy League school, I did graduate from a good state law school and had one of the VC Contributors as a law professor (for whose class I got an A — when our school had a 2.85 curve).
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November 20, 2009, 9:57 pmSandy MacHoots says:
Absolutely, totally untrue. Reading and parsing cases is very difficult — there’s a reason students who read twelve books a semester in an undergrad Poli Sci class are overwhelmed by 14 pages of tort casts — and the more practice you have at it, the better. I’m really worried that law students read people like you and take what you say seriously. Law students: Don’t take career advice from a guy who teaches Law for Paralegals. If your professors (who are the people you know who did really well in law school and have your interests to some degree at heart) assign readings, don’t skimp. Unless your goal in life is teaching Law for Paralegals at a juco. That’s not a bad life, but it has nothing to do with high-level law practice.
Every area of law I ever practiced or taught, every one of the scores of briefs I ever wrote — criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law, commercial law, government contract law — required very serious attention to statutes and cases. Go read some of EV’s briefs and see whether or not you think he spends much time reading the damned cases.
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November 20, 2009, 10:19 pmSkyler says:
I think the real problem is that American universities, and I wouldn’t limit that to law schools at all, do not much care about teaching or the theories involved with teaching.
Professors really don’t much care if you learn the material and have little to no interest in providing the information needed. Lectures are rarely anything more than the professor’s ego gratifying session.
Okay, I’ve over stated the matter, but the gist is still true.
I’ve often said that the best classes I’ve had were in the military and in industry. In both environments they are motivated to make sure that every student learns every part of what is being taught. They couldn’t care much about grade curves, if everyone learns everything, they’re very happy.
Professors are not taught how to present a class, they are not taught how to capitalize on different types of learning styles, they mostly just drone on in very dull ways. Occasionally a professor will have an outgoing personality to make it less dull, but still the material is not presented in a way to exploit the different learning styles.
Despite the protestations to the contrary, about 90% of law school is rote memorization. Analysis is generally pretty straightforward, so long as you have the rules memorized. Law is not logical, it is arbitrary and has developed based on the whims of past judges and lawmakers. Socratic method is fine, but you still need to memorize the rules before you can do any intelligent discussion, but you rarely hear of anyone advocating rote memorization in law school.
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November 20, 2009, 10:38 pmTruePath says:
A very important point about different styles of learners that is often overlooked is that some students may not learn well from lecture and might instead learn much better from independent reading.
I know this was the case for me when pursuing my undergrad mathematics degree. I ended up spending entire terms without attending class as time in class was universally pointless for me. Either I was lost or bored. Had I gone to one of the many schools which does care about class attendance I would have been totally screwed since I would then have to spend double the time learning the subject (the wasted time in class plus reading the book on my own...which can’t be done while someone is lecturing at you).
Given that students can differ in the benefit they gain from class I feel that it’s downright unethical for professors (or university policy) to require class attendance. After all what is the difference between forcing all students to learn visually or kinesthetic and forcing them all to learn in the lecture format.
Frankly I think it’s absurd to ever require class attendance or anything of the kind. A professor has two (distinct) roles. To provide resources to help students learn (and encourage their use but not to blackmail them into doing so if they choose otherwise) and to evaluate a student’s performance in the class.
Unfortunately, this really boils down to a prisoners dilemma situation among the faculty. If everyone cooperated and behaved this way students would learn how to learn (e.g. realize they need to attend lecture/read book/etc.. for their own good) and have more options. Unfortunately, individual faculty members make themselves look better by blackmailing students into putting in the effort for their class since they then capture a greater fraction of student study time.
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The relation to the Socratic method is that the Socratic method is the epitome of professorial blackmail of students to spend time on their class: I will make you look dumb unless you’ve done the work this week I want you to for this class.
The problem is that the professors who abandon this kind of technique end up with a lower percentage of student effort since the students prepare for the classes they might be embarassed in.
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November 20, 2009, 11:11 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Why Tradition Does not Justify the Socratic Method says:
[...] Archives « Teaching to Different Learning Styles in Law School [...]
The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Why Tradition Does not Justify the Socratic Method says:
[...] Archives « Teaching to Different Learning Styles in Law School [...]
theobromophile says:
Kudos, Professor, for trying to accommodate all of your students. One of the difficult things about teaching a class is trying to present the information in a timely manner while explaining the material in a way that different learners can understand.
Beyond the visual/oral distinction, there are also abstract and concrete learners, as well as intuitive/non-intuitive people. Then there’s people like me who are very global in their thinking: we need context. Lots and lots of context. (We are the ones who want to derive equations, ab initio, before performing a single calculation. Our polar opposites just want the freakin equation and please stop with the explanations, thank you very much.)
The value of the Socratic Method, as another commenter pointed out, is primarily in student engagement. The fear of being called on also forces students to be prepared, which makes for better class discussion (as well as the habits of being a lawyer, if not the thought process). It works best when students get clear, logical answers to the professor’s question, either from the student on the hot seat or, failing that, the professor. Nevertheless, a professor can move through the class roster alphabetically or through the rows, which will encourage students to prepare well when they are going to be on the hot seat.
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November 21, 2009, 12:25 amDave N says:
The problem with the Socratic Method is that most professors aren’t good at it, so you end up with 1Ls who are forever lost because they leave class — having read the casebook and having paid rapt attention during bad Kingsfield impersionations — without a clue as to what just happened, other than they have just spent 60 minutes of their lives they will never get back.
So yes, I applaud all law professors who actually work to make sure their students learn.
My best law professor, the late Ron Boyce, spent his spare time as a Federal Magistrate Judge. In his teaching, Professor Boyce would spend the first 10 minutes of every class reviewing the highlights of his previous class. He would then lecture the remainder of the hour on new material. And I mean new. He was famous for citing cases that were days old from obscure jurisdictions that made his point (o differed from it). His finals were the toughtest True/False tests I have ever taken.
But as a result, I learned Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and the other classes I took from him much better than I would have from someone using more “traditional” methods.
Legal writing is the worst class taught in most law schools but everything else is a close second. If law professors start teachomg so that students actually learn, maybe, just maybe, we will end up with a better crop of lawyers.
I am not holding my breath.
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November 21, 2009, 2:55 amPerseus says:
I’m not convinced that “learning styles” exist or that attempting to accommodate them does much to improve learning (see here for criticisms). As for grading, it puzzles me (as someone who teaches undergraduates) why law schools favor single, end-of-course essay exams.
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November 21, 2009, 2:59 amTruePath says:
Let’s distinguish the issue of learning styles as a theoretical construct in educational psychology from the claim on which the post rests: there is not one method of instruction which is optimal for every student. The later is trivially true. Something as simple as a bad experience with one type of instruction or one’s self image will affect what kind of teaching is best for an individual student.
Also as someone who teaches undergrads I’m not puzzled why single end of course exams are favored (as for essays I don’t know enough about law exams to comment). Yes, it’s true that locally students tend to show increased retention if you give them frequent tests, i.e., if you have midterms the students will do better on the final. However, the obvious explanation for this fact is that the midterms, like graded homework or mandatory attendance, prod the students to keep up with the class rather than slacking off.
I mean to take this to absurdity one could require each student spend a supervised hour a night in the library reading for your class on pain of failure. One can always use the stick of grades to force students to spend more time studying/learning/etc.. but this comes at a cost.
First, the practice in many universities of making midterms, attendance, and homework major components of grades erodes the ability of students to learn on their own. At some point a lawyer will have to research an issue over a period of months without any midterm to remind them they need to be studying more. Being able to manage your study habits for a long term goal is an important skill. Of course feedback about your current level of understanding is very useful but it need not be an exam (I expect many law profs use SM for this kind of feedback).
Secondly, midterms and other evaluations along the way likely are a worse measure of a student’s mastery of the material. After all the grade should reflect what knowledge/skills the student leaves the course with. IMO end of term exams tend to be a better estimate of the students knowledge of the material next year will be than a grade resulting from midterms and other examination instruments. In particular if a student bombs midterms but then studies hard and does well on the comprehensive final then what relevance do their midterm grades have to estimating the knowledge they leave the course with. It’s really irrelevant what they may not have known several weeks ago if they know it now.
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Ultimately I think it comes down to how you see grading instruments. I think ideally grading instruments should be optimized soley for estimating student competence in the subject after the end of the course. However, I realize the received view in academia is the opposite and I find myself forced to play along even though it makes me feel dirty.
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November 21, 2009, 5:16 amShag from Brookline says:
I read through the comments to see if anyone made a reference to my ConLaw Prof. Thomas Reed Powell’s take on what it takes to think like a lawyer. Not a nibble. I know it’s available on the Internet. Can someone provide a link? It’s amusing, as was Prof. Powell. (I took Prof. Powell’s course in the Fall of 1952.)
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November 21, 2009, 6:10 amShag from Brookline says:
Here’s a link to Thomas Reed Powell’s take:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95–566.ZD1.html
Montana, Petitioner v. James Allen Egelhoff, Justice Souter’s dissent, footnote 4.
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November 21, 2009, 8:33 amLargo says:
TruePath,
Was this the case for all of your math courses? Did it vary according to year level, or class size?
I ask because what you said was true for me in some of my courses (trying to follow a chalk-board proof in real-time would often leave me lost). But in every discipline has its history and culture (from folklore to tricks of the trade) that is not easily acquired through books. A few of my courses were outstandingly taught, and I would be much poorer for having missed them.
Having said that, math is probably the discipline where classroom experience is least required (unlike, for me at least, philosophy, where I would languish without opportunity for discussion.)
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November 21, 2009, 8:36 amLargo says:
(BTW, TruePath, did you ever read Proofs and Refutations?
...a book by the philosopher Imre Lakatos expounding his view of the progress of mathematics Mathematics. The book is written as a series of Socratic dialogues involving a group of students who debate the proof of the Euler characteristic defined for the polyhedron. A central theme is that definitions are not carved in stone, but often have to be patched up in the light of later insights, in particular failed proofs...
That would have been a class not to miss :) )
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November 21, 2009, 8:50 amJon Rowe says:
“Jon Rowe, why do you, as a community college professor, think that you know ass from elbow about the instruction and practice of law?”
Because I am a law professor at the community college level.
“Might it not be that professional and remedial education have different goals and require different pedagogical techniques?”
No doubt there is a disconnect between my law lectures and the real world practice of law. But, except for clinicals, that is Oh So True in JD/law school.
The pedagogical goals are the same: Learn the damn material. The biggest difference between two is the level of expertise at which the students are expected to learn the material.
In terms of pedagogical techniques: Yes and that’s why the average community college professor is a better professor than the average JD law professor. JD law professors tend to use fewer pedagogical techniques. If only we were paid the same.
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November 21, 2009, 8:56 amJon Rowe says:
“Jon Rowe: What’s false is the idea that you have to read all (or even most) of the cases in most of your classes to do well.”
“Absolutely, totally untrue.”
Who am I to believe, you or my transcript and experience at law school? I didn’t graduate with honors when I got my JD, though I did, as noted graduate at the top 1/3 of my class at arguably the second best law school in Pennsylvania.
I will note though that I used the same technique for my subsequent LL.M. at said school — where we took the same classes that JDs took — my GPA did shoot up into the Magna Cum Laude level because I was taking 2 courses a semester, and refining my technique of meticulous note taking and typing them up into outlines (plus I had three years of experience taking those damn tests). I still wasn’t reading every case.
Reading and parsing cases is very difficult — there’s a reason students who read twelve books a semester in an undergrad Poli Sci class are overwhelmed by 14 pages of tort casts — and the more practice you have at it, the better. I’m really worried that law students read people like you and take what you say seriously.
Here’s my advice. For the first semester, do what I did, read and brief every case. You’ll learn the ropes then. After that start testing the waters and see what works for you. I had a number of friends who found that they couldn’t follow the lectures unless they did the class readings. If that’s you, then by all means always do the assigned readings.
Law students: Don’t take career advice from a guy who teaches Law for Paralegals. If your professors (who are the people you know who did really well in law school
Again as someone who graduated at the top 1/3 of my class from a good state school, I far better represent the typical good law student than a JD law professor. They tend to be people who graduated with an Ivy League law degree, had a Supreme Court or Federal Clerkship...in other words for most law students they come from a different world than the students they teach.
and have your interests to some degree at heart
LOL. The only reason why I’m writing this is because I have their best interests at heart. JD law professors probably have their own best interests like perpetuating this Socratic game where they need the students to be prepared for class.
assign readings, don’t skimp. Unless your goal in life is teaching Law for Paralegals at a juco. That’s not a bad life, but it has nothing to do with high-level law practice.
To clarify, most of my students are not paralegals; I also teach international business and political science courses. But again, I think you fail to appreciate that most attorneys themselves don’t do “high-level law practice” which really means appellate litigation. That’s what reading cases and crunching them teaches you.
Every area of law I ever practiced or taught, every one of the scores of briefs I ever wrote — criminal law, criminal procedure, administrative law, commercial law, government contract law — required very serious attention to statutes and cases.
Again, this reflects a very limited area of law practice, something most JDs will not be doing — appellate litigation. Why should the JD system be preparing everyone to be appellate litigators when most JDs will not be doing such?
Go read some of EV’s briefs and see whether or not you think he spends much time reading the damned cases.
What I said.
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November 21, 2009, 9:16 amJon Rowe says:
Let me stress: I am not encouraging all students to blow off the readings. What I’m trying to encourage is JD students figure out what works best for them. In my case I suffer from severe attention deficit problems (and no I don’t take Ritalin, but I did start taking a different medication during my 2nd year which helped). If I am not interested in reading particular material, my attention lapses. If I really love the material, I can hyper-concentrate. Ditto with lectures. If I need to pay attention and learn material that I find un-interesting, I found the best method is to go into stenographer mode and take down every single word the professor says, not giving my mind a chance to wander.
I’d then type it up into an outline, use the book as a supplement to make sure I got all of the rules right. And memorize the outline.
I perfected this method during my LL.M. days and got over a 3.6 at a school that had a then 2.85 curve.
That’s what worked best for me.
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November 21, 2009, 9:21 amtroll_dc2 says:
I had no problem with the Socratic method, but the best course that I ever took was Robert Pitofsky’s course on federal-court jurisdiction, and he used the problem method.
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Laura(southernxyl) says:
Once again, Theo, we are twins here. I’ve found errors in calculations published in regulatory methodology because I can’t take other people’s word for anything. (Re the climate thing — it’s why the very idea of “peer review” without “review of raw data” irritates the daylights out of me and makes no sense whatsoever.)
I like Jon Rowe’s approach. I had to help my daughter find a way to study 10th grade biology, in addition to the way the teacher had the kids learning the material. In the process, her grades went from mid-level C’s to A-pluses. I told her I wanted her to (a) learn some biology, and (b) get her grades up, but most importantly, (c) internalize the fact that learning is her responsibility. The teacher teaches in such a way that the majority of the class learns, hopefully, but that doesn’t mean it will work for you, and you can’t reasonably expect her to individualize instruction when she’s got 25-plus students per class. So it’s up to you to find a way to learn the material.
For me, and for people like the chocolate-lover, learning on our own is almost like an auto-Socratic method. We ask ourselves questions and triangulate using other knowledge we already have to pull information out of what’s offered to us and put it into context with what we already know. It’s the way I coach and train people, too. Maybe I’m biased, but I think more highly of techs who argue with me about a calculation until they’re satisfied that it’s right, than of techs who just take a formula and plug numbers into it. Never quite comfortable that the latter won’t turn in crap data without noticing it.
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November 21, 2009, 12:43 pmuberVU - social comments says:
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Sandy MacHoots says:
Jon Rowe:
Sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, it’s clearly possible to slide through law school without reading the materials. I suspect your own students can slide through your class without doing the readings that you assign. But do you recommend that they do so? Has it occurred to you that you might have done better in law school had you read the cases? Did the classmates who made law review do the readings?
I disagree with your description of most legal practices. Most lawyers may never write an appellate brief, but all litigators will write motion memoranda which require precisely the same skills. All junior law firm associates will write memoranda on doubtful legal issues. All those who counsel businesses will have to give advice in areas where the law is murky.
I assume most law students want to have at least a chance of working in a high-level, intellectually challenging legal environment. They’re racking up $120,000 in debt, after all. But if not, by all means take it easy. You can always do DWI plea bargains at $250 a pop. Or get one of those great temp jobs that are so popular these days.
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November 21, 2009, 1:30 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » How Common is the Socratic Method in Law Schools Today? says:
[...] a post below, Ilya writes: The traditional law school reliance on the the Socratic method, which I criticized on [...]
Nelson Lund says:
Alternatively, perhaps, those who won’t bother to learn how to use the Socratic Method effectively should indeed choose the far easier method (for instructor and student alike) of presenting lectures and Powerpoint presentations.
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November 21, 2009, 4:41 pmJon Rowe says:
“Sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, it’s clearly possible to slide through law school without reading the materials.”
I didn’t slide. I graduated with a 3.22 for my JD which was top 1/3 of the class and a 3.68 with my LL.M. (which consisted of the same classes that JDs took and the same 2.85 grading curve).
“I suspect your own students can slide through your class without doing the readings that you assign. But do you recommend that they do so?”
Actually I give them the same advise I give on this board: Learn the material. There are many ways up the mountain and you have to learn what works best for you. If they don’t do the readings before class it’s not a problem because I don’t pick on them and ask them to talk about the prepared readings for the day. Though we do do lots of Q & A and class participation.
“Has it occurred to you that you might have done better in law school had you read the cases?”
Note I did read the cases, just not all of them. I did well enough.
“Did the classmates who made law review do the readings?”
I’d imagine they did what worked best for them.
Let me again stress: I did read and brief every case during my first semester and after that, off and on. Since law school, I’ve read lots cases — mainly from the Supreme Court — about areas for which I am passionate. I could write a memoranda as well as your average good, six-figure paying litigator. I just found that I could skip a great deal of the reading in law school and do well anyway.
“I assume most law students want to have at least a chance of working in a high-level, intellectually challenging legal environment.”
Most of these jobs are misery producing. I’d rather be a DUI attorney. It’s more than %250 a pop btw.
My brother made law review at a different but similar level law school, graduated at the top of his class and has always worked those kinds of jobs. I think he read more of the cases than I did, but he too got to a point where he just stopped. And he agrees that taking notes, making the outlines, determining what the black letter law is is more important than being prepared for class.
And the type of work that he does (transactional real estate) for which he gets his 6-figure salary rarely involves reading caselaw.
BTW: I found it more helpful to read cases AFTER the teacher had already gone over them in class. That’s probably a more effective way of learning the material.
But ultimately I think you’ve missed one of the main points I’ve tried to stress during this conversation. I never said, even for someone like me, who didn’t get much out of reading every case and being prepared for class: Don’t read cases; don’t do the readings at all. Rather, the ability to determine what the law is from reading appellate cases without the assistance of the teacher does not require doing ALL of the reading in law school, or even MOST of the reading in law school. For me it was something I got after doing much of the reading in the first year.
This is what the first semester legal writing and legal method classes taught.
After that, if shortcuts (Gilberts, other students’ outlines, taking meticulous notes in lieu of doing the reading, selectively reading cases AFTER instead of before the classes that the teacher assigns them) work for you, so be it.
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November 21, 2009, 5:10 pmJon Rowe says:
Let me make a few other comments: I thought many of our law professors and this might include Mr. or Mrs. MacHoots if s/he is a JD professor, did the students a grave disservice in stressing being prepared for class so much OVER other waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more important things. I had the luxury of having two older brothers in law school, ahead of me and knowing many other folks who had already been through law school and their advice shot thru the crap the law professors spouted.
The bottom line is, putting all of it together and preparing for the end is way more important than being prepared for class. And that means learning every single black letter brief case crunched rules. I can’t tell you how many students I know whom I did much better than because they thought because they did all of the readings they’d be okay. But they failed to put together and memorize the right kind of meticulous outline. And memorize means reading THAT over and over again until you have it cold. Far more important than being prepared for class.
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November 21, 2009, 5:23 pmJon Rowe says:
Reminds me of JFK’s “We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hahd.”
So what if it’s easier? The question is what’s the most effective way to learn the material? If the SM is not, essentially you argue let’s get from point A to point B by walking three miles instead of two.
I’m busy; I prefer not to take the scenic route.
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November 21, 2009, 5:26 pmSandy MacHoots says:
Well, if the reader wants to be the kind of lawyer who does “well enough,” follow this man’s advice. Maybe there are some clients out there who like lawyers who just do “well enough.”
I’m sorry to sound rude here, Jon. Your reviews suggest that you’re a really good community college teacher. You have to teach all of business/tort/employment law in six hours, which I’m sure is challenging, especially given that you don’t have Harvard graduates as students. But with all due respect, there’s nothing in your background that gives you any credibility on the issue of what it takes to really succeed in law school or in legal practice. And yet you’re out here giving advice to folks on how to do what you never did. And suggeseting that their professors are deliberately leading them astray.
Any student whose goal is to go into debt for 20 years so that he/she can finish in the top third (but not in the top-quarter) at a run-of-the-mill law school should heed your advice. Those who would prefer to succeed should listen to people who actually did really well in law schools and (mostly) practiced law at fairly sophisticated levels.
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November 21, 2009, 6:56 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » How Common is the Socratic Method? says:
[...] has many of the same shortcomings as the “hard” version. I discuss some of those problems here and [...]
Jon Rowe says:
LOL. You are suggesting that someone who graduated in the top 1/3 at Temple (or Rutgers or one of the SUNY schools) didn’t really “succeed” in law school. We are the bread and butter of America’s attorneys. You’ve just termed probably 75–90% of licensed attorneys as “not succeeding.”
To the contrary I am more typical of a law school success than the Harvard JD who gets a Supreme Court clerkship.
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November 21, 2009, 7:26 pmeffay says:
When I first came to law school, I, along with everyone else, was at least mildly intimidated by this thing called the Socratic method. I have come to learn that the Socratic method as applied in law school has evolved — or devolved — into simply a method of cold-calling on people. Most law students seem to think that being randomly called on like this is what the Socratic method is. Of course, I think it is actually a method of questioning, not a method of selecting the questionee.
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November 21, 2009, 7:31 pmJon Rowe says:
“Any student whose goal is to go into debt for 20 years so that he/she can finish in the top third (but not in the top-quarter) at a run-of-the-mill law school should heed your advice.”
This is an important point; but not for the reason you criticize me. One of the things that makes me feel good about being a community college professor is that if college doesn’t “work out” for my students (as is the case with many CC students who give it a try), we, relatively speaking, aren’t responsible imposing a financial burden on them. Our tuition is the least expensive. And if they go on to 4 year schools, they’ve saved $$ by going to CC and having those credits transfer.
The student who graduates in the middle or near the bottom still pays the same $$ for tuition. Simple logic tells you not everyone graduates in the top 15% of the class.
I understand that unless you have a degree from a first tier law school (which most folks don’t) or have graduated in the top 15%, have law review from a 2nd or 3rd tier school, it’s really tough to get one of those starting 6-figure law jobs.
In other words the system by its very nature produces debt loaded students who graduate in the middle from 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier law schools.
If you get into and graduate from law school, chances are, that will be you. You have a far great chance of THAT being your story than a story like Eugene Volokh’s.
In other words, if that’s not an acceptable outcome, you shouldn’t go to law school. And perhaps America is churning out too many JDs/attorneys.
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November 21, 2009, 7:35 pmloki13 says:
1. Do not listen to Jon Rowe, please.
2. Not everyone is above average. But if you hope to be, don’t just slide through. If you want to be the person on law review or moot court, read the cases.
3. Jon Rowe doesn’t know what he’s talking about in “real” practice, because he’s not a real practictioner. Sure, there’s some lawyers (for example, in the transactional field) who rarely have to read and distinguish cases. Note– not never, but rarely. But it’s not just appellate lawyers who have to read and understand cases. All litigators do. And litigation involves... oh.... criminal work (go figure).
4. Jon Rowe’s succinct comment about why we should believe him:
“Because I am a law professor at the community college level.”
Res ipsa.
(Who do you believe– Jon, or your lying eyes? I recommend talking to the people at your school who are in the top 10%, not the “top third at arguably the second best state law school in PA.” before deciding how to study. If you, too, aspire to be a community college professor– not that there’s anything wrong with that– then JR’s advice seems sound.)
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November 21, 2009, 8:19 pmloki13 says:
“Simple logic tells you not everyone graduates in the top 15% of the class.”
This is true, and if you don’t bother... oh.... reading cases, then you can aspire to the heights of mediocrity.
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November 21, 2009, 8:20 pmJon Rowe says:
Loki,
Why don’t you try reading my comments.
I never said don’t bother reading the cases. I read and briefed every case for my first semester and read quite a few of them after that. I also sat thru many classes where I did not engage in large portions of the assigned readings and I did well in law school.
But if I look back and say, what would it have taken for me to have boosted my 3.22 (top 1/3) to over a 3.5 (which I believe was top 15%), it wouldn’t have been, “do more of the assigned readings,” but rather take better notes. And also put even more time preparing for the end putting together the outlines, memorizing them, making sure all of the rules in the outline were correct, etc.
As noted I perfected this method while I got my LL.M. and ended up with a 3.68, taking the same classes that JD students took (but in fairness I was taking only two a semester).
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November 21, 2009, 8:30 pmJon Rowe says:
“If you, too, aspire to be a community college professor– not that there’s anything wrong with that– then JR’s advice seems sound.”
When we open a full time position, you should see how many resumes we get from JDs trying to leave the profession and often take a major pay cut.
If anyone is interested — this is off the cuff from my experience, not an official stat. — the average starting salary for an Assistant Professor at a community college (at our college a JD is the equivalent to a PhD and that means you start off as an Assistant Professor not an Instructor) is somewhere between 45-50K, plus a really nice benefits package. But that’s for 15 credits for the fall and spring not counting overloads. I have taught up to the contractual maximum which is 24 credits in one semester. And summers are overloads as well.
With overloads you can get into the 70s.
Again, it can be shocking how many JDs are willing to apply for these positions.
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November 21, 2009, 8:36 pmloki13 says:
JR–
I only have the sample size of people I knew in law school. But strangely enough, all the people who were on law review read the cases. They also outlined, briefed, and did all sorts of extra work. But they *read the cases*. And that worked proved invaluable for our work on law review and for *my work* as a practicing lawyer. I’ve read cases over, and over, and over, so I can immediately (and quickly) look at them, apply them, identify the relevant parts, distinguish them, and, in general, assemble winning cases and motions from them.
But hey– why listen to me? As you said, the country has too many lawyers, so if they’re fine with being second-tier law students and not, you know, practicing law, then they should be fine. I think many aspire to greater things, even though (statistically) not all will achieve it.
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November 21, 2009, 8:45 pmJon Rowe says:
Loki,
You probably won’t believe me, but I bet I can case crunch as good as the typical person at your firm. And that’s because I have read many cases. Indeed I have read certain cases over and over and over again (they tend to be in subject matter areas that really interest me, like First Amendment jurisprudence).
What I did not do is go out of my way to be prepared for class. As noted, I often found it helpful to read the case AFTER the teacher had already lectured on it.
This is important because if I understand, say 75% of the cases just by carefully following the class lecture, that means I have to read only 25% of the cases assigned for that class.
Without doing all/much of the assigned readings, I read enough cases in law school to be able “to identify the relevant parts, distinguish them, and, in general, assemble winning cases and motions from them.”
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November 21, 2009, 8:52 pmloki13 says:
“As noted, I often found it helpful to read the case AFTER the teacher had already lectured on it.”
That was your first big mistake. Reading the cases after the Professor lesctures on them gives you a false sense of security; you’re just reading what was already explained. You need to grapple with it and try to understand it before the lecture. This helps for two reasons–
1. You’re better prepared before the lecture, and you can actually understand the nuances in the lecture better.
2. You learn through the struggle ahead of time; when things are spoonfed to you, you aren’t engaging in critical thought on your own, and you’re not really learning nearly as well.
So this might explain some of your grades.
I highly doubt you understand cases “as well.” Truly, anything is possible. But there’s a difference between reading a case and saying, “Huh, I think I get it” as opposed to having to read tons of cases and synthesize the meaning of them, knowing that you have an adversary doing the same thing coming to the opposite point of view.
I appreciate your lack of humility, but I would be more than a little surprised if you could crunch cases as well as the worst members of my firm, let alone the “typical” person at my firm. This is one of the moments I wish I could break anonyimity to explain in excruiating detail how wrong you are, but alas it is not to be. :) So we’ll just say that anything is possible, if not probable.
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November 21, 2009, 9:05 pmJon Rowe says:
This is a bit of an aside, but, may I ask who your favorite Supreme Court Justice is?
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November 21, 2009, 9:09 pmloki13 says:
I’ll cabin this to current SCOTUS–
I always had a strange fondness for Souter, and thought he was tragically underrated, but he’s no longer on the court.
I think Roberts is brilliant, but I’m not a fan of a great deal of his jurisprudence.
I don’t particularly care for for Breyer (too admin law-y), Kennedy (too Hamlet-y), Alito (too Alito-y, and strangely like a consevative Breyer), Thomas (don’t like his writing, don’t like his jurisprudence, but I do admire him, so long as he’s not joined by another Thomas clone).
Scalia is a great writer of dissents, but a horrible majority opinion writer, and an alienating figure to boot. Writes for law students, not attorneys.
Sotomayor is too recent to comment on.
I like Stevens. I like Ginsburg (especially for really difficult civ pro or conflicts issues).
I’d say that given my political bent, I admire Roberts although I disagree with him.... and think Stevens and Ginsburg, although for different reasons, are, well, okay.
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November 21, 2009, 9:17 pmJon Rowe says:
Thanks for answering my Q.
Why are you afraid of breaking your anonymity?
On to your comment:
But what if I found that I didn’t need to be prepared for class to follow and understand the lecture?
This hits on something different; if the idea is to get students to learn to think critically, it has to be proven that the “prepare for class/Socratic method” is the most effective pedagogical method for doing so.
I see zero evidence for this.
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November 21, 2009, 9:43 pmloki13 says:
Why are you afraid of breaking your anonymity?
No upside, lots of (possible) downside. Think of it in terms of risk-aversion; in my world, whether it is viewed in terms of (young associate) making partner or (partner / of counsel) pissing off clients for no good reason, there’s little reason to put your name with hastily-constructed blog comments.
But what if I found that I didn’t need to be prepared for class to follow and understand the lecture?
Correlation does not imply causation; I know my experience and that of the other people who did really well at law school was to read the cases ahead of time, but maybe we were just type-A personalities that would do wll no matter what. I did find that there were times when I couldn’t read ahead because of some other major work (law review deadline, flying for interviews, that sort of thing) and class was less rewarding. There’s a difference between following and understanding (always possible) and really getting it– if you get to the point where you can anticipate the lecture (after reading the cases) then you’ve mastered the material and issues.
This hits on something different; if the idea is to get students to learn to think critically, it has to be proven that the “prepare for class/Socratic method” is the most effective pedagogical method for doing so.
There were no professors at my school who went full-Socratic. However, one professor did a lot of Socratic teaching. He was one of the two best professors I had (the other did no Socratic teaching). He really helped me get to another level, and there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think about the contributions he made to my current success.
No single method of teaching is the best, especially if a professor cannot do it well. But if a law professor can do the Socratic method combined with cases correctly, it’s pretty damn amazing.
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November 21, 2009, 10:05 pmTruePath says:
Working in mathematical logic I took a bunch of philosophy courses and there things were exactly the opposite. I rarely found the readings to be helpful at all but lecture and particularly discussion were both fun and highly educational. This is largely to do with the essential nature of the subject: a free wheeling argument or casual discussion is of limited use in mathematics. However, the fact that even analytic philosophers still assign ridiculous readings like Plato, Hobbes, and Descartes rather than letting students benefit from the improved explanations and winnowing of bad ideas that has occurred since the originals were published (we don’t have calculus students read Newton) but that’s another discussion.
But while the subject and the professor’s ability definately do make a difference what works best often really depends on the student. I have good friends who took the exact same classes and found that lecture was vital to their understanding. Mathematicians seem to range across the spectrum from those like me who gets nothing from conference talks but can digest written papers readily to people who get nothing from the paper and everything from talks.
Collaboration is still quite important to me and even in college (where I once went a whole term in my junior year without once attending class) I usually found someone to work/talk with and after the first year of graduate school seminar is somewhere between a class and collaboration which worked better for me so I didn’t miss out on the tricks of the trade.
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November 21, 2009, 10:15 pmJon Rowe says:
What I see in this comment reinforces my theory of “do what works best for you.” I never disputed that for some folks, they really need to do all of the prepared readings to reach their goals.
I do dispute that, were it my goal to, instead of graduating in the top 1/3, graduate in the top 10%, I would have needed to do more of the prepared readings.
I think of one of the highlights of my JD degree: I got a full A (3 out of about 50) in professor Angel’s Employment Law class at Temple. She was/is known as a hard ass grader. And I found her to be very crass and disagreeable at times. But she usually kept my interest (where being crass and disagreeable is a plus; why some Liberals might find Rush Limbaugh an addiction they have a hard time giving up).
I’d say I did about 50% of the reading in that class, mainly because I was genuinely interested in the cases (secondarily because I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down). Taking notes, writing up the outline (I had a good previous year’s outline as a baseline), memorizing the rules...all far more important than doing the prepared reading.
And during this very semester Prof. Angel stated you should be preparing 3 hours for every 1 hr. of class credit. And that didn’t include, time for review, making an outline, etc. That meant for 12 credit hours of class lecture (typical), you should do 48 hours of reading the cases, preparing for class.
What terrible advice. I didn’t do more than 1–2 hours a week of preparing for her (very difficulty graded) class. I spend FAR more time preparing the outlines, reviewing the material, typing it into notes.
Again, if I did anything wrong in law school it was NOT lack of prep., but not taking better notes, writing the outlines, memorizing them.
I never sacrificed my sleep in law school; I slept 8–9 hours every night then as I do to this day.
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November 21, 2009, 10:22 pmJon Rowe says:
Let me give another reason to reinforce my assertion that I can (probably) case crunch as well as the typical person in Loki’s firm. From the original post, IS noted:
I graduated with a JD in ’99, and an LL.M. in ’01. Despite practicing little, I’m currently a much better legal thinker now than I was then because I’ve spent a great deal of time honing my philosophical arguing skills.
I became a better legal thinker once I better understood philosophical debate (something JD programs tend not to teach), and understood that law is a subset of philosophy, with eccentric rules of its own like arguments from authority are not fallacious.
In short, there is a lot of learning that is done post JD/bar exam or “on the job.” And I’m sure many successful attorneys could attest to this.
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November 21, 2009, 10:49 pmloki13 says:
JR,
Again, I’m not sure what to say. I am impressed at the belief you have in your natural talent. You claim to have not been much of a case-reader in law school, and to have practiced little, and to currently only read cases occasionally (in subjects that interest you), and yet you say that your case-reading ability is on per with practicing lawyers that did read cases through law school and often have to read 20–30 cases a day to prepare for litigation. *shrug* You do not lack for confidence, but reality can be a cold mistress.
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November 22, 2009, 12:02 amSandy MacHoots says:
Loki, great points. Law students, probably every professor in your law school finished higher in his/her class at a more highly ranked law school than did Professor Rowe. They have no reason to lie to you. So you can choose to listen to them or you can listen to Professor Rowe. It’s your life and your money.
Nuff said.
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November 22, 2009, 12:47 amJon Rowe says:
“You do not lack for confidence, but reality can be a cold mistress.”
Maybe one day I’ll be Vice President of the United States.
[You have scroll down to Biden’s law school credentials to get the joke.]
SM: You are right that most law professors at state schools graduated from schools like Harvard or Yale, have prestigious clerkships and whatnot. In other words, they come from a different world than their law students (unless of course we are addressing Harvard, Yale, Stanford JD students only in these threads).
I don’t believe I accused JD law professors of “lying” to students (if it came off that way, I didn’t mean it). I think a lot of profs are genuinely mistaken about the effectiveness of the Socratic method and the necessity of always being prepared for class to learn the material. And I think a lot give bad advice in terms of the hours needed to prepare (again, the advice we were given — three hours of prep for every one credit hour of class — was ridiculous).
My advice remains the same: Figure out what works best for you. Try to read and brief all of the cases in the first semester and then after that start experimenting.
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November 22, 2009, 8:54 amJon Rowe says:
Let’s see it’s been 13 years since I was a 1L. Despite all of the reading I missed I’ve still read thousands of cases. And the areas of law that interest me — what I keep up with regularly — happen to be Supreme Court constitutional law issues — 1st, 14th Amendment issues and whatnot. In other words the area that I regularly follow is about as intellectually demanding as it gets.
I don’t doubt if I had to make a transition to litigation, there would be a rough learning curve that would smack me in the face; but I think I’d probably be able to adjust within 6 months or so.
It would probably surprise you and SM to know that I’ve published for the same journal as a current sitting Supreme Court Justice (who published AS a Supreme Court Justice) (though my article was much smaller than his; I don’t want to be accused of misleading anything — it was in a different issue as well).
I don’t think the journal will publish me again, not because what I write is bad, but because I’m known for having a different worldview than it.
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November 22, 2009, 9:04 amJon Rowe says:
Let me make one more comment — something I noted above, but that needs to be stressed again — to reply to SM’s “It’s your life and your money” comment. I graduated in the top 1/3 from Temple University. I was not on law review or moot court (I didn’t try out for them because I had no interest).
If you are a typical person thinking about going to law school, you’ll be lucky to end up with credentials such as mine. You are far likelier to end there than with Eugene Volokh superstar credentials. For a JD student to get a Supreme Court clerkship is like an aspiring musician getting a record contract with a big label (highly unlikely).
If that’s not worth it (given the cost of law school) then you probably shouldn’t go to law school to begin with. There is a good article at National Law Journal that suggests if you don’t go to a top 14, law school might not be worth it.
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November 22, 2009, 9:47 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
If I didn’t know better, I’d think some folks were mad because they are now beginning to suspect that they worked way too hard in law school.
Cause the whole “this is what worked for me, so if you say anything different worked for you, you’re a liar” thing is a little out there. Also, “you can’t get the career I have doing what you did, and the career I have is the only one worth having” — hm, bit of a stretch.
Rather, I think Loki and Sandy are enjoying putting Jon on the defensive.
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November 22, 2009, 11:11 amJon Rowe says:
It’s also funny that with this silly “could Jon cut it as a litigator?” hypo is that I wouldn’t trade my life for theirs for all the $$ in the world. I’m sure they make more $$ than me (I’m not going to disclose, but I do make a comfortable five figure salary; they probably make six). But have I no problem getting my 8–9 hours a sleep a night just as I did in law school.
I’m not even saying I never will litigate. But if I do, it will be on my terms, similar to how Randy Barnett got involved in Raich or Michael Newdow. I doubt I’ll ever get to argue before the Supreme Court; but if I do it will be on my terms.
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November 22, 2009, 11:28 amYankev says:
One student’s experience — I learned a lot more in the courses taught by Socratic method than in those taught by lecture. That may say more about me, or about the lecturers, than it does about the method, but so be it. My contracts prof in particular used hard Socratic while property, torts, crim law and con law used a mixture of hard and soft.
I learned even more in my clinical classes and a small group seminar, but I do not think I would have done as well in those classes without the background I gained in the pre-requisite courses, which were taught Socratically.
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November 22, 2009, 12:31 pmloki13 says:
This is how inane this thread has become.
1. This might be one of the few time Sandy and I have agreed.
2. People that... um.... did well in law school and are actually *lawyers* point out that maybe the advice of a person who didn’t do great in law school and is a community college professor is not the best advice to follow. Somehow this is bad– why?
3. Basic logic Laura– I never said my way is the only way. I only questioned Jon’s advice. Why? Because he was advising law students how to succeed, which means (I believe) both in law school and in eventual outcome. He did that despite not doing well in law school by the usual metrics and not practicing law (or teaching at a law school). Try imagining this– Hey guys, I didn’t do that well at MedSchool, and I’m currently teaching at a community college, but here’s my advice for how to succeed. Does it sound quite the same to you now?
4. Unlike Lake Woebegone, not everyone is law school is above average. That’s pretty devastating for the many type-A personalities out there. Not everyone aspires to practice BigLaw, or go to the top small specialty firms, or clerk, or go into academia, or work at the top regional law firms, or work for SEC, or become an AUSA, or work for the ACLU, or go in-house with a top international firm.... but most at least start with those aspirations. There’s nothing wrong with having different goals– helping the homeless, teaching at a boarding school or a community college, writing the great American Novel, becoming a solo practitioner in your small town. But if you are after success in the traditional way it is measured in our field (and top government programs and NGOs are super-competitive), then perhaps our adivce is better to follow. Do you know why?
5. Supplements are everywhere. Anyone can read the black letter law, read hornbooks, read E&Es, and read Chemerinsky for ConLaw and Federal Courts (inside joke there). And guess what? Everyone does. They’re called average students. The students who do better do the little things that matter– like read the assigned cases. Because all those shortcuts I mentioned are shortcuts. Amazingly enough, most professors realize that students use supplements, and they actually have questions on their exam that, well, can turn depending on a real understanding of your readings that they assigned to you.
But hey– what do I know? I only know what I did to get the order of the coif, magna, law review, multiple book awards, and so on. I mean– it worked for me, but I must be an outlier. Instead of listening to the advice of lawyers, I highly recommend people listen to Laura (no idea about the law) and Jon (very nice and knowledgable fellow, but self-admittedly not the greatest law student). Your classmates will thank you. ;)
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November 22, 2009, 12:51 pmJon Rowe says:
Loki 13,
You keep on saying that I didn’t do well. But I graduated in the top third from a good state school. If that’s not doing well then the overwhelming majority of JD grads are wasting their time. Now Biden, he didn’t do well, but he still, like me, has a JD from decent non-first tier law school.
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November 22, 2009, 1:01 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
And if you want to learn to be a condescending jackass, copy Loki’s style.
Let me tell you what success is, Loki, since you seem to have reached the lofty heights you currently hold without ever learning this basic fact.
Success is achievement of goals. Period.
And let me tell you another fact which will be a new eye-opener for you today.
Everyone doesn’t share your goals.
Maybe you need to have a glass of water and sit down now.
See, I can do it too.
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November 22, 2009, 1:04 pmloki13 says:
Laura,
I excuse your ignorance from a desire not to read my posts and a basic lack of knowledge about how law schools work. For the first:
1. Success is achievement of goals, period.
Hmmm.... wow, it’s almost like I *never* wrote this, just above:
“There’s nothing wrong with having different goals– helping the homeless, teaching at a boarding school or a community college, writing the great American Novel, becoming a solo practitioner in your small town.”
2. Most people who go to LAW school do so because they want to succeed in the LAW profession. There’s a number of ways to do that– clerkships, academia (usually after clerkships), BigLaw, goverment work, NGOs, etc. What many people don’t realize is that positions that are underpaid (like ACLU, or SEC) are very competitive to get into. Even working as a state prosecutor in some places requires very high class placement.
3. Yes, if you reach your goals, you are a success. If you go to LAW school, and write the Great American Novel, and become a novelist, and that’s what *you* want, more power to you. You are a success. If you go to LAW school and stay at home to raise a family and are happy, then you are a success. But that has nothing to do with succeeding at LAW school and succeeding in the LAW profession. So if your goal is not to succeed at the LAW profession, then you don’t have to do well. Of course, you might not want to go to LAW school. By the same token, if you don’t want to do very well, if you want to become a solo practioner, then you don’t have to do as well at LAW school. But as someone who actually went there and knows the people who go there, I find that people actually try to do well, because most of them want the more competitive positions (either lucrative or not, they still require high class standing).
4. I managed to write all that without a glass of water. I enjoy writing about things I know about. Apparently, the converse it true for you.
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November 22, 2009, 1:46 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, because I did read what you posted.
Maybe because you reiterated that about 14 times, and if the law students who read this are as bright as you say they are, they’d have picked up on Jon’s professing at a community college after you’d sneered at him for it once or twice?
Do you really, honestly think that people who are after success the way you measure it, and have a reasonable chance of getting there, need you to explain to them, over and over, how Jon’s way of getting through law school is utter crap?
He modestly said. And if you can’t attain to what Loki has done, or if you just want a personally fulfilling career that requires a law degree that you didn’t have to shut down your life to get, then you need to just drop out of law school and go flip burgers. Because there’s really nothing else for you.
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November 22, 2009, 2:02 pmloki13 says:
Wow Laura– projecting much? Perhaps the burger fumes got to you?
I have nothing but respect for Jon doing what makes him happy. More power to him. I am sure that, as he wrote, there are those enjoying six figure incomes that would trade places with him.
I do have a problem with someone offering advice on how to succeed at something when that person demonstrably has not succeeded at that thing (not life, not happiness, but the thing under discussion)*. If someone were to advise you, “Well, I received below-market returns with this strategy, but it’s really the best strategy” then that strategy as an investment strategy is questionable, even if that person is happy with their life.
I don’t post about my personal life (almost never) but I think anyone who has read here for a while knows that I have a plenty of things that make me happy outside of my work. I am lucky because I do work that I love, and I have a great family.
All of your faux outrage and ignorance about law school doesn’t hide the salient fact– if you want to succeed, you have to do well (and first year grades and membership in law review and moot court count disproportionately toward this). If you have different goals, then you don’t. But I hope you feel nice in your smug superiority for lecturing people you don’t know about subjects you aren’t familiar with.
*This is not being snobby. Law schools are very competitive. Jon certainly did better than 99% of the population would have done. But finishing top 1/3 (not top quarter) at Temple, which is a good school (but not one of the 50 best) are not credentials that would lead most people to think they have the best advice for law school. Since his advice was to not do the assigned work, and my advice was to do it– well, YMMV. Personally, I think it’s kind of a waste of your own money (since I paid for my school on my own) to not do your work. But if slacking is your measure of success, and wasting your own, or your parent’s, money, is how you define happiness, then more power to you.
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November 22, 2009, 2:26 pmJon Rowe says:
Heh. It’s funny I’m a political libertarian but I couldn’t imagine a more egalitarian job than being a community college professor. I help give disproportionately otherwise disadvantaged students a chance to succeed in college, seeing them off to four year colleges, helping them get their two year associates degrees. I’ve taught in the inner cities, majority minority classes, had plenty of students on welfare, never taught in prisons (like some of my fellow CC profs) but have taught plenty of ex-cons.
Community college professors, I’d imagine, are happier with their positions that most 4-year and graduate level professors. If we teach spoiled rich kids it’s only because said kids find themselves at a community college with classmates from the real world.
These full time positions are super competitive as well. Though the CCs tend not to care about things like law review, placement at top of the class. You need good credentials plus a lot of experience adjunct teaching (which doesn’t pay diddly) with good student evaluations and the right personality and temperament. You need to be able to teach well to students, like ordinary jurors, who don’t necessarily have strong academic backgrounds.
Like I noted, I make a good five figure salary with great benefits. I’m sure there are plenty of six-figure practitioners who would switch positions with me in a heartbeat.
I always knew I didn’t want the misery producing big law firm job which is why I didn’t try out for law review or moot court. I’m grateful to be where I am today.
But ultimately I think Loki has a bizarre definition of “succeeding” in law school and at the practice of law. Graduating from where I did and with my GPA certainly counts at “succeeding” at law school. I never attempted a full time gig at the practice of law. As soon as I graduated I started working part time for an attorney, teaching part time, and getting my LL.M. part time.
But a lot of folks who graduated at my level hang their own shingle or join or start small firms in towns and whatnot. And at the end of the day they may take in a nice middle class 5, perhaps low six figure salary. Some who start out small eventually become millionaires many times over. Except for the last example, that seems not to be “success” according to Loki?
Ultimately 80+% of licensed practicing attorneys are probably not “successful” and that begs the question of whether it’s ethical for law schools to be churning out so many JD failures every year.
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November 22, 2009, 2:40 pmJon Rowe says:
Loki,
I wrote my last comment before I read your last. It seems I anticipated some of what you wrote in there.
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November 22, 2009, 2:41 pmloki13 says:
Jon–
I don’t know that I agree with your statistic (80% is too high, IMO), but I agree with the sentiment behind it. There are too many law schools turning out too many grads, and too many false promises of huge salaries and rewarding jobs. What people in our field understand is that it is amazingly competitive, and even low– (and non-) paid work that is prestigious, like ACLU, FIRE, or government programs (SEC, DOJ etc.) are very hard to get into. In short, first year grades (and a few extras, like LR and MC) predetermine your job opportunities.
The real crime lies not in the top 100 schools, and some of the good schools below that, but in some degree mills that mainly serve to separate students from their tuition with little, if any, hope of getting a job in the legal field. Even worse, some of these schools fail large numbers of their students after taking their tuition money to keep their bar passage rates acceptable. It’s sad and pathetic.
There’s a lot of people out there right now seduced by the idea of a legal career that are flippin’ burgers (as Laura so eloquently put it), and they certainly didn’t have that as their measure of happiness.
So, yeah– we need fewer law schools and JDs produced every year. It’s a disservice to the people coming in.
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November 22, 2009, 2:49 pmJon Rowe says:
Let me also note that one isn’t necessarily permanently trapped by their JD credentials.
There are plenty of millionaires (cough, Joe Biden) who did worse than me, but had to take an alternate route to success and riches.
My sister in law graduated from a worse law school (Widner in Del.), I think at a lower class rank, failed the bar twice. She started off working in a restaurant in a non-lawyer position, moved to being an associate for a sole practitioner that paid not well. She eventually worked her way up to partner in a big Phila. area firm and makes that good 6-figure salary. She has fire in the belly and has a very charismatic personality (in addition to being an attractive person; I know that shouldn’t count, but it does).
If you looked at my life track in high school you wouldn’t have predicted my outcome (though if you looked at my diagnostic standardized test scores at age 10, you would). I was an extreme under-performer in high school, due to attention deficit, lack of motivation and so on. I attended the community college where I now teach for my first year of college and ended up with over a 3.5 undergrad GPA. That’s what counts for grad. school; your high school failures disappear and if you do well at a community college; you can get into at least a good state school.
Sadly I know of a lot more of my friends who did well in high school (when they were under their parents control) but blew it at college, when they were on their own.
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November 22, 2009, 3:19 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t flip burgers, Loki. Perhaps you have missed the comments where I mention what I do.
Maybe you need to look up “snobby” in the dictionary. You have just damned 3/4 of graduates of Temple to the status of “unsuccessful”. I’d be hard-put to come up with a better example.
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November 22, 2009, 7:37 pmloki13 says:
Geez Laura, feeling defensive? I’ve been trying to avoid your threads for awhile, for what are obvious reasons– when you know nothing, you double down, and quote out of context.
To reiterate, the basic debate between Jon and I is that I think case reading (doing your assigned work) is important, and he doesn’t believe it to be as important — for *succeeding in law school* (also known as getting good grades). We’ve talked about other issues, such as the importance of knowing how to read cases in practice, but that’s the main point.
You, of course, choose to ignore all this and go on the offensive ‘cuz gosh darn it, I’m so mean (pot, kettle, etc.). But for your reference, I did not damn 3/4 of the Temple (law school– you missed that, as usual) graduated to the staus of “unsuccessful”. I merely made the observation that someone who did not do great, at a school that is out of the top 50, is probably not the end-all be-all of advice for study tips.
Feel free to offer your substantive comments. I have yet to see any, but I love surprises!
But here’s a quick summary since you seem to have trouble grasping the idea–
you can succeed in life, and in the law, if you graduate at the bottom of your law school class. But that’s not germane to the question of what works to succeed at *law school*. And, since you’re not really hip to the legal profession, you aren’t aware of how competitive the field is; with the current economy, students who finish at schools similar to Jon’s with similar class rankings at this moment are unable to find any jobs. Students who go to school more highly ranked than Jon’s (note– I didn’t say better) and have a higher class ranking than Jon’s are having trouble finding jobs.
But you wouldn’t know that, would you?
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November 22, 2009, 7:48 pmloki13 says:
And by the way Laura, you have studiously avoided the issue–
given your knowledge of law schools, do you think that students will get better grades, in general, by:
a) Doing the assigned reading (and then supplementing) OR
b) Not doing the assigned reading (and using just supplements).
Well? I thought Jon’s position was a little counter-intuitive from my experience (admittedly, there’s a lot of reading in law school), but I’m sure you could shed some light on it.
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November 22, 2009, 8:01 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Loki, please. You said that Jon demonstrably had not succeeded, with your little asterisk that explains that top 1/3 at Temple is not good enough. Do you even read your own writing?
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November 22, 2009, 8:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t claim to know about law schools, Loki, I only claim to point out the illogic and the snobbishness in your comments. But since you asked, I would venture to guess that what students have to do to get good grades differs by student and by professor.
Perhaps you missed Jon’s comment, in which he said this:
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November 22, 2009, 8:09 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Example of illogic — do you imagine that if all Temple students read all of their assigned readings, they’d all rank in the top 1/4 of their classes?
They won’t, you know. They’ll still stratify. They could all take exactly your advice on how to study and still 3/4 of them will not graduate in the top quarter of their class. So tell me why they should definitely take your advice, and not Jon’s, since you can’t guarantee that you can get them where they need to go anyway?
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November 22, 2009, 8:12 pmloki13 says:
Wow... the level of reading comprehension here boggles the mind. I am boggled. Let’s go through this in an instrctive fashion. Here’s the original quote:
I do have a problem with someone offering advice on how to succeed at something when that person demonstrably has not succeeded at that thing (not life, not happiness, but the thing under discussion)*. If someone were to advise you, “Well, I received below-market returns with this strategy, but it’s really the best strategy” then that strategy as an investment strategy is questionable, even if that person is happy with their life.
Notice– I didn’t say “success at life” or “success at being happy”. I was talking about being successful at law school; that means getting good grades. That’s what the analogy was for. In other words, Jon was offering advice on how to get good grades in law school when his grades weren’t that great. That you fail to see this after I’ve written it repeatedly shows how much you’re reading into my statements. As usual.
And no, most law schools have a forced curve. If everyone followed my advice, they wouldn’t finish in the top 5% of their class (of the top 1/4). But guess what? Most people don’t. I did a lot of academic tutoring for 1Ls my second and third years, and the one thing that always amazed me was how many of them thought they didn’t have to do the reading– they’d just get an E&E and (maybe) an Emanuels and they thought they were set. So my best, easiest, first piece of advice for any student that wanted to do better was always the same– read the cases. Do your assignments. Because your grades will improve due to all the people who aren’t reading the cases.
It’s an amazing concept– do the work that’s assigned to you. It works in grade school, middle school, high school, college, and, yes, law school.
And finally, I never said that Jon has not succeeded in life. He’s happy, and he’s doing what he wants. He’s happier than some of the people that did the Clerkship/BigLaw track. And that’s awesome. But he didn’t succeed at the law school grade game.
Try to wrap your head around this analogy (without misrepresenting it): Bill Gates might not be the best person to ask for how to get the best grades at Harvard. He wasn’t successful at the undergraduate grade game. I’ll withhold judgment about how that impacted his overall life. ;)
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November 22, 2009, 8:27 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
If Jon has “demonstrably not succeeded” then why are you so agitated about his offering his views? Surely law students who have the potential to “succeed” don’t need you to explain to them what a loser Jon is?
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November 22, 2009, 9:14 pmloki13 says:
My goodness Laura, what do you ever do when you’re slighted? You have enough second-hand umbrage to power the nation’s plasma screen TeeVees.
I don’t need to explain what a loser Jon is, because he’s not a loser. I happen to think that he is often (normatively) wrong about some matters, but I usually respect his methodology, and on occasion (such as, I believe, an issue involving some history with the Senate) we’re on the same side. I have the feeling he thinks I’m misguided as well. So it goes.
To address two separate issues:
1. Jon didn’t agitate me. You did. If you bothered to look through the thread, after the usual sturm und drang, we settled down (being reasonable people).
2. As to why I think this is important, it’s because students’ first year at law school (let alone what they think going into it) is filled with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they only get feedback in the form of finals; so most have no idea if they’re doing things right until January.... and that matters. So I happen to think the more good info out there, the better, and given many people’s proclivities, I think encouraging students to not do their work is bad advice. I’m oversimplifying of course– Jon did stress the importance of writing your own outlines (very important!) and learning some black letter rules; but the foundation for all of that is to do your assignments. I was never in a class where it hurt, and usually it was the difference between getting a good grade (or a book award) and just getting by. In addition, while I think it is demonstrably wrong, it helps to showw it– apparently it suckered you in.
Anyway, given all that, I’m sure you will be advising students in other walks of life that doing the work their teachers assign really isn’t that important. Because, you know, a teacher would never test on it.
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November 22, 2009, 9:34 pmSandy MacHoots says:
I think I was the one who made that point first. Think of it this way. If Jon wasn’t as smart as the top 100 or so students in his class, then finishing where he did is obviously fine. If Jon is just as smart as the top students — which, frankly, his blogging seems to demonstrate — then obviously his approach to studying hurt him and limited his job choices. It’s like listening to a very gifted baseball player tell people to follow his unique training program — that never got him higher than rookie league — and then explain how many people apply for his highly desirable job as a high school coach.
If my goal were to make the major leagues — or even to be the very best minor league player I could be — I’d try to copy the training program of someone who had actually played in the major leagues.
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November 22, 2009, 9:38 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m not convinced that his approach to studying hurt him, Sandy.
Suppose you had the potential to play in the major leagues and you simply didn’t want to? Would you still feel compelled to copy the training program of someone who had actually played in the major leagues?
And once again — if a law student has the ambition and the potential to have a career as spectacular as Loki’s — would that student not have enough sense to figure out whose strategy she needs to copy without everybody pointing it out over and over?
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November 22, 2009, 9:58 pmJon Rowe says:
Heh.
I’m flattered to be the topic of such heated debate. FYI: It was always my goal to pursue some kind of alternate track, not the big bucks $$ (what today would be a starting six figure salary; in my days [JD, ’99], it might not have been in the sixes yet). I wanted to do well (which we all define in a relative sense; and I think I achieved the goal of “doing well”), but knew that I didn’t need to make honors, law review, whatnot to achieve my career goal.
I understand if I put more hours into work, I would have done better. I always slept 8–9 hours. And INCLUDING the 15 hours of time spent in weekly class lectures I probably worked on average of 40–45 hours a week; that means 25–30 hours doing more than just sitting in class; more of it was spent putting the material together than preparing for class, however.
Though, again, I reiterate, looking back, if I wanted to boost my GPA by doing more work, I don’t think spending more time preparing for classes would have paid the highest dividends. Rather, taking better notes and more time putting it together for the end would. I didn’t perfect my note taking until my LL.M. years.
Intuitively, exams are extremely “teacher” oriented. It’s black letter law + teacher’s interests. It makes sense that what comes out of the teacher’s mouth would be most important.
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November 22, 2009, 10:01 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, Loki. I will advise students in any walk of life to try to crystallize their goals as best they can, and to figure out what they have to do to reach them. What I will not do is try to impose my goals onto them, or tell them that they can only succeed by doing what I did.
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November 22, 2009, 10:12 pmloki13 says:
No, Loki. I will advise students in any walk of life to try to crystallize their goals as best they can, and to figure out what they have to do to reach them.
Oh Laura... I am entering my first year of law school. I’m somewhat undecided as to what I want to do, but I might want to go into academia, or do corporate transactional work (I’ve heard of this M&A thing), or maybe litigation, or perhaps (depending on loan forgiveness) work for FIRE. Tell me, since I know nothing, what do I need to do to accomplish my goal? How do I reach them? I’ve heard these two people talking about the relative pros and cons of doing assigned classwork, and I’m confused.... do I need to read cases, or should I just purchase the commercial case outlines?
please advise!
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November 23, 2009, 12:30 amloki13 says:
Are you purposefully avoiding the question? If someone didn’t want to make the majors (for example, they’d be satisfied being a high school coach) then it doesn’t matter what they do in the minors. They can hit however they’d like, because their performance doesn’t matter.
If someone doesn’t want to get good grades in law school, then it doesn’t matter what they do for studying. This passes for insight?
The question is, assuming you would like to do well in law school, is it better to read your cases or not? Your charming ability to combine skepticism with a lack of knowledge of the subject on which you’re skeptical is nothing if not... interesting, and explains why I’ve avoided your posts. I wish you’d extend me the same courtesy.
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November 23, 2009, 12:36 amTruePath says:
I don’t think I ever read that book. I read a fair bit of Lakatos when I TAed philosophy of science but none of his mathematical writings. So maybe I’m misunderstanding the point being made but my reaction is that this is totally obvious to anyone who seriously pursues mathematics. That is it’s obvious to anyone who spends time proving (even in exercises) non-trivial mathematical results.
As soon as you move beyond the simplest proofs you need to introduce new concepts to organize your arguments. At the most basic level this might simply be choosing the right inductive hypothesises and more complicated arguments will require lemmas and ultimately names for frequently used properties. So merely by tackling hard problems in a math class you directly experience the fact that sometimes you have to go back and modify your terms to give a nice proof. Moreover, even just digesting the definitions given one can’t help but notice that you use different definitions when you come back to linear algebra in group theory then you did the first time around.
I think this is the sort of thing that might not be obvious to those who merely appreciate mathematics (even if they’ve digested lots of advanced math) but comes for free to anyone who actually tries to do real mathematics.
I mean progress in mathematics is really nothing but appropriate revision of concepts and definitions. The reason we can teach algebra to even highly uninterested junior high students but the best greek minds struggled to solve even basic linear equations is that we represent algebraic problems in a useful symbolic format while they tried to represent them geometrically.
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November 23, 2009, 6:33 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Well, Loki, you’ve seen the relative pros and cons laid out here in excruciating detail. I’ll bet reading and understanding cases is a lot more difficult than reading and understanding these arguments. If you can’t read analytically enough to make sense of this, and you’re not sure what you want to do anyway, maybe you don’t need to run up a bunch of student debt in law school.
I would already have been skipping over your comments, except that you appear to keep asking me questions. In my intellectually-limited world, people ask questions when they want an answer. Evidently, once they reach your dizzying heights, they ask questions but they want you to ignore them. So now that I am enlightened, I won’t respond further to you.
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November 23, 2009, 7:57 am