One of my five classes is called "Procedure" ("Civil Procedure," officially), but this post is more specifically about how a class period proceeds on a typical day -- based, of course, on my potentially unrepresentative sample of the first four days of my 1L year. (1L, 2L, and 3L being the identifying years of your time in law school.)
The first thing to know is that your reading responsibilities begin before the first day of class. It is understood that every class will be discussing the content of the course on the very first day, and that you have completed a typical chunk of reading for that day, and that you are ready to be called on in class to discuss it. The professor won't be handing out a syllabus, because you've already looked up the course on the law school website and printed it out, along with any "handouts" (inappropriately titled, given that no one's handing them to you). There are no icebreakers, no calling of roll, and there's not much of an overview or introduction from the professor to speak of. One professor was calling on students within 10 minutes of the beginning of the first class period.
So how does this work, exactly? It's hard to imagine that a class such as "Frankfurt School Aesthetics," or "Advanced Biochemistry and Enzymology" could work so efficiently that barely any introduction would be necessary before diving into the content of the course. But for the most part, this approach seems to work in law school for a very simple reason: it's all about the cases. For the most part, each aspect of the law on a given topic is going to be illustrated by individual cases, with only a minimal amount of contextualizing material. To determine what the case means is my job, and I'm limited in my search for meaning by the evidence cited within that case. In my Contracts class, for example, we began with a case called Ray v. William G. Eurice & Bros., Inc., which happened in Baltimore between 1950-1952. The condensed version of the case is this: the plaintiff, Ray, contracted with the Eurice Bros. to build a new house. As is the case with construction projects, the plans were revised back and forth by each party a couple of times, and then the deal was signed. The problem is that the Eurice brothers were confused when they eventually signed the final contract; they didn't realize the extent of the revisions which were in the final document. Essentially, they were OK with draft #3 and when they met at the bank to formalize the contract, they didn't realize that the document in front of them was actually draft #4, which required them to build a much fancier and more expensive house.
So once the Eurice Bros. realize that they've actually signed draft #4, they refuse to honor it, saying that they wouldn't have signed it if they'd known what was in it. Ray naturally expects them to honor the contract as a done deal, and sues. The litigation begins.
In my textbook, I get to read the appellate judge's version of this case and the reason that he decides the way that he does. (The casebooks, by the way, are strictly appellate decisions, which means that they're all cases in which the loser of the original verdict has taken the claim to appeals court. The main reason for this -- i.e., the reason that we're reading the appeal rather than the proceedings of the original case -- is that it's more concise. I can read an actual, binding legal judgment in Ray v. Eurice without having to read tons of pages of court transcripts -- longwinded opening/closing statements, rambling witnesses, etc.)
But even though the casebook contains a summary, it's not a very compact summary. And the judge who authors the decision isn't going to tell me why this particular case is important. I have to use his citations and his reliance on rules and precedent to decide what precedent this case seems to establish. That's not easy! If you gave me a random modernist poem, I could probably tell you how it adheres to and how it deviates from precedent, but I could do this because I know a few things about the aesthetics of modernism, the history of poetry, etc. I could probably do this exercise with a lot of examples drawn from traditions that I know pretty well: I can tell you how a current French film is different than a New Wave film, or how Peter Crouch is a different kind of center-forward than Alan Shearer, or why Obama is a different politician than Jesse Jackson. But I couldn't take, say, a piece of Japanese chamber music and explain its innovative features because I've never learned anything about Japanese chamber music. And after only four days of law school, I can't claim much more expertise over the tradition of contract law.
Another thing that can be initially overwhelming about law school is that we're expected to be able to retell the stories of these cases in exhaustive detail. I didn't get called on in the Ray v. Eurice discussion, but I would have been really lost if I had, because when the professor asks you for the facts of the case, s/he does not want you to skip over anything. If you'd said that "Ray and the Eurice brothers met a few times to revise the contract," you'd have been rudely interrupted and asked to identify the dates of those meetings and the specific nature of each of those revisions. Think of how weird a literature class could be if the professors demanded that you be able to retell all of the nuances of a story before analyzing it. You could spend five minutes of class time talking about the characteristics of Turkey and Ginger Nut before even getting to mention poor Bartleby. And who'd be prepared to do this? Pick your favorite novel right now and explain to me what happens on page 1. Don't leave anything out. Then move to page 2. Repeat.
More about how my five classes work in the next post...
