Comments on: The Problem with Class Discussions

By: Thomas Foley

Thomas Foley — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:51:09 +0000

My unsolicited advice to students disappointed at the dearth of discussion in law school classes is to locate your professor’s office, plant yourself in a chair, and discuss to your heart’s content (within reason: they’re busy too).

I was always enormously gratified and enriched by the faculty’s willingness to engage outside of the class, as well as amazed at how deserted of students their office blocks usually were.

I won’t mention any names (because if I started to, this comment would get very, very long) but in my time, every instructor was unfailingly more than accommodating when it came to elucidating or expanding on the material presented in class.

Remember, the professors teach their areas of interest, meaning they’re very interested in those areas, and they’re also very generous about sharing their knowledge and experience. So go get your money’s worth.

By: Irene Calboli

Irene Calboli — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:48:43 +0000

I believe class discussion varies in law school depending on the type of class. Seminars, workshops, and upper-level classes (those classes where students should, or are supposed to, know the foundation of the topic) have often great and insighful class discussion, or at least this is my experience. First-year courses and survey classes often have less, due to the fact that the basics have to be learned in the class, and also due to the number of students and the limited time of each session. Professors are, however, like orchestra directors and have to set the tone of the class, including the discussion (sometime I am a nose-leader, while other times I just want to have as many different positions expressed on one issuse so students can understand how different the interpretation of one issue can be). Good (and well prepared) participation is a must for class dicussion, and I have the magic power (because of my position) to start it and also somewhat control it (not allowing the same people to talk all the time, and involving those who are less prone to talk by gentle, but firming “cold calling”). Still, as Professor Hylton rightly puts is, the bar examination drives a lot of the law school teaching. I would go even further and say that the (legitimate and important) pressure to find jobs and to practice law well also calls for a good preparation of my students. First we need to give them the black letter law, then we can build a good discussion, which will be based on rules, legal principles, legal strategies, etc.

By: Gordon Hylton

Gordon Hylton — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:06:06 +0000

In every state but Wisconsin, the pressure to cover as much material as possible in conventional law school courses can be traced directly to the bar examination. For better or worse, we are a profession that, again, outside of Wisconsin, views knowledge of the law as the primary prerequisite to becoming a licensed lawyer.

No one was ever asked their opinion as to what the law should be on a bar examination.

By: David R. Papke

David R. Papke — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:40:17 +0000

Like Gordon Hylton and Bruce Boyden, I benefited greatly from taking graduate-level history and legal history classes at roughly the same time I was in law school. The legal historians with whom I studied included Robert Cover and Robert Stevens. Both were superb instructors, and, among other things, their efforts launched the thought that it might be rewarding to pursue a career as an academic. It was also valuable to contrast what happened in my conventional law school classes with what what was going on in the history classes. As Bruce Boyden suggested in his recent post, the legal history classes were much more interpretative in character and blessed with rich, animated, and genuine discussions.

I agree with Gordon Hylton that the drive for “coverage” is one of the factors that limits discussion in contemporary law school classes. Professors feel a responsibility to “cover” as much as possible. Students want professors to “cover” as much of the impossibly long casebooks as possible. Discussion is one of the casualties. But might the drive for coverage be a specialized example of the ethos of quantitative consumption? Might the thinking be that the more laws I serve up or acquire, the better things are? The actual number of laws that have to be taught or learned in law school, after all, is arbitrary. Coverage is never complete, and it might be more valuable in a true educational sense to think about a smaller number of laws in depth and pause to compare thoughts on them using – believe it or not – discussion!

By: Travis Miller

Travis Miller — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:27:44 +0000

It is an interesting question. However, the fact is not that upper level students fail to read or identify the key points in cases. To the contrary, by the time a law student reaches an upper level, they have realized that the key to the course is understanding the professor’s interpretation of the area of legal study.

This is a valuable skill, as it teaches students to direct legal analysis to the reader. However, in such instances, a meaningful class discussion will always be muted. There is a reason for this. If the final outcome in the form of the grade is based solely on the demonstration of the groups average understanding of the point of view of the professor, the rewarded value of the course is in the ability to absorb that individuals perspective and present it back in a manner that that individual deems satisfactory. Just an observation.