Last month, Jessica Slavin’s short post on “Things Law School Doesn’t Teach” caught my eye.  Professor Slavin’s post linked to a public defenders’ blog in Connecticut which contained a list of “10 things I didn’t learn in law school,” a list seemingly assembled without a lot of thought, apparently just a bit of lighthearted fun.

The comments to the post, on the other hand, were hardly lighthearted, especially the comments of Professor Papke and John Kindley.

Professor Papke wrote:

. . . I thought the list was cynical to a fault.  Too many lawyers have a sad bitterness and mean anti-intellectualism about them.  Maybe living in debt and working in the context of hierarchy and bureaucracy produces those attitudes.  I wish somehow lawyers could remember law school as a demanding but enriching academic experience.

I spent the past few months pondering how to improve and experiment with the use of student presentations as part of my teaching in small and medium-sized classes.  Since I started teaching, I have been using presentations in most upper-level classes, not just seminars.  I have always believed that law schools should train students as public speakers, but, apart from extracurricular activities, such as moot court, not much of this training is really done. Yet, future lawyers will have to stand and present in many ways, not just to judges, but often to clients, other lawyers, fellow classmates, and CLE attendees.  And students usually like presentations very much (maybe they are happy to get a break from the professor!), so I always found it natural to build upon and use this interest as a useful tool in my role of legal educator.