{"id":8961,"date":"2010-02-11T22:07:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T03:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=8961"},"modified":"2010-02-11T22:07:20","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T03:07:20","slug":"langdell%e2%80%99s-curse-and-transactional-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/02\/langdell%e2%80%99s-curse-and-transactional-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Langdell\u2019s Curse and Transactional Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"langdell_portrait_vinton_03-150x150\"<\/a>In a prior post<\/a>, I criticized law schools\u2019 heavy reliance on the case-method as a way to prepare lawyers for practice. As I argued in that post, the case method, which primarily teaches students the law through an analysis of the legal reasoning in appellate cases while ignoring most of the factual context for those cases, leads law students to think more like judges and judicial clerks than practicing lawyers.<\/p>\n

Still, being able to think like a judge is helpful to some degree to a litigator, for it enables her to place herself in the shoes of her potential audience — the judge \u2013 to identify her strongest (and weakest) arguments. Moreover, learning the law through the case method, even absent much of the factual context giving rise to the case, gives students some exposure to what a lawsuit is, who the different parties to a lawsuit are, and how to read and understand the procedural posture of a case. It also helps students to develop legal reasoning skills in the context of a legal problem arising due to existing facts and circumstances. The procedural and evidentiary aspects of litigation are further explored and reinforced through courses on civil procedure and evidence, which are mandatory at many law schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But thinking like a judge is nearly irrelevant to a transactional attorney. <\/p>\n

A transactional attorney should never see the inside of a courtroom, either trial or appellate. In fact, if she has done her job well, a transactional attorney can prevent many legal \u201cproblems\u201d from arising in the first place. (That being said, sometimes a client who is advised that a contract provision may lead to litigation is willing to accept that risk, and sometimes a risk comes to pass that was simply not foreseeable.)<\/p>\n

While litigators focus on events that have occurred, transactional attorneys must generally consider what might occur. More generally, a transactional attorney helps her clients order their business affairs in light of unknown future risks. To do this, a transactional attorney must first understand her client\u2019s objectives in a transaction. She must then help her client to achieve those business objectives in compliance with the law. Often this involves foreseeing likely changes in circumstances that might impair or prevent her client from achieving its business objectives, and advising her client how to structure the transaction to minimize or avoid possible adverse consequences from those changes.<\/p>\n

Law school casebooks almost never contemplate the transactional context in which the law may be applied. Even the hypothetical variations of cases presented in most casebooks teach students how to apply the legal principles they have learned from a case to a new legal problem with slightly varied facts. Very rarely do they present a hypothetical transaction and ask the student to advise her client how to achieve the client\u2019s business objectives in light of the legal principles she has learned from cases (and statutes) she has read.<\/p>\n

I concede that the law is not developed in the context of transactions because transactions are effectively private arrangements between parties. But one of the primary goals of the case method is to teach students how to apply the law in a new factual context. By failing to teach students how to apply legal principles in a transactional context, I fear we are insufficiently preparing them to be transactional lawyers. We also are failing to teach students the standards of professionalism applicable to transactional attorneys throughout the relevant parts of the curriculum.<\/p>\n

As in my prior post on the case method, I do not propose here how to change law school doctrinal courses so that they better prepare transactional attorneys for practice. In my view, the development of recommendations should only follow a dialogue about how, conceptually, we can improve the academic enterprise for the benefit of our students and the legal profession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a prior post, I criticized law schools\u2019 heavy reliance on the case-method as a way to prepare lawyers for practice. As I argued in that post, the case method, which primarily teaches students the law through an analysis of the legal reasoning in appellate cases while ignoring most of the factual context for those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}