tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post4810878012979903086..comments2024-03-28T10:56:31.720-06:00Comments on Outside the Law School Scam: If You're Going To Law School, Do It RightUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-87565031362734032622014-06-25T15:25:59.951-06:002014-06-25T15:25:59.951-06:00The Socratic Method is utterly useless and doesn&#...The Socratic Method is utterly useless and doesn't teach anything. Law professors have bottom less egos that need constant validation. That's why the paid 2-3 times what their students will make in practice and work 6 hours a week 9 months a year. The rest of the time they're purusing "legal scholarship" which benefits no one and is read by no one. When is the last time research in a law review article was used to cure an illness? Bottom line, law is the only profession where practioners aren't being taught how to practice in school. No one goes to a physician becuase they learned to "think like" a doctor. Fail.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-28939704943858250602014-06-25T15:22:54.602-06:002014-06-25T15:22:54.602-06:00The Socratic Method is utterly useless and doesn&#...The Socratic Method is utterly useless and doesn't teach anything, most especially, how to think like a lawyer. I am a lawyer and I think the same way I did in law school and before law school. I only had a handful of professors who even used it and the best did not. Law school as a model of education is completely useless. It doesn't teach anyone how to practice law, it's giant hoop all hopeful lawyers have to jump through. No one would ever seek out a physician who knew how to "think like" a doctor. There's a reason physicians/dentists/physical therapists/optometrists/social workers/teachers, etc.. have to engage in years of practical training before they are licensed to practice. Law school in its current configuration si driven by 1) money and 2) the need for law professors to be seen as serious scholars. The fact is, law school should cost 10%-20% of what is does now and should be an undergraduate degree. Finally, law professors are not making incredible discoveries. You can't discover the law because it is constantly changing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-7821781851923087532014-06-24T10:27:54.134-06:002014-06-24T10:27:54.134-06:00I'd say it's (1). The thing is, I think mo...I'd say it's (1). The thing is, I think most people are much better at self-deception than the 10:07 AM Anon is giving them credit for. People don't usually tell themselves that they are shitty at a thing they are spending a substantial portion of their life doing. Their ego just can't handle it. Law professors don't deliberately make the course of student longer and more inefficient, because that would require them to admit to themselves that they are long-winded and inefficient, something they refuse to understand. They tell themselves that the material is difficult and hard to master, and that they're very good at teaching the best students how to handle it. The latter is ego-stroking; the former ego-destroying.<br /><br />Law professors don't usually tell themselves that they need to cover up the fact that they are clueless about pedagogy; they instead tell themselves that they have been anointed as smart and teaching is easy, so they all basically figure it out with minimal instruction.<br /><br />If there's a place that this blog goes wrong in misunderstanding the law professor psyche, it is in underestimating the debilitating effect of law prof ego.<br /><br />If law professors actually believed that they were overcomplicating matters and that they really needed education, they would DO something about it--but they don't want to believe that they're doing anything wrong, because that would imply that they are all dumb. <br /><br />I'd classify the attitude more as reckless indifference to the truth rather than outright purposeful evasion. The reason we have such a terrible situation, in addition to the financial crap, is that law professors fundamentally do not wish to understand what they're doing (and failing to do). Law professors, like most people, want to believe they're fundamentally good people doing good work.<br /><br />The only reason I was able to be honest with myself about the situation is that, unlike most law professors, I had a way to make six figures without teaching in law school. I'm not a better person; I just didn't have the same cognitive dissonance that most law profs do.Carthage must be footnotednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-5435989994757780552014-06-23T15:11:21.388-06:002014-06-23T15:11:21.388-06:00Scalia's comment, "...you can’t make a so...Scalia's comment, "...you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse."<br /><br />I remember this from, what, 2008 or 2009. I love how many people argued that he had gotten it backwards and/or otherwise failed to understand what he meant.Imagining The Open Toadnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-38168465096370998742014-06-23T11:07:39.559-06:002014-06-23T11:07:39.559-06:00Mainly (3), with an admixture of (1) and (2) to ta...Mainly (3), with an admixture of (1) and (2) to taste.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-13568187914971117272014-06-23T10:49:37.754-06:002014-06-23T10:49:37.754-06:00Lazy question, but does the ABA mandate the use of...Lazy question, but does the ABA mandate the use of the Socratic method, or is this method used just because of (1) tradition, (2) as a deliberate means to make the course of study longer and more inefficient than it needs to be, and/or (3) as a way of covering up the fact that most law professors have zero education and experience in how to teach effectively?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10157020541840080308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-7021737406012673072014-06-23T09:53:08.712-06:002014-06-23T09:53:08.712-06:00Carthage probably deserves his own OP for this par...Carthage probably deserves his own OP for this particular post. Looking forward to more.dupednontraditionalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04170022654810216357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-367629501840361422014-06-23T09:51:16.650-06:002014-06-23T09:51:16.650-06:00Exactly. Kerr is one of the few non-scamblogish p...Exactly. Kerr is one of the few non-scamblogish professors that still "gets it," IMO, or at least is willing to go on record for saying so. <br /><br />Many, many others either don't see and/or are unwilling to see, so the downward spiral continues.dupednontraditionalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04170022654810216357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-2038171495496255422014-06-21T10:09:43.546-06:002014-06-21T10:09:43.546-06:00I couldn't have said it better myself.I couldn't have said it better myself.MAhttp://www.thelawschoolscam.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-16560030912617151862014-06-21T01:02:55.469-06:002014-06-21T01:02:55.469-06:00That's right. You can also read cases to:
-l...That's right. You can also read cases to:<br /><br />-learn how to write in a bloviated fashion that has no use to 99.9% of lawyers.<br />-learn the opinions of the elderly and deceased on collateral social or political matters<br />-be reminded of how quickly sound legal principles are thrown out for external reasons.<br /><br />I would argue the format, style, and content of most opinions harms, rather than helps, a modern attorney's development. <br /><br />Beyond the ability to read and extract a rule that has not been overturned or abrogated, there is no use for old case opinions. They're not great works of literature. Only a select few have historical significance of any note. The only reason cases exist is to decide issues before the court and explain the reasoning to guide future attorneys who bring similar cases. That's it. They're not sound teaching devices for students trying to learn how to be a lawyer, and the writing in most of them is so terrible, self-absorbed, devoid of sound reason, or all three, that reading most of those cases can have very little positive effect on the modern student.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-78792037510611525222014-06-20T23:59:39.445-06:002014-06-20T23:59:39.445-06:00Reading a twenty-page case just to learn one small...Reading a twenty-page case just to learn one small point of law is indeed inefficient. But that's not the only reason to read a case. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-48207158219662554362014-06-20T22:34:42.511-06:002014-06-20T22:34:42.511-06:00For most lawyers, the law is less an intellectual ...For most lawyers, the law is less an intellectual pursuit and more a trade. The majority of actual law practice is doing the same thing over and over. Writing a contract or handling a divorce eventually becomes an exercise in filling out the same forms over and over and learning how to handle the type of matter one specializes in. Most lawyers eventually become like a plumber and electrician, who know how to solve the problems they learn to solve and know little else.<br /><br />The nuances taught in law school are not really relevant in law practice because a client won't pay you if you spend 5 to 10 more hours than you need to researching and arguing some arcane point of law. That type of luxury is only available to lawyers who don't have to bill by the hour. Most of us do not fit that category. Writing off time means you gave away your time for free. Given the precarious existence most lawyers lead, doing this too often means the bills don't get paid.<br /><br />The reason I am telling prospective law students to use bar review materials is because at this point, law school has been reduced to a three year hazing ritual to enter the legal profession. I can count on one hand the number of times I cited a case I read while in law school. Reading a twenty page case to teach one small wrinkle of the law is the height of inefficiency.<br /><br />If law schools really want to reform, then change the curriculum after the first year to focus on practice based learning. Law schools need to get away from "Law & _____" type of classes and teach students HOW TO BE ATTORNEYS. Knowing how the third word in the fifth paragraph in International Shoe changes the whole argument is not terribly useful. Learning how to draft a pleading, write a contract, and file a divorce are the skills schools need to teach.<br /><br />Leaving the teaching of actual law practice to law firms abdicates the responsibility law schools have to their students to teach them how to perform the basic tasks required in the field they have chosen. Law firms no longer need to or care to teach students how to everything law schools won't teach them. Couple that with the massive toll a malpractice claim can have on one's professional reputation and license, and new graduates not on the Biglaw or government track are between a rock and a hard place.MAhttp://www.thelawschoolscam.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-62736919276982591912014-06-20T21:12:39.943-06:002014-06-20T21:12:39.943-06:00I'd say that almost any introductory course wo...I'd say that almost any introductory course would offer "a fake oversimplified version of the law." Using the Socratic Method, or more commonly a cheap imitation thereof, leaves huge gaps in a student's actual knowledge. These gaps inevitably have to be filled in with ad hoc reasoning that is often oversimplified and just plain wrong. Many judicial decisions can be explained as the product of just this sort of reasoning.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-63123959872333008172014-06-20T20:47:35.819-06:002014-06-20T20:47:35.819-06:00In one of Brian Leiter's most insolent message...In one of Brian Leiter's most insolent messages, sent to a Las Vegas attorney, he pretended to reveal what "thinking like a lawyer" means. Not surprisingly, his definition was nothing but a description of the first-year law school curriculum. A more circular and self-serving definition could hardly be imagined, even by Leiter. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-13162519742574173342014-06-20T19:41:06.174-06:002014-06-20T19:41:06.174-06:00I’m a former law professor, and I have a slightly ...I’m a former law professor, and I have a slightly different take on this then Orin. <br /><br />When I was in law school, I would have disagreed with this post 100%. Law school can teach a handful of particular, distinct skills. The main skill it teaches is how to write a law school exam—which is a skill that has cognates in writing bench memos for judges/appellate briefs.<br /> <br />The questions that I didn’t ask until I was a law professor: <br /><br />1. Does the Socratic method do a good job of teaching the above skills?<br />2. Are those the most useful skills for our students to learn?<br /><br />Many law professors cannot answer those questions from an unbiased position because one side of the answers, if true, would be hard on their egos. <br /><br />The Socratic method must do a good job of teaching those skills, law professors tell themselves, because we are invested in the myth of our own success. The system that produced us must be good. Maybe not perfect—maybe in need of some alteration—but generally good. Law professors are theory-heavy and practice-light. If the answer is “no, this skill is not useful,” then we have a huge problem, because law profs—and our colleagues—are fundamentally not equipped to teach any other skill.<br /><br />And so we avoid the truth. <br /><br />The Socratic method is a shitty method of teaching. As a law student, I could see only my own success. I did awesomely in law school, so of course the Socratic method appeared to work. As a law professor, when I graded exams, it became clear that a large percentage of my students weren’t learning the skills that I had tried to teach them, and when I talked to my colleagues, I was told that this was just the way things were, that the students who failed were dumb/lazy/slow to get it.<br /><br />But I knew my students, and while I’m sure some were dumb/lazy (inevitable in any large class) I didn’t buy that most of them were. And I’ve learned a number of different skills in my life over a variety of disciplines, and I know how good students generally are at learning skills that are well taught. <br /><br />Thinking like a law professor isn’t hard; we are just incredibly shitty at teaching it.<br /><br />(The second problem is that we use the Socratic method to teach two things at once: both the substance of the law and this ineffable “thinking like a law professor” skill. When both are opaque, it’s sort of like blindfolding your students, handing them legos dipped in goo, and asking them to construct a railroad depot, with the added caveat that you do not, in fact, want a railroad depot; you really want a museum of trains, something that only looks like a railroad depot from a distance. The fact that some students manage to produce the appropriate museum is no reason to pat ourselves on the backs.) <br /><br />As for the second question, it became quickly obvious to me that most of my students would not, in fact, ever need to think like a law professor—that if I wanted to help them succeed, I needed to give them projects and tasks that mimicked the sort of things they would actually be doing in practice even though I taught nonclinical classes. <br /><br />But I know fuck-all about practice, and while people all around me told me it didn’t matter, it soon became apparent to me that this was a self-serving myth created by the practice-light environment of academia. In what actual world would a total lack of experience and knowledge ever be irrelevant? <br /><br />I was not comfortable saying, “Oh, well, I just made this shitty exercise up, and I know as much as you about how you’d approach this problem in real life, so snap to it, and I’ll grade you based on what I think the right answer is. But I could be completely wrong, and also, do practitioners approach this problem like this? IDEK.”<br /><br />In any event, TL;DR: Law school teaches low value skills badly, and law professors are by and large too invested in their own success to cop to this.Carthage must be footnotednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-79234012781275131492014-06-20T19:40:27.916-06:002014-06-20T19:40:27.916-06:00Orin Kerr himself may be the nuanced exception. He...Orin Kerr himself may be the nuanced exception. He may be that one professor out of twenty who both knows his subject thoroughly and knows how to lead a good discussion. If all the professors at George Washington were reported to be as good as him, I might give serious consideration to borrowing $200,000 to attend his school.<br /><br />However, at George Washington as elsewhere, many of his colleagues publish public-policy articles with only the most tenuous connection to legal practice. I have one particular professor in mind as representing that class. I would feel absolutely cheated to take classes in that professor's specialty. That's one good reason you won't find me doing so. I'm also committed to initiating and supporting reasoned discussion about the (inflated) costs and (dubious) benefits of attending George Washington and other well-known trap schools. Sure, it isn't American or Brooklyn or Hastings or Miami, but a student should be extremely wary of paying anything close to sticker price to attend George Washington.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-53641213480276078402014-06-20T18:39:01.225-06:002014-06-20T18:39:01.225-06:00What is a not a "fake simple version of the ...What is a not a "fake simple version of the law"? What is the "actual complicated version"? <br /><br />I think that's a very odd criticism given that no law school in the country is teaching the real tort law of the jurisdiction in which it sits, or the real contract law, or the real property law. They are all teaching fake torts, contracts, property. <br /><br />I cannot help but notice, also, that the 4th amendment is not complicated. It can be read and comprehended in itself in about 20 seconds. <br /><br />If the practice of law is complicated (I would concede that some of the practice of law is complicated, but not all of it), it would be revealing if you would identify the source of complication. <br /><br />The real source of complication is the two-way street of trying to jam real events into the frameworks provided by law, and trying to sort out the meaning of law in light of real events. <br /><br />You simply have to do it to learn how to do it. This is confirmed by everyone who has ever done it. You do not practice law in law school. <br /><br />It seems to me that many, if not the most important foundational skills, for practice are not taught in law schools, and students either have them walking in the door, or maybe acquire them in practice in an informal way. <br /><br />Logic is not taught in law school. Grammar is not taught in law school. <br />All that human experience that is absolutely critical to predicting what will be persuasive and what will not be persuasive to a decision-maker cannot be taught in law school. The skills needed to discover the factual case, and then walk it through the eye of the needle of procedure, are not taught in law school. <br /><br />We should get rid of law school and "read for the law" with apprenticeships. <br /><br />The notion that a student could not become a competent lawyer without law school is as ludicrous as the notion that children could not learn to read outside of a public elementary school.<br /><br />Nothing metaphysical is happening in law school that makes them special and irreplaceable, and law schools are not working for the country. <br /><br />All of the 201 ABA accredited schools are drawing the overwhelming majority of their operating budgets directly out of the federal lending system. We all know that money is not going to get paid back. <br /><br />What is happening here is that a cottage industry - the legal educational industry - has attempted to turn a trade it into a philosophical "discipline" so as to justify its cushy, non-productive existence in the economy. It presents only barriers to entry, and has the gall to claim it presents opportunities to entry. <br /><br />I assume that if the assorted scholars of the legal industrial machine are so deeply called to think and write and speak, they can and will continue to do so in the great tradition of scholars and artists everywhere by accepting poverty in exchange for excessive leisure.<br /><br />A world of scholars would starve to death pretty quickly, but you would never be able to tell the way they put on airs about their importance to society. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-37685322319612222752014-06-20T17:24:08.768-06:002014-06-20T17:24:08.768-06:00Duped, thanks for the response. I think it all d...Duped, thanks for the response. I think it all depends on the professor, though.<br /><br />When I teach, I generally lay out the black letter law in the first five minutes, just as you say. Laying out the blackletter law is easy, and any student can get that from an outline or a treatise (or a comprehensive case). I then spend the rest of class time exploring the nuances. In your example, I might then spend the first 15 minutes of class on nuanced exception 1; the next 15 minutes on nuanced exception 2; and the last 20 minutes on where the law is unsettled (and we'll have a debate on it). <br /><br />So who is right here depends on what MA's position is. If MA is saying that the first five minutes laying out the blackletter law is "the law" and the rest of class is useless and needlessly complicated, then I disagree. On the other hand, if the point is only that some professors are bad teachers and don't provide a helpful or clear doctrinal structure to help frame the rest, then that's certainly true of some professors but not of others.Orin Kerrhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-11738567604071543442014-06-20T15:10:14.445-06:002014-06-20T15:10:14.445-06:00Don't forget that law schools have been known ...Don't forget that law schools have been known to hold off on releasing fall semester grades until well into spring... far to late for folks to drop out and not incur the cost of the student loans to cover the spring semester. Yes. That actually happens.Crux of lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06572986619859564280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-10799206936638088312014-06-20T15:07:43.717-06:002014-06-20T15:07:43.717-06:00The Socratic method as a Gucci bag.
I like tha...The Socratic method as a Gucci bag. <br /><br />I like that one.Crux of lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06572986619859564280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-45032838450865200572014-06-20T15:03:36.696-06:002014-06-20T15:03:36.696-06:00@ AnonymousJune 19, 2014 at 3:19 PM - The reason 1...@ AnonymousJune 19, 2014 at 3:19 PM - The reason 100% pass rates are rare if not impossible is because the bar exam is curved. It does not matter how an particular testing cohort scores compared to any other testing group from a different year. Rather, a line is drawn at, say, what would be a 70% score for that particular exam and the other 30% of test-takers are considered to have "failed" the exam. As the testing population and questions are different on every exam, there is no real correlation between a particular score across different exams. The bar examiners think otherwise, of course. To them, the fact that 70% passed this year and 70% passed last year demonstrates equivalence between the exams. TL;DR, it's baloney.Crux of lawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06572986619859564280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-37955297801423475602014-06-20T14:30:10.779-06:002014-06-20T14:30:10.779-06:00I (6:16) know that now, having learned it the hard...I (6:16) know that now, having learned it the hard way (as one of those non-traditional students without connections). I only wish that the truth were set out plainly: "Without connections to big money, you have very little chance of getting a job in a law firm, however good your grades may be. Stay away unless Daddy can pay cash for your three years in this place."<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-55997473551702484802014-06-20T14:26:53.181-06:002014-06-20T14:26:53.181-06:00I agree in part. Much of the complaining about law...I agree in part. Much of the complaining about law school is unwarranted. There is merit in exploring problems, difficulties, and nuances (one thing that law school is <i>supposed</i> to do) rather than just presenting the current state of the law in simplified form (what bar-review courses do).<br /><br />That said, law school does a poor job of exploring those difficulties and nuances. Legal pedagogy is shite. And most profe$$ors wouldn't know pedagogy if it bit them on the ass.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-55907380448934888562014-06-20T13:45:27.713-06:002014-06-20T13:45:27.713-06:00Orin, with all due respect I think you are off the...Orin, with all due respect I think you are off the mark here, though we do appreciate your comments at OTLSS. The argument is not that the law isn't complicated at times, because it certainly can be. Rather, law school pedagoguery tends to obfuscate and make mountains our of molehills in the generalist classes as opposed to saying, for example, "here is the general rule, here is nuanced exception 1, here is even more nuanced exception 2, here is where the law is unsettled so let's have a debate". The fact that the 1L year is historically designed to be about general principles supports this notion. No one who wants people to actually learn something talks about Footnote 9 of Section 42-B Subsection 9A of the Makework Securities and Paperwork Act like its a real thing, at least until you take Secured Transactions or something similar during one's (often) 3L year.<br /><br />We could debate why this happens, though I think "learning to think like a lawyer" is a weak cop-out for this. My opinion is that the "majesty of the law (tm)" and "job security" trumps clear communication in many, many cases. <br /><br />Admittedly, I have a jaundiced view of how the game is played, some ten years out of law school now.dupednontraditionalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04170022654810216357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-48690026230242609032014-06-20T11:02:08.379-06:002014-06-20T11:02:08.379-06:00I for one think that the "model" of lega...I for one think that the "model" of legal education is a matter best discussed after we reach the point where law school no longer costs more than most people can really afford and the annual number of graduates has been cut at least in half.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com