LSC Chapter 3: Legal Methods 102
Week 1:
I remember walking in to Legal Methods and being a little intimidated by the sheer size of it. It was a large class of 120 or so, and the room was strikingly elevated, swooping down fifteen levels to the center with a regal podium that the professor was sure to inhabit. Each row of seats nestled fifteen seats, but held only seven students to give each of us more room at the desks. The entire edifice was gleaming wood washed with cooling tones of blue accents on the seats and back walls to inspire a sense of prestige and academic severity. To finish the room off, each of the student desks was anointed with a conspicuous, black microphone, perhaps to ensure that the classroom could hear with perfect clarity our poorly informed opinions.
From day 1 in the classroom tensions ran high. It was a class filled to the brim with Type A over achievers who had always been at the top of their classes, and they would be damned if they weren't the same here at Columbia Law. As a number 4 ranked law school in the country, the best (reads "most privileged") and the brightest, (reads "most educated") were all shoved together and now were given the grand opportunity to face off with each other. To make matters worse, we would all be graded on a curve against each other...
Everyone looked left. Everyone looked right. These were our competitors. Even though Legal Methods was virtually impossible to fail - everyone said so - that didn't stop every single student from overachieving. Now was the opportunity to impress... or to intimidate. No one wanted to be labeled as a dunce on the first day. Never mind that not a single one of us had any training in the legal field... so long as it was perceived that we knew what we were doing, we had the edge.
Legal Skill # 1 - The art of bull shitting. The skill of posturing was thus ingrained into us pre-lawyers from day one. The only thing worse than being incompetent, is being perceived as incompetent.
As we moved through Legal Methods we were overwhelmed with work that we could not complete and were horrified of reporting on cases we did not understand. Most importantly we closely monitored the individuals who excelled and constantly compared ourselves to them. By the second day we had 40 pages of legal reading, by the fourth we had 65, and by the end of the week we had 100. I studied from the moment I got home until I went to sleep at 1am. Because I was never able to finish my reading by then I would wake up first at 6 am, then as the reading intensified, 5am. Yet somehow, everyday I would pray not to get called on because I hadn't finished the reading, or didn't fully understand the material I had covered. I had to reference and cross reference legal terminology just to get a basic foothold on the material I was struggling to understand. Even though we were supposed to "learn" the material during class, no one wanted to look like the idiot in front of their classmates, so we did impossible amounts of homework and research to make sure we did understand the material before we got to class. For all the good it did us. As soon as the socratic spotlight was shined on you, your hard earned answers could easily escape into the aether of your terrified mind.
Terminology 1: Socratic Method - Calling a student at random and asking them a series of progressively difficult questions regarding their homework to test the depth of their reading and the accuracy of their deductions. This is a method through which an entire class learns material by observing the analytic failures of one of their comrades.
And Sovern was a skillful user of the socratic method.
From day one his goal was to make us realize we knew nothing. I do not think it was cruelty, I think he merely wanted us to make peace with it early on. However, it could be a painful lesson for some of the students. He started by asking each of us one generally simple and answerable question. From there he stayed on the same individual and asked them questions that escalated in difficulty until they could no longer be answered. Everyone failed this test, generally within the first two or three rounds. I remember the day someone answered 8 questions in a row. We all watched on in awe as this little, quiet, mousey girl answered each of his questions with profound accuracy. Finally though, even she succumbed to the inevitable onslaught of his overbearing questions.
I remember another woman who when first called on answered with such enunciation, confidence and projection I thought she must already be a lawyer. When Professor Sovern pushed her point to challenge her, she pushed right back with a quick retort and a snappy counterargument. Her line of questioning did not last very long, but she left quite an impression on me. I really wanted to be like her with confidence, grace and aplomb. So I studied harder and lost myself in legal ideas and terms I didn't understand and certainly couldn't pronounce. My brain became clouded with new concepts: the facts of the case, the judicial history, the holding, the dicta, stare decisis, the counter argument, the dissent. My life slowly revolved around the 8 things I had to find and understand in each case, and my back became hunched from huddling over my books. My highlighter collection grew from three colors to seven and having already drained two highlighters I learned that you must always have back up for any given color since you never knew when one of them might run out just as you needed to highlight that important fact.
By Thursday I was a sleepless, bedraggled mess and against my compromised better judgement I went out drinking with other students in my class to relieve the anxiety. It turns out this was not a good way to relieve stress since we just ended up talking about legal cases and our study methods the entire time. By Friday I was a hungover, bedraggled mess and woefully unprepared for class. I spent the entire time in near tears praying in the back that he wouldn't call on me since I had only done half the homework. Friday night we had a double wammy of homework, and on top of it I still had to finish the thirty pages I hadn't completed the night before. The weekend promised to be brutal.
I remember as I stumbled out of the classroom at the end of the day I bumped into a recently acquired friend of mine who looked about as bad as I felt. I asked him how he was doing and he looked at me with haunted eyes and said, "Adelle, I think I'm unwinding." He looked confused for a minute and clarified, "No that's not what I meant at all. That sounds positive." After struggling with himself for another minute, he finally turned back to me and with the most desperate, lost eyes I have ever seen in a human being he told me, "I think I am unraveling."
I remember walking in to Legal Methods and being a little intimidated by the sheer size of it. It was a large class of 120 or so, and the room was strikingly elevated, swooping down fifteen levels to the center with a regal podium that the professor was sure to inhabit. Each row of seats nestled fifteen seats, but held only seven students to give each of us more room at the desks. The entire edifice was gleaming wood washed with cooling tones of blue accents on the seats and back walls to inspire a sense of prestige and academic severity. To finish the room off, each of the student desks was anointed with a conspicuous, black microphone, perhaps to ensure that the classroom could hear with perfect clarity our poorly informed opinions.
From day 1 in the classroom tensions ran high. It was a class filled to the brim with Type A over achievers who had always been at the top of their classes, and they would be damned if they weren't the same here at Columbia Law. As a number 4 ranked law school in the country, the best (reads "most privileged") and the brightest, (reads "most educated") were all shoved together and now were given the grand opportunity to face off with each other. To make matters worse, we would all be graded on a curve against each other...
Everyone looked left. Everyone looked right. These were our competitors. Even though Legal Methods was virtually impossible to fail - everyone said so - that didn't stop every single student from overachieving. Now was the opportunity to impress... or to intimidate. No one wanted to be labeled as a dunce on the first day. Never mind that not a single one of us had any training in the legal field... so long as it was perceived that we knew what we were doing, we had the edge.
Legal Skill # 1 - The art of bull shitting. The skill of posturing was thus ingrained into us pre-lawyers from day one. The only thing worse than being incompetent, is being perceived as incompetent.
As we moved through Legal Methods we were overwhelmed with work that we could not complete and were horrified of reporting on cases we did not understand. Most importantly we closely monitored the individuals who excelled and constantly compared ourselves to them. By the second day we had 40 pages of legal reading, by the fourth we had 65, and by the end of the week we had 100. I studied from the moment I got home until I went to sleep at 1am. Because I was never able to finish my reading by then I would wake up first at 6 am, then as the reading intensified, 5am. Yet somehow, everyday I would pray not to get called on because I hadn't finished the reading, or didn't fully understand the material I had covered. I had to reference and cross reference legal terminology just to get a basic foothold on the material I was struggling to understand. Even though we were supposed to "learn" the material during class, no one wanted to look like the idiot in front of their classmates, so we did impossible amounts of homework and research to make sure we did understand the material before we got to class. For all the good it did us. As soon as the socratic spotlight was shined on you, your hard earned answers could easily escape into the aether of your terrified mind.
Terminology 1: Socratic Method - Calling a student at random and asking them a series of progressively difficult questions regarding their homework to test the depth of their reading and the accuracy of their deductions. This is a method through which an entire class learns material by observing the analytic failures of one of their comrades.
And Sovern was a skillful user of the socratic method.
From day one his goal was to make us realize we knew nothing. I do not think it was cruelty, I think he merely wanted us to make peace with it early on. However, it could be a painful lesson for some of the students. He started by asking each of us one generally simple and answerable question. From there he stayed on the same individual and asked them questions that escalated in difficulty until they could no longer be answered. Everyone failed this test, generally within the first two or three rounds. I remember the day someone answered 8 questions in a row. We all watched on in awe as this little, quiet, mousey girl answered each of his questions with profound accuracy. Finally though, even she succumbed to the inevitable onslaught of his overbearing questions.
I remember another woman who when first called on answered with such enunciation, confidence and projection I thought she must already be a lawyer. When Professor Sovern pushed her point to challenge her, she pushed right back with a quick retort and a snappy counterargument. Her line of questioning did not last very long, but she left quite an impression on me. I really wanted to be like her with confidence, grace and aplomb. So I studied harder and lost myself in legal ideas and terms I didn't understand and certainly couldn't pronounce. My brain became clouded with new concepts: the facts of the case, the judicial history, the holding, the dicta, stare decisis, the counter argument, the dissent. My life slowly revolved around the 8 things I had to find and understand in each case, and my back became hunched from huddling over my books. My highlighter collection grew from three colors to seven and having already drained two highlighters I learned that you must always have back up for any given color since you never knew when one of them might run out just as you needed to highlight that important fact.
By Thursday I was a sleepless, bedraggled mess and against my compromised better judgement I went out drinking with other students in my class to relieve the anxiety. It turns out this was not a good way to relieve stress since we just ended up talking about legal cases and our study methods the entire time. By Friday I was a hungover, bedraggled mess and woefully unprepared for class. I spent the entire time in near tears praying in the back that he wouldn't call on me since I had only done half the homework. Friday night we had a double wammy of homework, and on top of it I still had to finish the thirty pages I hadn't completed the night before. The weekend promised to be brutal.
I remember as I stumbled out of the classroom at the end of the day I bumped into a recently acquired friend of mine who looked about as bad as I felt. I asked him how he was doing and he looked at me with haunted eyes and said, "Adelle, I think I'm unwinding." He looked confused for a minute and clarified, "No that's not what I meant at all. That sounds positive." After struggling with himself for another minute, he finally turned back to me and with the most desperate, lost eyes I have ever seen in a human being he told me, "I think I am unraveling."