Legal Commentary

For the first time in two weeks, I've actually relaxed a little before class, in part because I know what I'm going to do today - the last of ten consecutive weekdays in which I've taught a two-hour long class in federal securities regulation to non-U.S. lawyers (except for the three U.S. lawyers that we admitted to the program this year).  It's not as abbreviated as you think at first.  My 3-credit hour securities regulation class in Boston has 35 class hours; this is 20, and it's stuffed into two weeks.  Add a little heat and humidity, plus the hard work of scaling a class back by 15 hours of material and having it still make sense, and it explains why you get back to your hotel, take a shower and pretty much collapse every night.

So here I am sitting outside with an eszpreszo dupla at the Cafe Alibi on the Egyetem Ter (University Square), reflecting on the experience.

1.  Don't complain.  While it is indeed hard work, like most things about being a law professor, it's a nice gig.

2.  It's very much an online exercise.  The problem with assigning American casebooks is not just the cost but the difficulty of schlepping the books around, particularly when the students have three classes (i.e. six hours of class) a day.  We use TWEN, with publishers' permission to copy some material out of the casebooks.  In my case, I set up links on TWEN to the University of Cincinnati Securities Law Deskbook, posted my syllabus and class outlines, provided PDF files with exercises taken from Choi and Pritchard (with permission), and posted copies of the key cases.  I also recommended the "Securities Law in a Nutshell" as a source for an overview.

3.  The pedagogical challenge in a course like securities regulation is finding a balance between overview and detail.  If you skate over the top, the students might as well just read the Nutshell.  When you dig into the regulations (for example, teaching Regulation D small and private offerings, Regulation S overseas offerings, or the Rule 144 resale safe harbor), just the logistics alone, not to mention the specificity and complexity in the face of the language barriers, can be a frustrating challenge. You need constantly to dig into the trees, and then return for the big forest picture.

4.  By and large, the "students" are delightful.  Most of them are already experienced lawyers.  They come from Malaysia, Lebanon, Iran, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Honduras, Ukraine, and a few more I can't recall offhand.  The program involves three summers of the two-week program in Budapest, plus online courses, plus a research project and paper.  We had the closing ceremony last night, in which the third-year students had the "last word."  For all that we have the MacCrate and Carnegie issues in the U.S., the students here, I think, perceive of their American professors as pragmatic, energetic, and accessible, at least in comparison to traditional (continental) European legal academics.

5.  Don't underestimate the work it takes to organize this.  I come away with much respect and admiration for Bridgett Halay, the director of the program.  She is combined lawyer, meeting planner, counselor, confidante, mediator, diplomat, and curriculum planner.  (My colleague Steve Hicks is also here, and works hard, but he's a full professor, so his ego doesn't need any more boosting.) Imagine a two-week long conference with 70 or so participants and ten or so faculty members.

6.  To my chagrin, as a person who thinks Power Point should be used as seasoning - sparingly, and as an accompaniment to teaching, not an outline or crutch - the students here love Power Point as much as in the U.S.  Moreover, the classroom (see right), in addition to being rectilinear, acoustically challenged, and not ampitheatrical, has the usual problem of having the screen for Power Point cover the chalkboard (which I'm sure, by the way was installed somewhere around 1872).  And I, of course, love the smell of  the chalk dust and the roar of the crowd (not to mention those nostalgic screeches of chalk against slate).  I also put on my stern face the first day when most of the class came sauntering in anywhere from five to twenty-five minutes late.  Now my philosophy of teaching runs something like this - I can lead you to water but I can't make you drink.  And while I care deeply about leading you to water, particularly if you want to drink, I really don't care if you make the decision not to drink - it's your life, not mine.  Hence, I don't care if you surf the Internet or do Twitter during class, but I really don't like it when people coming in late disrupt everybody else.  As a result, my gift from the class in the closing ceremony yesterday was a small chalkboard, signed on the frame by all the third-year students, on which was inscribed (in chalk) "Class begins PROMPTLY at 2:30 p.m.  POWER POINT SUCKS."

7.  Budapest is an interesting place.  Physically, it's beautiful.  The view down the Danube is breathtaking, particularly in the evening.  It's seedier than Vienna, and more exotic, I think, because of the strangeness of the Hungarian language, but it's a city that had kings and nobles in the tradition of Vienna, Munich, and Berlin.  There's more here that survived the war than in the former East Berlin, so the old world aspect lives on much more.  And there's a kind of post-Communist edginess, even now, despite the fine restaurants and nice hotels.  You don't want to hail a cab on the street, get scammed in by the hustlers on the Vaci Utca (the main tourist pedestrian zone), spend much time in the Keleti vasutallomas (railway station), or try to find an office supply store to buy a roller ball pen.