Legal Research

What?s going on in my 1L classes?

By Pamela

Brand new law students may be confused and frustrated by their professors’ methods of instruction.  A recent blog post by a torts professor sets out to reveal the underlying reasons for their pedagogical choices.  I summarize below.

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What will you be asked to learn in the next three years, and in this class in particular?

1. The Law: Many class sessions ? both in torts and in other classes ? will be spent learning particular legal rules.

2. Concepts: A second answer is basic legal concepts, reusable modules that come up in many contexts:

3. Skills: You will also be learning legal skills.

a. Reading cases: One important skill is reading cases.

b. Analogy and distinction: The last point about reading cases leads us to a separate skill: making analogies, and drawing distinctions, between the case before you and past precedents.

c. Reading statutes: Reading statutes is also a very important legal skill.

d. Thinking about how the law affects prospective litigants (and others).

e. Making policy arguments:

f. Talking in front of others. All lawyers have to be good at this.

[g.  I would add finding legal authority or legal research, because you can't do any of the above if you haven't first done this.  PRM]

4. Habits and attitudes:

a. Think dispassionately, and always examine the other side of the argument.

b. Marry the abstract arguments and the concrete arguments.

Read it all.

(PRM)

Full post as published by Cocky Law Blawg on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).