Legal Commentary

Is there a professional job in the world that requires less formal training than law teaching?  Perhaps because so much of the hiring process focuses on scholarship, new hires are often placed in front of an auditorium full of law students with little or no teaching experience or formal training.  This is changing, of course, with the increasing ubiquity of fellowships and VAPs, and the system appears to work pretty well, due perhaps to the fact that new hires tend to be hard-working self-starters.

That said, as I think back over my first three years teaching (five if you count my fellowship?and yes, that does make me feel old as the hills), I am always coming up with small insights that I wish I?d known when I was starting out.  For that reason, I hereby proffer the ten things I wish I?d known before starting out law teaching, in the hope that some of these points may be helpful to the pre-prawfs out there.

These are, I should caution, based purely on my own experience and may well not ring true for others.  I am sure that there are many, many other non-obvious tips and pointers that other lawprofs will find missing from this (admittedly incomplete) list, and I?d be very interested to hear others? suggested additions.  That said, here goes.

1.  There will be substantive errors.  The law is sprawling and often very difficult, and in teaching a long and complex course, it's hard not to make a couple of missteps in discussing the substantive law along the way (at least the first time out).  Though making such an error feels awful, it is by no means the end of the world.  When this has happened to me, I?ve owned up to the mistake, clarified it in all possible media (in class, on TWEN, etc.), and used it as a reminder to the class that the law is hard stuff and even the purported experts sometimes get it wrong (which, I hope, comes off as humanizing).

2.  Classes will vary in quality.  Sometimes, class just clicks?everything goes according to plan, people laugh at my jokes and respond well to my questions, and it all ends right on time.  But there are other classes that are just the opposite?nothing goes the way I wanted, there?s an ocean of silence in response to just about anything I say, and I leave feeling like I just did a couple hours of intellectual dentistry.  Fortunately, most classes are closer to the former than the latter, but when a class goes poorly, I remind myself that this kind of variation is natural and inevitable, and may be due to exogenous forces outside my control (after one particularly dreary class, I learned that the students had just turned in a major writing assignment in their first-year law skills class, leaving them understandably tired and ill-prepared).

3.  Overpreparation can be a real concern.  When I started teaching, I combated my pre-class anxiety with an onslaught of prep?there wasn?t a student question I hadn?t thought through, and my lecture notes had little times next to them to make sure I hit every point at the right moment in the class.  Looking back, the intention was good but I was simply overdoing it.  Law classes are different than straight lectures because their dialogic format requires extemporaneousness, and leaving space and time for that is key to having a good discussion.  It?s kind of impossible to prepare to be spontaneous, so this is the kind of thing I?ve found improves a lot over time as you get more comfortable in front of the class and allow yourself room to freestyle (as it were).

4.  There is awesome power in punting.  When I started teaching, I lived in fear of not having an immediate and complete answer to any given student question.  Many years removed, I am very much at ease with my many shortcomings, and feel no obligation to answer every question immediately in class.  While one wouldn?t want to make too much of a habit of it, there?s something very freeing in being able to occasionally say, ?I?m not entirely sure of the answer to that?I?ll look into it and [come back to it next class; post about it online; etc.].?  The occasional punt also helps avoid misstep #1 above (substantive errors). 

5.  It?s easy to lose sight of how fragile student egos can be.  It?s getting to the point where I can no longer say ?I was a law student not too long ago,? but if I think back, I can still recall the anxiety of being called on in class, and the attendant embarrassment if it didn?t go well.  I try to constantly remind myself of this when teaching, because student anxiety/sensitivity is an inevitable factor in the classroom and one that requires delicate management.  In light of this, I make a big effort to stress when a student has hit the right answer to a question, and correlatively try to find the kernel of value in even off-base student contributions.  Related, on the rare occasions when a student is so visibly wracked with anxiety upon getting called on that they?re visibly struggling, I have no problem moving on and sparing them (though often informally arranging to call on them in the next class so they have a chance to redeem themselves).

6.  Getting to class early has its virtues.  This one may be purely personal, but I like to show up very, very early for class to set up and do some last-minute reviewing.  Part of the reason is that I?ve found that if I arrive late to class and in a rush, I feel rushed and disorganized at the outset of class; but if I arrive early, I?m relaxed and ready to go by the time things get started.  Related, and purely idiosyncratically, I have a pretty strict attendance policy, and figure that if I expect my students to be highly punctual, then I should apply the same standard to myself.

7.  Jokes have to be deployed with the utmost caution.  A well-timed, truly funny joke can be a great way to liven up a class.  But the danger is that a joke that doesn?t go over well?or, worse, offends someone?can have just the opposite effect.  The first time I taught copyright, for example, I made a snarky remark about the painting at issue in Lee v. A.R.T. (which is kinda depressing?see what you think here), and a student raised her hand and said icily, ?Annie Lee is my favorite artist.  I think her painting is wonderful.?  Ouch.  That moment was tough to get past, and was a wake-up call that even  an innocuous remark can have unforeseen consequences (see #5, ?Fragile student egos,? above).  The lesson I took away from this is to be very careful with any humorous remark, and to give wide berth of any joke that tends to mock anyone or anything?except, of course, myself.  Self-deprecating humor is unlikely to offend and may also have the salubrious effect of making the lawprof seem more human and approachable.

8.  Students hold you responsible for every word you say.  In my experience, students will hang on every word that comes out of your mouth (I?ve had students recount in detail anecdotes I?apparently?told in class that I?d entirely forgotten), and this is especially true for any promises or predictions you make about course management.  I found this out the hard way.  I used to have the very bad habit of making extemporaneous promises.  E.g., ?We?ll probably end class early today,? or ?I?ll have these slides on TWEN by tonight.?  And even though I?d follow through on nine of ten of these representations, if I forgot about or failed to keep the schedule on even one, students would?not unreasonably?call me out on it.  My policy now is never to make promises or predictions about course management issues extemporaneously in class, but only when I?m sitting at my desk, thinking carefully about the issue, and consulting my beloved MS Outlook calendar. 

9.  The learning curve bends inexorably upward.  The first times I?ve taught classes have all been onerous?the amount of work required to put together a full law course is enormous, and despite that, the first edition of any course is likely to have some serious kinks to work out.  But I discovered that the beauty thing is that after I laid the groundwork with that first course, I?d done all the hardest slogging, and thereafter, I needed to invest less prep time but the course kept getting better.  There is, of course, marginality after you teach a course many times.  I?ve taught property five times already and am planning on switching texts to keep things fresh, but still, it?s a great feeling to be able to reduce (though not, of course, eliminate completely) the amount of time one spends working at something and have it get ever better.

10.  Be yourself.  Yes, yes, it?s a hokey cliché, but I?ve found it to be entirely true.  Small counterexample:  I once tried to teach a class based on someone else?s notes and lesson plan.  It wasn?t a full-on disaster, but lord it wasn?t good.  Since then, I?ve done class Sid Vicious-style (that is, ?my way??not in a 1970s Sex Pistols idiom, though the latter would indeed be interesting), and it?s made all the difference in the world.  Large groups of students are adept at sniffing out phonies, and little is more persuasive than genuineness, so it?s not terribly surprising that to thine own self be true retains its validity in the classroom.  (Though I suppose it has limits.  If ?thine own self? is a drunk, or incompetent, or sadistic, then all bets are off.)

So that?s all I got in the way of possibly obvious and arguably useful insights.  If anyone has a beef with the above, or other thoughts they?d add to the list, I?d be interested to hear them.