"Learning law by the yard is hard, but by the inch it's a cinch."
*yes it's a groaner - but at least Summers is taking a stab at a sense of humor!

The whole presentment of materials in law school I find kind of frustrating. it seems to me that the whole thing would be easier if they would deal in a straightforward manner with telling us first what is clearly dileneated, and then later introducing us to all the complexities that happen in the gray or contested areas of law.

But no. Instead their explicit policy is to give us the borderline cases first, the ones where the application of the rule is murky and can be reasonably argued in completely opposing ways. The whole reasoning behind it is that they want us to think about all the issues lawyers and judges have to think about in these murky cases, they want us to argue with each other and the profs, struggle with it, and somehow in the process we'll develop the analytical skills, the types of reasoning processes that are specific to the legal realm.

The problem with this is that we don't even really know what the law is - we're expected to work it out from the case. That's also supposed to be part of the reasoning process. But how are you supposed to work out what the law is from a case that's admittedly pushing at the fringes of where the law is? If the law was stated to us clearly, and then they gave us a murky case, it might be possible to use our analytical skills to argue away at the murky case. Or, if the case was a clear illustration of an undoubtedly correct application of the law, then w/o being told what the law was we would stand a chance of working it out for ourselves from the cases.

But instead they throw us into this realm where we don't get anything, we have to make it all up as we go and hope it comes out the way they want. At the very least I can say that the profs don't expect us to necessarily come to the right conclusion . . . this is why we have no graded assignments but simply a final at the end of the semester. Asking us to try to come up with "right answers" right now would be ludicrous. We're supposed to trust that it will all make sense by the end of the semester.

And I believe it will, because after all they train lots of competent lawyers. But all the same, in my tired exhausted state, the structure kind of pisses me off. Granted, I'm at the end of a very bad haul . . . Tuesday and Wednesday my section has all four of our core classes, which amounts to 8-16 hours of prep for Tuesday and 8-16 hours of prep for Wednesday, plus full days of classes both those days. Tuesday especially sucks because I both have to be in class all day *and* have to do the maximum load of work . . . which means Wednesdays also suck, with only having the slightest mitigating factor of being able to say "well at least I've finished Tuesday!"

And this is repeated, week after week. And I'm in week one. So I feel like being grumpy. And don't even try to tell me "well what did you expect from law school". Yeah I signed on for this, I know - but that doesn't mean I signed a contract not to complain about it!! :-P