The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Transcript 5.4 [1/4/10]
Prof.:
Well, let’s go back to Mr. H. 
[Returning to selected Socratic dialogue
participant]
 What is the good involved in the transaction?
Mr. H.:
I would say that it () service.
Prof.:
Is there a good in that transaction? Is Article 2 applicable at all?
Come on now, I don’t want to (). Yes or no.
Mr. H.:
No, it’s not.
Prof.:
Is that a “no” that you believe in, or is that a “no” that you’re just
wimping out? [[Class laughter]] Are you sure?
Mr. H.:
I am sure. I would say that it is “no”--
Prof.:
--No. No good in that transac-
tion. UCC, no. Common law, yes.
Student #2:
So they, they’re- the UCC presents a point that isn’t a good.
Prof.:
For you to discern a difference between the two. And to wonder,
and be concerned about, lose sleep. That’s what this is all about.
Okay?
[ . . . ]
In this rather elliptical exchange, the professor is focusing on a key distinction
in U.S. contract law: whether the contract involved goods or services. Contracts
for goods are covered by the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC); contracts for
services are not, and must be dealt with under common law rules.
7
 Although the
professor’s question and subsequent comment presuppose that the students
understand this distinction, Student #2 seems to be indicating that this is a
new insight and attempts to clarify the point. Despite his apparent refusal
to respond at the end of this excerpt, the professor has actually already pro-
vided the answer to the student’s question in a previous turn. Note also that, as
in Transcript 4.1 at the beginning of Chapter 4, these comments by the profes-
sor at times approach a satiric level, operating at a metalevel to make fun of tra-
ditional conceptions surrounding law teaching. (Yet, in each case, there is

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Epistemology and Teaching Styles
91
arguably some double-voicing in which the satiric tone both mocks and subtly
invokes the stereotype.)
Through Socratic questioning (but also through departures from traditional
Socratic teaching such as mini-lectures and giving answers), teachers in modified
Socratic classrooms push students to perform all of the steps required for an ade-
quate legal reading as outlined in Chapter 4. Arguably, there is a slightly more at-
tenuated mirroring relationship here between authoritative classroom talk and a
canonical legal reading focused on authority. However, there is still a strong fam-
ily resemblance in both the structure and content of the message. As we see in Tran-
script 5.4, professors use negative uptake not only to press for technically correct
responses, but also to push students to adopt appropriately authoritative tones of
voice. During the substantial amount of class time spent in extended exchanges,
they prod students to decipher correctly the authoritative form and content of legal
discourse.
Shorter Law Class Conversations: Authority in Sheep’s Clothing
Finally, four of the classrooms of the study spent less time in the classic, extended
Socratic dialogues than was found in our modified Socratic classes, and less time
in lecture than in Class #7. Instead, these four, less conventional classrooms were
characterized by a higher proportion of the shorter, nonfocused professor-student
exchanges (Classes #2, #3, #6, and #8). Some of these classes also at times adopted
a more relaxed, conversational style of interaction. Of course, this is all relative;
there were still major differences between the structure of these classes and ordi-
nary everyday conversation. Turns at talk here were still closely controlled by the
professor, and unmediated exchanges among students were a relative rarity. None-
theless, there was far less focused Socratic dialogue in these classes than in the
modified Socratic classrooms (focused exchanges being those involving more ex-
tended dialogue with one student, whereas nonfocused exchanges entail only one
or two turns with a given student). Interestingly, three of these four classes were
taught by women professors (and, indeed, there are only three women professors
in the study).
8
 In all but one of these four classrooms, the shift away from extended
dialogue was accompanied by a marked rise in the time spent on shorter exchanges,
with more students speaking for briefer periods of time (from 22% to 46%). In the
other school (Class #3), there are still more of the shorter, nonfocused student-
professor exchanges than in the modified Socratic classes (13% as compared with
5% and 6% of class time). However, this percentage is substantially lower than is
found in the three other short-exchange classes. Instead, there is more time spent
in lecturing (63% as compared with 29%, 33%, and 50% in the other short-
exchange classes). Thus, this class falls at the less interactive end of the continuum,
with some affinities to a lecture format, whereas the other three short-exchange
classes involve more overall discursive interaction between professors and students.
9
Despite these divergences in style, professors in all four of the short-exchange
classes teach the same canons of a standard legal reading that we have already iden-
tified in other classrooms. Once again, we have encountered numerous examples

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92
Similarity
from these classrooms in previous discussions. Some of these previous transcript
excerpts help to underscore the point that all of the teachers in this study at times
use lecture as well as Socratic exchanges of one kind or another. Thus, in Tran-
script 4.4, we heard a professor in one of the short-exchange classes utilize a fairly
standard Socratic method of questioning in her effort to clarify a student’s state-
ment of the facts (involving the timing of a delivery of wheat). This was also true
in Transcript 4.6, where the same professor interrupted a student who began her
turn by describing the plaintiff as a “youthful man” rather than using a legal frame.
In both cases, the professor called on a student to explicate the case assigned for
the day and continued in dialogue with that student for some time, in an exercise
designed to sharpen the students’ understanding of fact construction in legal nar-
ratives. Transcript 4.8 showed us a short-exchange professor pushing a student to
apply law to facts (asking him to select which facts constituted consideration), and
in Transcripts 4.10, 4.11, and 4.12 professors from these kinds of classes work with
students to develop skills in analogical reasoning. Transcript 4.14 used an exchange
from a short-exchange classroom to exemplify the process by which professors
clarify law (here, the doctrine of specific performance), and here we see how a simi-
lar pedagogical message to that conveyed in formal, more Socratic classrooms can
be delivered in a more informal kind of exchange. (In Transcript 4.14, the student
began a request for clarification by saying “Wait a minute,” the class interrupted
with multiple speakers talking at once, and a second student chimed in to approve
the first student’s answer, a privilege usually reserved for the professor in more
formal classrooms.) Interestingly, students were still using a vigorous turn-taking
structure to clarify aspects of a legal reading focused on authoritative case law lan-
guage and the practice by which it can be de- and recontextualized.
10
Thus, when nonfocused exchanges are doing much of the work in a class, the
same core pedagogical message is conveyed in a somewhat different form. With
lectures, professors do much of the discursive work, whereas in focused dialogues
individual students must stay in the spotlight for extended periods of time, labo-
riously uncovering the legal story as they respond to question after question. In
nonfocused exchanges, multiple students may chime in to help one another and
the professor in constructing an acceptable legal narrative, adopting a more con-
versational style. The same rules for reading apply, but they are learned in a some-
what different form.