The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

The Traditional Socratic Teacher: On the Wane?
We have already encountered the most stereotypic Socratic teacher in this research,
a professor who taught in one of the classes used for the pilot study. This is the
class in which uptake structure mirrored the pragmatic lesson the professor sought
to inculcate; for example, in one exchange, he repeated the question “How did this
case get to the appellate court?” until he received the desired response (“It was
appealed”; Transcript 4.2). It was a class taught in an elite/prestige law school by a
white male professor, who himself had been educated in an elite law school. It is
interesting that this class was the only one we encountered that maintained the level
of strictly stylized questioning typically associated with “pure” Socratic teaching.
1
There have been some indications that the Socratic method is on the wane, at least
in certain law schools.
2
 Indeed, a recent article describes “The Decline of the Socratic
Method at Harvard.”
3
 The professors included in my actual study used methods
ranging from modified Socratic teaching, through use of shorter exchanges and at
times almost conversational styles, to a heavy lecture format. This might appear to
give some support to those who see a decline in use of strict Socratic teaching.
However, there are some difficulties in assessing either the current general state
of Socratic teaching in law schools or the degree to which the current situation
represents a marked change from earlier teaching norms. First, most studies have
relied on professors’ self-reports as to what they are doing, which may not be en-
tirely accurate.
4
 For example, one of the professors in my study described his teach-
ing method as a mixture: “I try . . . purposely to get a mix. I don’t want to do the
same format every day. I want days where I really push them a lot, I want days where
I maybe lecture it, there’s no sense in falling into a pattern. Patterns create stale-
ness” (Interview 97–I13). This professor spent 91% of class time in monologue or
lecture. This does not mean that his assessment was entirely inaccurate, because
he did use the remaining 9% of the time to vary the format. However, one would
not want to use his self-report as the primary or only source of information about
the actual pattern in his classroom. And, indeed, this is not unusual; it is difficult
for speakers to keep detailed track of what they are doing.
A second difficulty is that we have no thorough linguistic study of classic Socratic
teaching during its heyday. As a result, when discussing the linguistic structure of
Socratic teaching, the literature relies on stereotypes and anecdotal descriptions of
this teaching method promulgated by either fans or opponents of Socratic teaching.
Although there is some agreement on a general definition of the genre—it involves
extended questioning of individual students regarding cases assigned for class—from
there the details become increasingly difficult to define. For some, it is necessary that
the questioning occupy almost all of class time, that it be antagonistic, that no an-

---

Professorial Style in Context
143
swers or explanations be proffered by the professor, and that the students be called
on at random without warning. For others, some subset of these characteristics is all
that is necessary. Others rely on a generalized combination of discourse structure
and discourse content in defining Socratic teaching: “For many professors, the term
‘Socratic’ describes a question and answer method in which the professor asks a se-
ries of questions of the students, uncovering both preconceptions and cogent legal
analysis.”
5
 We really have no systematic information on the actual distribution of
particular characteristics in classrooms considered to be strictly Socratic. It seems
possible that even professors considered to be classic Socratic teachers occasionally
broke into explanations and lecturing, or that some may have approached the ques-
tioning with less ferocity and animosity than one would infer from the stereotype
and associated anecdotes. It is unclear under the stereotype how to classify profes-
sors who combine classic Socratic questioning with a predictable pattern for calling
on students (rather than calling on them with no warning) or with a heavy reliance
on volunteers. It is similarly difficult to label a professor who in essence follows the
same thread of question-answer sequences that would be found in the typical Socratic
classroom (i.e., asking for statements of facts and reasoning, using hypotheticals to
test students’ understandings) but who does so with a series of students rather than
remaining in tight dialogue with just one or two students.
Interestingly, a study published in 1977 by Thomas Shaffer and Robert
Redmount seemed to indicate that the Socratic method was on the wane.
6
 Their re-
search found that first-year law teaching at Indianapolis, Notre Dame, and Valparaiso
(and possibly also UCLA) was heavily oriented toward lecture. Teachers in first-year
classes in the Indiana schools spoke “four-fifths of the time,” whereas teachers in
public-policy-oriented classes spoke “only two-thirds of the time.”
7
 Shaffer and
Redmount seem to define Socratic dialogue in terms of “probing” methods of
questioning, which they found to be “not used much at all”; when these methods
were used, it was most frequently in the smaller schools and in the generally smaller
third-year classes. As I’ve noted, we don’t have quantitative observational data from
early Socratic classrooms, and so we don’t know to what extent even the most pure
examples of Socratic teaching involved a mixture of lecture and questioning. From
one perspective, one could look at Shaffer and Redmount’s findings as evidence
that a nonlecture method of some kind was still very much in use in first-year class-
rooms: nothing close to 100% or 95% of the time was spent in lecture (by contrast
with a straight lecture-style class). This was true in all but one of the classes of this
study as well. Friedland’s 1994–1995 survey of law professors similarly found that
97% of the respondents reported using Socratic method at least some of the time
in first-year classes.
8
 In contrast with Shaffer and Redmount’s findings, Friedland’s
respondents recount using Socratic method to a greater degree in first-year classes
and lecture method more in upper-level courses.
9
A third complication lies in the fact that the impact of Socratic teaching may
not be attributable in any straightforward way to the amount of floor time it occu-
pies. It may be sufficient that the method is used to some degree in most class hours;
this may be enough to convey to students any particular form of reasoning that it
embodies, or to intimidate them with the fear of possible public humiliation often
mentioned as one of its disciplining functions.

---

144
Difference
In sum, we do not have enough information to reach a definitive conclusion
about the purported decline of Socratic teaching. There is very little empirical in-
formation about the actual distribution or shape of Socratic teaching in its reputed
heyday to provide a baseline. Furthermore, there is a great deal of variability in the
details of how Socratic teaching is defined in the literature, with some writers fo-
cusing more on discourse structure and others on a tough or exacting emotional
atmosphere. Studies purporting to show the end or decline of Socratic teaching
frequently yield substantial evidence of its continuing influence. For example, of
the faculty surveyed for an article entitled “The Decline of the Socratic Method at
Harvard,” the largest group (41.6%) reported using traditional Socratic teaching,
and another 25% reported employing a mix of Socratic and other methods.
10
 There
may indeed be an ongoing influx of alternative teaching methods (and a correla-
tive decline in use of traditional Socratic teaching), but we do not have the evi-
dence at this point to conclude that any of the core features of Socratic teaching
have ceased to exert considerable influence in law school training.
11
 As we will see,
there is considerable methodological difficulty in studying some of the often men-
tioned features of the Socratic classroom. For example, internal dialogue within a
professorial lecture can replicate aspects of the discourse or argument structure,
and a professor who calls on multiple students to answer questions (rather than
focusing on one or two) can still create an intimidating atmosphere. We turn now
to an examination of the more complex, mixed picture of teaching method that
emerges from the classrooms of this study.