The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

The Modified Socratic Teacher
If we rank the classrooms included in our full study in terms of the amount of
extended, Socratic-style dialogue (in terms of either amount of time or number
of turns), we find that there is a clustering of three classrooms (#1, #4, #5) at the
top.
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The teachers in these classrooms spent between 45% and 60% of the time
in extended dialogue, whereas the remaining classes (except for #7, the lecture-
dominated class) clustered between 21% and 29%. Similarly, the teachers in
classes #1, #4, and #5 spent between 74% and 86% of the turns in extended dia-
logue with students, whereas teachers in “short-exchange” classes spent 60%,
54%, 40%, and 34%. Note that all of the more Socratic classes in the study had
some shorter dialogues, in which multiple students participated for shorter pe-
riods of time, as well as some lectures by the professors. For this reason, I char-
acterize them as “modified Socratic” classrooms. This terminology is supported
by other deviations from stereotypical Socratic teaching found in these classes,
as we will see. We now turn to examine the characteristics of these three modi-
fied Socratic classrooms.
Because extended dialogue dominates in these classrooms, we frequently find
the class period divided among a small number of students, each of whom partici-
pates in a lengthy exchange with the professor. All three professors diverge from
dialogue at times, using lecture formats to explicate particular points. In this re-
gard, the teaching varies from standard Socratic format in that some answers are
in fact explained and laid out for students, rather than left to emerge in dialogue.

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Professorial Style in Context
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The professors also use humor and other techniques to soften the questioning, again
a departure from the stereotypical harshness and humiliation that some deemed
to be central to Socratic questioning. If the traditional stereotype portrayed Socratic
dialogue as similar to oral argument at the appellate level (where judges sharply
question attorneys),
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 the Socratic exchanges in these classrooms seem to more
frequently approximate direct examinations, in which the questioner is attempt-
ing to elicit and coproduce an integrated narrative. This, of course, does not mean
that students do not feel pressure when they are required to sustain lengthy ex-
changes with their teachers, sometimes under the eyes of more than one hundred
classmates. And, unlike a direct examination, the classroom exchange is not re-
hearsed. The student in a sense occupies a place somewhere in between the wit-
nesses in cross-examinations and direct examinations; although the professor is
not the student’s attorney, with a strong investment in eliciting a seamless narra-
tive, in these transcripts we find evidence that professors are in fact attempting to
ease the dialogic process through a number of devices, such as framing. Professors
may not have the complete overlap of interest in production of a smooth narrative
found between a client and attorney during a direct examination. However, they
do have a strong interest in keeping classroom exchanges going in a coherent and
productive fashion. In this sense, there seems to be a difference between the modi-
fied Socratic teachers of this study and the opposing counsel bent on breaking down
a witness through cross-examination, or even the appellate judge zealously pok-
ing holes in an attorney’s oral argument.
In this example from Class #4, taught by a white male professor in a relatively
highly ranked regional school, we see how the teacher coconstructs a story with
his chosen Socratic partner. This student takes up 66% of the student turns on this