The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

[professors]
who talked that way, but I don’t do that. You know, I- I think that it’s
Socratic in the sense that I ask them a lot of questions. And if that’s what

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Professorial Style in Context
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Socratic has come to mean, then, okay, it’s Socratic. But it’s not Socratic in
the sense that I won’t give answers. It’s not Socratic in the sense that I have
suspended all judgment. There’s no- no question that I’m looking for
something in particular nine times out of ten. (.) And I won’t leave a case
unless I go back to what I consider the key passage, and say, “All right,
look at this. It’s right here,” you know, and hopefully over time, through
the process of questioning them on what’s important and telling them at
the end, they’ll start to realize what’s important. But I won’t leave a subject
simply because I haven’t gotten the proper answer. I’ll fish for it for a
while.
This professor goes on to stress that pure Socratic teaching, which avoids giving
answers, can also leave students without adequate knowledge of the substance of
the area of law being taught (here, contract law): “They really need to know this
stuff when they go out and start practicing . . . they’re expected to know some of
the content of this area of law.” Thus, in his view, a teaching method that left the
students to glean this content for themselves, concentrating instead solely on a
process of reasoning instantiated through endless questions, would fail to achieve
an important pedagogical goal in law teaching. Of course, as we have no detailed
linguistic study of the older Socratic classes, we cannot know to what extent the
features found in our modified Socratic classrooms have always been part of the
Socratic teacher’s repertoire, the stereotype to the contrary notwithstanding. How-
ever, it does appear that to the extent that professors depart from stereotypical
Socratic rules, the modified format results in more cohesive, coherent, and prob-
ably more pedagogically effective lengthy exchanges. Carrying on these lengthier
exchanges, just like extended direct or cross-examination in a courtroom, poses
certain discursive challenges and difficulties. In this section we have examined some
of the linguistic devices deployed by professors to overcome those problems, to be
sure with varying degrees of success.
The Short-Exchange Teacher: Mixing Dialogue,
Lecture, and Conversation
In four of the classes, professors employed less than half of the amount of extended
dialogue found in the three modified Socratic classrooms.
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 The structure of ex-
changes in these classrooms tended to be more free-ranging, with more students
chiming in to approximate a give-and-take at times slightly more reminiscent of
ordinary conversation (although the constant mediation of professor questions
serves as a continual reminder that this is classroom dialogue).
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 All of the classes
also included stretches of more typically Socratic extended dialogue, often at the
beginning of discussion of a case, when the professor asked a student to state the
facts or delineate the key arguments and issues. And, as in all of the other classes,
these professors also lectured at times.
Transcript 7.10 [3/5/8–9]
[During the initial exchanges in this class, the professor asks one student to state the
facts and lay out the court’s decision (turns 1–70), and then engages in shorter

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156
Difference
exchanges with several other students about the rationale of the case (turns 71–79, 80–
86, 87–90, 91–95). Numbers at the left indicate the progression of turns in the class