The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

[paraphrasing student] 
“The more
preliminary negotiation, the more likely we’ve got an offer.” We could-
we could start the process now and negotiate until doomsday, and still
maybe never find an offer. So, I don’t think the- the quantity, per se, or
the volume of preliminary negotiations is necessarily going to get it.
What’s going to get us into an offer? 
[ . . . omitted material, reiterating
and clarifying question (.57 total turn time) . . . ]
 How do you- how do
you support that? Ms. H.?
Ms. H.:
Umm, when Glass Works said that they could quote them a price, per
gross, for immediate acceptance, that would lead defendants to believe
that they had grounds for an acceptance, these were the grounds that
they could accept.
Prof.:
Okay. They could also (), according to legal standard, I don’t care if it
was first, I don’t care if it was fifty-ninth, in the- in the order of
correspondence, the first piece of communication, which actually and
reasonably led the other party to believe the power of acceptance is
created in the offer. I would certainly agree with you, Ms. H., on an
empirical basis 
[ . . . omitted material, elaborating on how to identify an
offer (2.55 total turn time) . . . ]
 Okay? Any more questions or observa-
tions on this? Mm-hmm?
Mr. Y.:
Is there some objective standard by which the court decides whether a
person has reasonable- reasonably have invested his power of accep-
tance or is that solely subjective?
Prof.:
Well--
Mr. Y.:
--I’m not clear on what differentiates, say, the first response where
the () promised them that they will make the shipment. And in the
second one it says, “Enter our order.” I’m not sure as to what (), that
essential element differentiates, differentiates- (.)
Prof.:
Well, the court, in analyzing the second piece of correspondence, said
there’s clearly an offer on the table, yeah, they received an inquiry to
what the- what the prices would be. And the court said that what we
have here is an offer. Now, if the court says that there was an offer,
hopefully they’ve got some rationale to establish how that statement, in
the context of the inquiry that preceded it, will raise actual and
reasonable belief, on the part of the buyer, that a power of acceptance is
created in them. Now, the primary focus is- there’s nothing in the facts

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166
Difference
to suggest any special knowledge that wouldn’t otherwise appear to a
reasonable person, you’re right- the primary focus becomes, what were
the reasonable expectations of the prospective buyer? Now, when you
asked me if that is a subjective standard or not, the answer has to be,
“No, absolutely not,” because reasonable is always objective. Reasonable
is always measured against this reasonable, objective personality, as
distinct from an idiosyncratic, individualized, inside-their-head type of
an approach. I think, what you were probably driving at is, is the more
basic question, “Is this an individualistic determination on a case-by-
case basis?” Absolutely, absolutely. Now, the court said it’s an offer. And
they give some decent reasons for it. I don’t think those reasons are
necessarily totally conclusive. You could make a case on the other side.
Uh, but, I think they did support it with decent reasoning. They said,
“Wait a minute. If this had just been the statement initially, and you
start making it look more like the 
Kershaw v. Moulton
 case, it would- it
would particularly fail as an offer then because you would not have a
definite quantity. It would be just like 
Kershaw v. Moulton
 in that sense.
They say, ‘We offer you these glass jars at the following prices, per
gross,’ not specifying how many.”
[Note elision of voices here, lack of clear
demarcation of when court’s voice ends.]
 And, we’re going to see that’s
the key, that’s exactly what you have in 
Kershaw v. Moulton
. They offer
you barrels of salt at a particular price. No specification of how many
barrels. (.) But with no designation of quantity, it’s not reasonable to
assume that this person would wish to commit himself. (.) So, we would
say, the first, basic criterion is going to be an offer. That’s going to be
the first of the two-part steps necessary. You’ve got to create that power
of acceptance. And it can’t happen until you get an offer. Now, we’re
going to see ways that that offer can die or be killed. 
[ . . . omitted
material (6.42 total turn time) . . . ]
 Any other questions? (.02 pause)
Okay, the 
Craft
 case (.) Now, there is a general rule. A general rule
concerning newspaper advertisements. What is the general rule? (.05
pause) Uh, yes, umm, Ms. R.?
Until this final turn, the exchange did not appear to be markedly different from
those found in other, more participatory classes. We see an example of the class
responding as a whole to one question. When one student gives an unsatisfactory
reply, the professor cautions him gently—interestingly, using a metalinguistic cor-
rection of how the student “articulates” the point and paraphrasing the student’s
answer. The ubiquity of forms of reported speech in law professors’ talk (see Chapter
6) is evident in this excerpt, as the professor reports first indirectly and then di-
rectly what the court said, as well as rephrasing the student’s question and answer-
ing in a direct quotation (“the answer has to be, ‘No, absolutely not’”)—an
interesting reframing of what is essentially the professor’s own speech as the prod-
uct of an authoritative, almost external voice stating the inevitable. In the professor’s
direct quotation of the court’s speech, there is an intriguing blurring of the bound-
aries between the court’s voice and that of the professor explicating the court’s
reasoning. From a very clear initial boundary (“The court said, ‘Now wait a minute
. . . ’”), the quotation devolves into murky territory, until at last with the sentence
“And, we’re going to see . . . ,” the professor has clearly moved back into his own

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Professorial Style in Context
167
voice, as indicated by use of the pedagogical “we.” However, as marked in the tran-
script, it is unclear at what point this shift actually occurred—a by-product of the
ubiquitous usurpation of courts’ and others’ voices in fictional direct quotation
forms used so frequently in these classes.
We can discern other similarities between this and other classrooms. Like the
professor in Class #6 above, this professor moves around the classroom in search
of a correct response and comments approvingly when he receives it. There are
very few repeat players in the class as a result of a conscious policy of the professor:
I try to never have more than- there may be a follow-up question occasionally, but
for the most part it’s one question per student. I think it’s extremely unfair to stay
with one student. Not that they shouldn’t be prepared to be able to do that, but be-
cause, while they’re talking they aren’t getting any notes. () primary reason to be in
class is to get the necessary notes . . . usually what I do is hop around and then the
students pay more attention to it. . . . I like students to participate. I want them to
participate, it makes it more enjoyable, but I have to admit as a student, I purpose-
fully tried to avoid dialogue because I was there to hone in on what the professor had
to say and get it down in my notes. . . . Because the reality is, that I was not going to
be ultimately evaluated and graded on my preparation for class. It was going to be
my preparation for the exam.
This policy results in a teaching style that is difficult to categorize because despite
the heavy preponderance of lecture here, the overall class structure remains some-
what dialogic, although there are far fewer pair-parts than in other classes. One
measure of this is the total number of professor turns throughout the semester in
this class (586), which is markedly lower than in the other classes. (The next-low-
est number, in Class #3, is 1,537, and all of the remaining professors took up more
than 3,000 turns, ranging as high as 4,046 turns for the professor in Class #1.)
35
Obviously, particularly in light of the high percentage of class time taken by the
professor here, each professor turn would on average be much longer than in other
classes.
To generate a skeletal picture of the overall structure in this class, the next text
excerpt gives an outline of the remaining turns in the class whose opening was in-
cluded in Transcript 7.13. This outline includes the time for each turn, along with a
sketch of features of the professor’s speech that contribute to continuity between turns:
Transcript 7.14 [7/10/6–17]
Ms. R.:
13 sec.
Prof.: