The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Yale Law School
, 14. One-third of the respondents preferred
“panels or on-call” systems to other systems for managing classroom discussion, including
the more classic “cold-call” approach, in which students are called on without warning.
93. To complete the picture, we should mention that Class #3 had equal participa-
tion ratios for men and women in both volunteered and called-on categories, meaning that
the distinction between volunteering and being called on does not seem to have gendered
dimensions in this class.
94. Students from Class #6 mentioned the unusually high number of older students
in the class—merely a reported perception on their part, but perhaps worth noting in
passing here. Class #3 was a night school class in a local law school and thus also a poten-
tial candidate for having a higher than usual number of older students.
95. Class #8 was also quite small, 32 students, as opposed to the 53 students in Class
#6; so again, we might want to ask about variations in control and relative structuring of
Notes to Pages 192–195
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turns in classes of various sizes. And there is also the issue of whether we would find varia-
tion across different law school subjects, a question we cannot address because we held
this particular factor constant in this study.
96. Note that these classes also contained substantial cohorts of students of color.
The fact that the same professor, who is a woman of color, might lead a class that has an
underrepresentation of women but an overrepresentation of students of color raises the
important point that we must also focus on the intersections of kinds of identity in un-
derstanding classroom dynamics. See Mertz et al., “What Difference Does Difference
Make?,” 75–80.
97. Class #6 was high in this regard (46% time, 62% turns in shorter exchanges), and
Class #3 was lower (13% time and 31% turns in shorter exchanges). Thus, although the
two classes are roughly comparable in terms of the amount of time spent in Socratic ex-
changes (21 and 24%), it would be fair to characterize Class #3 as more Socratic or formal
because of the lower amount of informal exchange. (The difference is accounted for by
the amount of time spent by the professor in lecture, or monologue: 63%).
98. Student interviews were not part of our original project design, but we began these
interviews during the first phase of data collection in response to a request from students
in one of the elite/prestige classes. Having undertaken this step, we proceeded to offer stu-
dents in the remaining schools an opportunity to participate in interviews where possible.
The resulting focus groups should not be viewed as representative of the average student;
certainly, in the first case, where the students themselves initiated the focus groups, these
were the students with more than average interest in having a voice in the ultimate study
results and with the time and energy to participate. On the other hand, once the decision
to offer focus groups to the students was made, we did make an effort to encourage all
students to participate, and so the groups were not entirely self-initiated. We were able to
obtain student interviews in one elite, one prestige, one regional, and one local law school,
giving us a nice array across the status hierarchy. Three of the professors teaching these
classes were male and one was female; one was a professor of color, and the remaining
three were European American. (As noted earlier, we obtained professor interviews in six
of the eight classrooms, again spanning the status hierarchy and including professors of
both genders and diverse races.) Thus, the resulting data cannot be treated as evidence of
“typical” students’ opinions but can be used as qualitative information to supplement the
picture obtained from observing them in class and speaking with their professors.
99. Students in Class #7 specifically commented that any gender or race differences
in participation were more likely the product of women’s differential hesitation about
volunteering rather than any bias on the part of the professor; this was a class that relied
heavily on volunteered turns.
100. The idea that some aspects of traditional Socratic teaching could be retained
while shifting many other characteristics of law school training has been part of the ongo-
ing discussion of pedagogical reform for some time. See, e.g., Garner, “Socratic Misogyny?”
The present study, along with recent observational studies from Yale and Harvard, sug-
gests that this has already happened in some so-called Socratic classrooms and that some
law professors are experimenting with mixed approaches to teaching.
101. My coauthors and I have elsewhere discussed the difficulties of coding for race,
given that any attempt to pin people down into simpler, more essentializing categories of
necessity obliterates important aspects of their identity. Mertz et al., “What Difference Does
Difference Make?,” 78–80. For the purposes of providing some empirical information on
race, particularly in light of the dearth of such studies, our team proceeded using the typi-
cal, more simplistic categories in tracking participation rates, but not without consider-
able, ongoing struggle over the process. My decision to proceed in this way was heavily
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influenced by the thought that were we to permit the dilemmas involved in coding race to
dissuade us from going forward, yet another study would emerge with information only
on gender, leaving a continuing silence on racial dynamics in the law school classroom.
102. I have mentioned age as another possible consideration. I also would add sexual
preference, an identity about which we were unable to collect any systematic information
in this study.