The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Teaching Precedent: A Traditional Socratic Classroom
The class on which we now focus conformed fairly closely to the stereotypic highly
regimented traditional law school classroom.
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 The students in this class had received

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52
Similarity
their initial reading assignment before their first class. It was posted on a student
bulletin board in the student area of the law school, and there was an expectation
that they would arrive in class the first day with their book bought and first assign-
ment read. Subsequent assignments were posted on the board throughout the se-
mester. Much of the knowledge about these expectations had been imparted or
reinforced through informal student networks.
Like many first-year students in other law schools, students in this classroom
were assigned to a cohort that would remain together through almost all of their
first-year classes. After the initial class, the professor circulated a seating chart, and
the students filled their names in. The professor then had a larger chart constructed,
with a picture of each student’s face and corresponding name in the appropriate
seating slot. He used this when calling on students in class each day. The physical
setting was a large classroom, seating around one hundred students. The seats rose
in height from front to back along three sides of the center of the classroom. In the
center was a small platform on which the podium rested, with a desk beside it.
Behind the podium were blackboards.
Class began when the professor called it to order and delivered a brief exposi-
tion of a problem or question derived from the readings. The professor then posed
a question, looked down at his seating chart, and called out a name. Address was
formal, using surnames prefaced by “Mr.” or “Ms.” This professor typically asked
each selected student a series of questions and occasionally continued speaking with
the same student for the entire class hour. More often, however, he called on two
or more students for extended exchanges through the course of one class hour.
When dissatisfied with an answer, he often asked for volunteers and selected stu-
dents who raised their hands, returning then to the designated student after other
students had answered that particular question.
At no time during this pilot study did a student in this class respond to being
called on by saying that he or she had not done the reading for the class. The profes-
sor had a daily sign-up sheet for students who were unable to do the reading; each
student was permitted a limited number of “unprepared days” each semester. On
other days, the students were expected to be prepared. The marked, almost ritual
structuring of student language characteristic of the law school classroom can be
analogized to other kinds of rituals designed to resocialize members of society to new
statuses. As I’ve noted, the linguistic discipline of the first-year law school classroom
in some respects transcends variation in professors’ pedagogic styles and political
philosophies; it can be viewed as part of an initial process through which previously
learned linguistic conventions and conversational expectations are broken down.
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The Process of Teaching Legal Reading
The first excerpt that follows was taken from the written text of an appellate opin-
ion, traditionally found in official books known as reporters that publish the deci-
sions of appellate courts (and now increasingly also obtained by attorneys from
one of the online services that publish the opinions electronically). Portions of
these opinions are excerpted in the casebooks used in law school classes, a pro-
cess linguistic anthropologists would talk about as recontextualization because

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Learning to Read Like a Lawyer
53
the portions of written text originally issued as parts of complete opinions by
courts are taken from their original contexts and put into a new context.
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The new context is formed by other case excerpts, notes on cases, occasional ex-
cerpts from articles or books, and the casebook author’s commentary, typically
bound together in a heavy book devoted to one area of law (contracts, for ex-
ample, or criminal law). So, now let us turn to one such excerpted piece of
written text:
SULLIVAN v. O’CONNOR
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 1973.
363 Mass. 579, 296 N.E.2d 183.
KAPLAN, J. The plaintiff patient secured a jury verdict of $13,500 against the defen-
dant surgeon for breach of contract in respect to an operation upon the plaintiff ’s
nose. The substituted consolidated bill of exceptions presents questions about the
correctness of the judge’s instructions on the issue of damages.
The declaration was in two counts. In the first count, the plaintiff alleged that
she, as patient, entered into a contract with the defendant, a surgeon, wherein the
defendant promised to perform plastic surgery on her nose and thereby to enhance
her beauty and improve her appearance; that he performed the surgery but failed
to achieve the promised result; rather the result of the surgery was to disfigure and
deform her nose, to cause her pain in body and mind, and to subject her to other
damage and expense. The second count, based on the same transaction, was in the
conventional form for malpractice, charging that the defendant had been guilty of
negligence in performing the surgery. . . .