Sort of Like High School

I went to a large undergraduate institution.  Some of my first year classes, like introductory physics had more than 400 students in the lecture hall.  The professors were giants in their fields, but not always the best teachers.  Frequently they were foreign and hard to understand.  Unlike high school, where there was an emphasis on how you kept your notebook, whether you did your homework etc., college was refreshing in that all that mattered was whether you grasped the material.  You were free to show up to class or not, no one cared how you took notes, it was all about quizzes and exams. 

Upper level classes had fewer people, but the emphasis remained the same.  There was more interaction with the professors, but there was no such thing as a grade for class participation.  I thought this was normal for higher education.  Then I went to law school.

Law school, particularly the first year, is like high school.  In the first year you are divided into sections, of roughly 70 people each.  You have all your classes with your section, never really interacting with the other sections.  Indeed, our first year Torts class was further subdivided into two mini-sections of 35 each. 

At the beginning of the 1st year of law school, everyone starts on the same page.  However, it is a rough learning experience.  Generally speaking, the grades that you get at the end of your first year determine much of your job prospects.  My school was ranked around #60 of 200+ schools, so not terrible but not terrific.  The higher your school was ranked, the less your individual class rank mattered.  For instance Yale, usually regarded as the top law school in the country, doesn't even give grades the first year.  Firms are so eager to get Yale students that it doesn't matter how you do.  To be fair, it is extremely difficult to get admitted to Yale, so even those at the bottom are very impressive.  Sort of like being the worst player on an All-Star team. 

Conversely, at my school everyone was shooting to be in at least the top 10% of students, hopefully the top 5%.  Over the course of the first year you would take 6 exams, that largely made up your GPA.  You were graded in Legal Writing, but it wasn't worth as many credits, so it was more important to get a high grade in the doctrinal classes.  The two biggest, worth 5 credits a piece, were Torts and Civil Procedure.  Civil Procedure came second semester, so that first year, first semester, everyone had their eye on Torts.  Even more nerve wracking, your entire grade is based on the final exam.  You have no idea about whether your study habits are working until it is too late. 

Our Torts professor was affectionately named the "velvet hammer."  The problem was that he was an exceptionally good teacher.  Not only was he exceptionally smart, he was some sort of expert on first amendment issues, particularly issues like hate speech.  He had a unique knack for conveying the information.  So much so, that almost everyone in the class grasped the material pretty easily.  Torts is probably one of the easiest subjects in the first year curriculum as well.  There is nothing too complicated.  Most classes spend the first 20% of the semester on intentional torts, like battery, false imprisonment etc.  The last 80% is spent on unintentional torts and the theory of negligence.  Even though the analysis of unintentional torts is more difficult than intentional torts, it is still pretty straight forward.  At my school, professors had to follow a strict curve, typically only 5% could get an "A", 10-15% an A- and so on with the majority of the class receiving a "B" or below.  Therefore, grasping the material was not good enough.  If you wanted the "A" you had to know the material better than the majority of the class.  Inevitably, someone had to be crushed under the velvet hammer.  Fortunately, it would at least appear to be gentle. 

Professor H, ran the torts class in the most friendly manner he knew.  He was so concerned with protecting people's feelings and encouraging participation that he went a little over the top.  For instance, if he asked a straightforward "Yes/No" question and the answer was "Yes", he would try to let someone who answered "No" down as easily as possible.  Instead of giving a gruff "wrong", he would say something like "well that's really close, and you seem like you were on the right track, but in fact in this case the answer happens to be 'yes'"  But it worked.  It was probably a combination of his easy going personality and the small class size, but there was far more participation in that class than any of my others. 

One interesting aside, Professor H was pretty intolerant of people showing up to class late.  Particularly if you made a habit of it.  We had one young lady who did make a habit of it.  She appeared to be in law school almost as a lark.  She seemed to have no end of discretionary income, always wearing the latest fashions and never the same outfit twice.  She was always late.  I think what infuriated Professor H the most was that she always came in with a fresh Starbucks.  So this was a person who realizes that they are late, but nevertheless makes sure to stop for a drink.  Perhaps if she skipped the drink she would have been on time, or at least less late.  So after about the 10th time of this happening, Professor H has had enough.   But of course, he is too nice of a guy to actually blow up.  Rather he goes the passive aggressive route of waiting for her to take her seat, and then addressing the entire class and giving this long winded speech of how it is important to value everyone's time and what showing up late represents.  I would have gone the more direct route myself, but that wasn't how Professor H rolled.  I was surprised we didn't join hands and sing Kumbayah.  The worst part was that she was either too stupid to grasp that this was about her, or was too self involved to care, she continued to stroll in late, perfectly coiffed with steaming beverage in hand, for the remainder of the semester. 

Typically, right around Thanksgiving, is when panic sets in.  Classes are mostly winding down, with exams typically scheduled for the middle of December and wrapped up before Christmas.  All of a sudden, you realize how close it is.  You have this nagging fear that there is always more to learn, more nuances to perfect.  Professor H gave us a thorough review session and encouraged people to drop by his office for further questions and answers, but it was never enough.  There was always doubt.

I think Torts was the final exam that we took that semester.  I know Criminal Law was first because people were losing their damn minds in the exam room prior to it starting.  The issue was that we took all of our exams on laptops and used this special program that locks you out of the rest of your computer.  Prior to the exam starting, all of the tech people are in the room making sure people can log on.  It was going smoothly until people noticed that the clock had started counting down.  Almost all exams are timed, typically 3-4 hours per exam and you want every second.  Since everyone was new, we all assumed that once the clock reached the prescribed time our exam would automatically submit.  This was not the case, as the poor tech guy explained again and again.  The problem was everyone was so amped up and nervous, that he had to keep explaining it over and over. 

By the time Torts rolled around, it was like the end of a marathon, the last thing left to do to end the first semester.  Most exams consist of a long fact pattern where you have to figure out the relevant legal analysis.  Professor H mixed it up a bit with some multiple choice first.  It is hard to write a good multiple choice question for Torts, because typically the answer is "it depends."  But, for a well written multiple choice there can only be one best answer.  The trick is to exploit a little loophole that leads people to select the trick answer.  I think that was worth only 10% of the exam though. 

The bulk of the exam focused on a fact pattern involving a young kid taking an assault rifle from his dad's unlocked gun closet and going to a mall and shooting it up.  It was more complicated, there were issues of the security guards having an idea that he had a weapon and the kid making threatening comments at school.  Over the course of three hours you had to identify and analyze different theories of liability.  I thought I did a pretty good job (turns out I got an A in the class). 

After grades had come out and we had started the next semester, Professor H offered to do a review of the exam.  This was great because you could see where you could improve.  Most professors grade based on a score sheet, looking to see whether you identified an issue and your analysis, with most issues worth anywhere between 3-5 points.  He gave us the score sheet and that is when I immediately noticed the velvet hammer.  There was a section worth about 16 points, a significant number of points, where he expected a policy argument on the whether the legislature should ban assault rifles.  To be fair, throughout the semester and indeed even in the instructions for the exam, he had instructed us to consider policy arguments.  Most of us missed it entirely or only touched upon it in a cursory manner.  That was the flip side of the curve though, you were only measured against the person at the top.  If they missed an issue it actually helped you.  So fortunately, the velvet hammer swung hard and hit uniformly.