Really good law students succeed in part by figuring out how law school works and organizing around long-standing structures. Really good lawyers succeed in part by pointing out (diplomatically) what facts the judge does not understand accurately, or by making an argument never tried before in a particular jurisdiction. Really good lawyers know their cases and their files better than anyone else, inside and out. Really good lawyers understand the policy behind the law and why the laws are written a particular way. Really good law students learn to accommodate authority. Really good lawyers confront authority (again, in a diplomatic way).
My only caveat with the quoted passage that I'd say really great law students learn to maneuver around authority structures. But that's hard.
One could of course have a long discussion as to whether this is a good way for a law school to be. But I hope we'd agree that a good part of what a really good law school does is offer the initial training people need to be really good lawyers.
To my enormous regret, I missed UM's Equity Theater because I was at a conference in Berkeley, but I'm looking forward to the promised posting of some the videos (and will link to the funniest ones). I hear it was a great show.
Meanwhile, the posting of this amusing video by NYU students, Please Repeat the Question, from their annual law school mockathon, provides an occasion for me to give my 2 cents on the laptops-in-class issue. But first, the funny:
Here are my thoughts on laptops in class:
I don't doubt for a second that a fraction of the students in every class are using laptops to do something other than take notes. How big a fraction is a very variable thing.
Anyone who thinks everyone was paying attention before laptops entered the classroom is dreaming.
Anyone who doubts that more students would pay attention in class if they had their laptops denied to them doesn't understand (1) the concept of the the “captive audience”; (2) the attractive nuisance aspect of wifi; (3) the mental habits of Generation Multitask.
Many of our students, like me, have gotten used to using a computer for all note taking. Stripping them of a familiar tool would be like telling a previous generation of students that they were forbidden to use legal pads or lined paper but had to take all their notes on index cards: something you should do only if there's a very good pedagogical reason. Students who were already paying attention will be disadvantaged by a ban.
Laptops create some genuine problems when non-users are annoyed by the keyboard clicking, but in most classrooms the instructor can create a laptop-free zone to accommodate those who would otherwise be bothered.
Laptops create some genuine problems when bad actors run something with video or with flashing colors that distracts their neighbors. Fortunately, this is both rare and not that hard to detect and deter.
One of my technoskeptical colleagues banned laptops in his first year class last year, and says he'll never do it again because the exams were so poor — he thinks as a result of the ban.
Every conference I've been to in the past few years features many members of the audience — yes, including law profs — checking email or surfing or writing something during large parts of the conference. (Not to mention that even non-laptop users read mail, or papers, or do work during faculty meetings, although there the case for paying attention often may be somewhat weaker.) There is a danger of hypocrisy.
My bottom line is that the case for banning laptops is weak compared to their potential benefits. In the end, I see them mainly as a challenge to both me and to my students.
The challenge to me is that I have to be more interesting than MySpace or Scrabble (yes, you know who you are). I suspect I don't always meet this challenge, but I'm working on it.
The challenge to my students is that they have to figure out the right tradeoff between having online fun in class, and learning what they may need to do do well on the exam and in their future careers. Law students are adults, and in the end that choice ought, I think, to be up to them.
This offer is good for 25 black-and-white resume copies per customer and is only valid for orders placed and picked up in-store. Customers may place orders by submitting their resume in printed format or as a digital file, and the copies will be printed single-sided on resume-quality paper.
Black and white only, but I don't think law firms want color anyway. FedEx Office used to be Kinkos, and there are a bunch of them all over the area. (I know students get a lot of free printing in the law school, but this offer includes nice paper.)
More than half of the nation's foreclosures last year took place in 35 counties, a sign that the financial crisis devastating the national economy may have begun with collapsing home loans in only a few corners of the country.
BlenderLaw » what's in a name? asks some thought provoking questions about EDGAR and Gabriel, two electronic financial info retrieval systems — with male names.
I was particularly struck by this, not just because it's a fun post and uses a foreign character set, because I gather that UM may be buying an electronic medical information system, with a PHR system named Lucy.
Could it be that if it's about money, you want a boy's name, but if you want the punters to think of it as a non-threatening, nurturing system, do you give it a girl's name? The sample is too small for any firm conclusions, but it bears watching.
