The Four Food Groups: A Review of First Semester Classes.
Posted by Aaron on Apr 18, 2007
The knowledge you gain in your first semester classes is the core upon which you build and compare the rest of your law school experiences. The material covered in those first few months transforms the tabula rasa of a student by impressing upon it knowledge of the law. (I only wrote this paragraph so that I could use tabula rasa in a sentence.)
Now, that I’ve gotten that need to be dramatic out of my system, I can tell you what you really want to know. You probably want to know what classes you are going to take. You probably want to know what you actually learn in those classes. You probably want to know what a law school class is like. You may even want to know what the professors are like. So, let’s talk about it.
The four classes I took my first semester were Civil Procedure, Torts, Property, and Legal Methods I. I remember getting my schedule and being very impressed just by their names, and also scared by the fact I had no idea what they meant. While I took these classes my first semester, I’ve picked up from professors that the first semester schedule changes from year to year. In any case, you’ll take those classes at some point in your first year. For a description of the content of these classes, try reading these: Civil Procedure, Torts, Property, and Legal Methods. Rather than make a list of everything covered in these courses, I am just going to tell you about the interesting bits.
Civil Procedure is typically described as one of the hardest classes you’ll take during your first year, and I won’t tell you any differently. There were some bright spots though. For example, beyond all the wordiness and strategically placed commas, there is an instruction book on how to get your lawsuit to a decision. Civil Procedure tells you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and to whom you should do it to.
In Torts, you get to learn all about how people cause harm to other people, and then how the courts make them pay for it. I found the medical malpractice and other negligence claims pretty interesting. The class has an everyday experience feel to it. We’ve all driven too fast in the rain or pulled the chair out from someone as a kid, and these are just the kind of situations that Tort law covers.
Property Law also had an everyday experience feel. For example, there is a whole chapter on gifts. You may not have known it but every time you’ve given someone a gift, you met a number of criteria (elements) that the law requires. Another example is lost or found property. This class finally settles the dispute over “finders keepers, losers weepers.” You also cover landlord/tenant law, and other everyday, and some not everyday, type things that you would never think would get so much attention.
Legal Methods is not an everyday type experience type class. Legal Methods teaches you how to write in the very technical legal way. If you are a flowery writer like myself, who hates repetition and loves a good thesaurus, then you may find the rigid and uncreative legal style of writing a little hard to get used to. Over time, though, you will learn to leave those unnecessary adjectives in the tool box. You will get to use them a bit when you start writing persuasively your second semester (see future post on Legal Methods II).
The classroom experience in law school is a bit more interactive than undergrad. IÔøΩm sure some of you have read about Socratic Method and have heard horror stories, etc. While the basic format of teacher ask and student tell is in place, it is far more diluted and tame than most horror stories make it out to be. My professors would ask questions, and sometimes tough questions, but would never be hostile or condescending to a student who didnÔøΩt have the answer they were looking for. This approach instills a fear of coming to class unprepared, and not a fear of coming to class.
In conclusion, I have nothing more to say.
Feel free to ask questions by emailing aaronsblog@mail.widener.edu or clicking the discuss link.