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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Interesting reddit post on the (alleged) use of the Socratic Method in law school:

You've all heard it, it's one of the legal community's favorite buzz phrases. But I get sick of hearing faculty and others constantly refer to the Socratic Method when in reality what most professors do is just ask questions that verify if you did the reading, usually with little follow up. This is stupid, I had undergrad professors who did the exact same thing.

[b]The real Socratic Method uses questions posed in an argumentative dialogue to make the student logically defend and think through their position on a specific topic. Essentially playing the devil's advocate. This is often hard to accomplish in a law school context since most classes deal with the law as is and not the law as it should be. The Socratic Method typically works best in philosophical discussions. As a result, it's not actually always that useful in legal classes where the goal is to learn the case law, not debate about its merits.[/b]

I guess the reason this grinds my gears is that it sounds both pretentious and scary, and it's misleading. People assume that the Socratic Method and getting cold called are the same thing. Just remember the next time your professor asks you "what did Justice Black say in his concurrence" that is not the Socratic Method. Your professor is just checking to see whether you read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LawSchool/comments/16vf5px/law_schools_suck_at_the_socratic_method/[/quote]

That reddit post is weird. I don't know where that poster went to law school, but as far as learning the law goes our professors absolutely did have us "debate about its merits." We were all expected to "deal with the law ... as it should be" as opposed to simply "as is."  Understanding the issue/rule/holding/reasoning in any given case was necessary but not sufficient. Our professors asked a lot more than "what did Justice Black say in his concurrence." I suspect that whomever posted that went to a bottom tier school (or maybe hasn't really gone at all?) where they weren't really using the Socratic Method in a real way (either because they didn't want to or because the students just couldn't handle it so it wasn't worth it--who knows what goes on at the bottom tier).

To PP who asked about The Paper Chase -- no, it's not like that at all. Well, not with most professors. I had one that verged on it, but we actually kind of enjoyed him; it was entertaining. Any time he thought a student didn't make sense he would yell "banana!" at them. [/quote]

I'm guessing there probably is quite a variation between higher and lower tier law schools.  You probably don't have serious courses in legal philosophy at Thomas Cooley or Florida Coastal.  [/quote]

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