92 Similarity
from these classrooms in previous discussions. Some of these previous transcript
excerpts help to underscore the point that all of the teachers in this study at times
use lecture as well as Socratic exchanges of one kind or another. Thus, in Tran-
script 4.4, we heard a professor in one of the short-exchange classes utilize a fairly
standard Socratic method of questioning in her effort to clarify a student’s state-
ment of the facts (involving the timing of a delivery of wheat). This was also true
in Transcript 4.6, where the same professor interrupted a student who began her
turn by describing the plaintiff as a “youthful man” rather than using a legal frame.
In both cases, the professor called on a student to explicate the case assigned for
the day and continued in dialogue with that student for some time, in an exercise
designed to sharpen the students’ understanding of fact construction in legal nar-
ratives. Transcript 4.8 showed us a short-exchange professor pushing a student to
apply law to facts (asking him to select which facts constituted consideration), and
in Transcripts 4.10, 4.11, and 4.12 professors from these kinds of classes work with
students to develop skills in analogical reasoning. Transcript 4.14 used an exchange
from a short-exchange classroom to exemplify the process by which professors
clarify law (here, the doctrine of specific performance), and here we see how a simi-
lar pedagogical message to that conveyed in formal, more Socratic classrooms can
be delivered in a more informal kind of exchange. (In Transcript 4.14, the student
began a request for clarification by saying “Wait a minute,” the class interrupted
with multiple speakers talking at once, and a second student chimed in to approve
the first student’s answer, a privilege usually reserved for the professor in more
formal classrooms.) Interestingly, students were still using a vigorous turn-taking
structure to clarify aspects of a legal reading focused on authoritative case law lan-
guage and the practice by which it can be de- and recontextualized.^10
Thus, when nonfocused exchanges are doing much of the work in a class, the
same core pedagogical message is conveyed in a somewhat different form. With
lectures, professors do much of the discursive work, whereas in focused dialogues
individual students must stay in the spotlight for extended periods of time, labo-
riously uncovering the legal story as they respond to question after question. In
nonfocused exchanges, multiple students may chime in to help one another and
the professor in constructing an acceptable legal narrative, adopting a more con-
versational style. The same rules for reading apply, but they are learned in a some-
what different form.
Transcript 5.5 [6/6/23]Prof.: What do- what constituted the promise, that’s a very good question?
What was the promise? Where do you get it from the materials? I
think it’s pretty clear. You’ve got her saying, “He promised I’d be
beautiful” and you’ve got him saying, “I didn’t promise anything.”
Fill that out a bit more and tell me how you can come to the
conclusion that he- she wins in terms of he did promise her a
beautiful nose?
Student #1: Well, he promised her something in two surgeries. I mean, um, he
was specific enough to say it’s gonna take two surgeries to do this,
whatever it is, and considering that he’s a plastic surgeon and she’s in