Student Participation and Social Difference 201student was a woman and provides a good illustration for the quantitative find-
ing above: that in Socratic classrooms, women students speak more when they
are called on, perhaps in part because they hesitate to volunteer.^99 For some
students, it seems that the most salient distinction is not “Socratic versus non-
Socratic” but “unnecessarily mean-spirited versus encouraging.” Some allusion
to this was found in discussions by students across the various prestige rankings
of law schools. At the same time as they appreciated the more encouraging
professors, the students also commented with some acerbity on moments when
professors did not adequately control the class during Socratic or other dis-
cursive exchanges, so that particular students were able to talk for what was
viewed as an excessive period of time. When a student who didn’t have much
to contribute substantively talked for a long time, it could become a confusing
distraction. That this can happen in today’s modified Socratic classrooms is
one sign that many professors have adopted pedagogical models that diverge
from the stereotypic Socratic class.^100
In substantive terms, many students converged on professors’ views when
discussing their first-year training and their Contracts class in remarks that re-
vealed much insight. Echoing an observation found in many of the professors’
interviews about the ubiquity and importance of contract, one student from a
local law school explained with energetic passion:
[6-1]Student 1: Contracts is- it’s almost so basic and people sign contracts every day
of their lives for whatever reason, whether it’s to sign their Visa
charge- and there’s so much that the general public doesn’t under-
stand about where you stand, what your rights are [... ] and it’s
almost like, why isn’t Contracts taught your senior year of high school
[Student 2: Exactly- like that case about the Carnival Cruise Lines-]
[general comments and exclamations by group, including: Oh my God,
that was unbelievable!] [... ]
[6–1]Student1: [... ] but Contracts is just so basic, and it’s something that every-
body- I can’t think of how you could live without ever getting through
without dealing with a contract; either apartment lease, or your credit
cards[... ]Students also commented on the process they were absorbing: of picking up
a case and learning to read it, of building analogies, and of parsing language
in new ways. Several pointed in particular to the ambiguity of law, a perspective
their professors were at pains to get across to students who sought easier answers.
Thus, along with some differences in perspective between professors and students,
and among students in different kinds of law schools, we find some convergence
in perceptions regarding the core task of the first year, which across all of
the schools in the study remains centered on learning to read cases and deci-
pher doctrine (with some discussion of policy and theory as part of the picture
as well).