Dear 1L: Don’t worry about cold calls.
💌 Dear 1L,
Don’t worry about cold calls. I get it. I was worried, too. Scenes from movies about law school made it all seem beyond stressful. I wasn’t quite sure how I would handle them. I mean, I had always been good at class participation (when I wanted to be), but everyone said law school was so different.
Here’s some info to help you.
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The cold calls I’m talking about are part of the Socratic Method—a mainstay of first-year law school. There’s far less talk by the professor, far more participation by you.
▫️ Rather than explain the reading, the professor calls on a student and conducts a Q&A, where the student answers questions about the reading and what it means.
Most questions are about 1/ what happened in a case and whether it was right, and 2/ what the case means for future situations.
🔹 1/ Questions about cases include queries like: who were the parties? What was the theory of liability? Which side won? What did the court hold? Why? Do you agree?
🔸 After the first week or so, these kinds of questions will seem routine to you. Just do the reading carefully and know the answers to the basic questions I list about each case, you’ll feel fine answering these types of questions.
🔹 2/ The harder questions involve hypotheticals.
🔸 These types of questions ask you to think beyond the reading. You’ll often need to consider new fact patterns on the spot, and then describe how you think a court could or should rule on those facts.
🔸 The good news is that today, most profs. give you some sort of advance notice, such as by designating a group of students to be “on call” for specified weeks.
______________
✏️ A TIP
When a prof. calls on you with a hypothetical question:
—> Do not try to get the “right” answer.
⭐️ The goal is not to know that answer, but to identify the strongest arguments that can be made for, and then against, that answer.
🔹 What could one party say that would sway you to rule their way?
🔹 Next, how might the opposing party sway you the other way?
-If you think of good arguments to bolster one side’s case, the professor might then call on another student to take the opposite view.
-Then there’s a sort-of modified debate, where more students may get brought into the conversation.
Remember this key for law school essay exams, too: —> It is not the “right” answer that’s the point. The point is identifying the best arguments for both answers.
* * *
♦️ What cold-call Tips do you have for incoming 1Ls?
Fondly,
💌 Amanda
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