Introduction to Reading in Law School

1. Introduction to Reading in Law School Ante-Law School Camp session 1

2. The Department of Academic Achievement • Chelsea Baldwin, JD ’09 • Assistant Director of Academic Achievement • Study for Success programs for 1L and 2L students • Steven Foster, JD ’08 • Director of Academic Achievement • Conquer the Bar programs for 3L students & graduates

3. WebEx features • Content pane • Participant pane • Provide feedback to the presenter, see who else is attending the program • Raise your hand so I can let you speak • Chat pane • Chat room for participants • Q&A pane • Put your questions in the queue to be answered during or at the end of the program • Polling • I’ll be using this feature occasionally to check in with you about the content of the program

4. Law School – First Year Overview • Language oriented curriculum & profession • In-depth analysis of the meaning of the words • Definitional • Grammatical usage • Modification through relationships with other words in a sentence • 1st semester • Orientation & Legal Analysis (week 1) • Torts, Contracts I, Legal Research & Writing I, Civil Procedure I • 2nd semester • Property, Contracts II, Legal Research & Writing II, Civil Procedure II, Criminal Law/Procedure • Appellate brief & oral arguments

5. Expertise • Per Anders Ericsson* • EXPERTISE refers to the mechanisms underlying the superior achievement of an expert, i.e. "one who has acquired special skill in or knowledge of a particular subject through professional training and practical experience" (Webster's dictionary, 1976, p. 800). • BUT, Expertise is domain specific • * Editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

6. Domain* • Most generally, domain knowledge is that knowledge used to refer to an area of human endeavor . . . or other specialized discipline. • Specialists and experts use and develop their own domain knowledge. • Lawyers (Law) • Doctors (Medicine) • Computer Programmers (Programming languages and architecture) • Social Scientists • If the concept domain knowledge or domain expert is used we emphasize a specific domain which is an object of the discourse/interest/problem. • *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_knowledge

7. Schema • Per McKinney, “[S]chema is a cluster of information that we hold in our mind about a subject.” • Schemas are “critical building blocks of the human cognitive process.”* • The case brief is an effective tool to help beginning students organize a legal opinion in a way that enhances understanding and makes the information manageable to the student. • By going through the process of drafting a case brief, students free up their short term memory which allows them to think about what the case actually means.  • *Leah M. Christensen. The Psychology Behind Case Briefing: A Powerful Cognitive Schema. 29 Camp. L. Rev. 5 (2006).

8. Reading in the Legal Domain • Understanding the basic contents of judicial opinions (a/k/a cases) • Layout • Caption • Names of parties in original lawsuit • The official reporter in which the case can be found • From this you can generally infer the jurisdiction and the deciding body that determined the outcome of the case • Date opinion was published • Deciding or Authoring Judge • Body {general conventions but no hard and fast rules for the ordering of the elements that are found in the body of the opinion} • Description of how the dispute found itself in this court (procedural history) • The story of how the dispute arose between the parties (facts) • The nature of the dispute, i.e., what question(s) must the court decide the legal answer to (issue) • The answer that the court has come up with for the question (holding) • The reasoning the court used to reach that answer to the question • Disposition

9. Case Briefing • A schema to help you extract the important details from a case • Also promotes active thinking re: the contents of the case • McKinney’s recommended form • Case heading (name, date, place & court of decision, page # in casebook) • Parties’ names • Procedural History • Facts • Issue or Question Presented • Holding • Reasoning/Rationale • Your Thoughts • Some professors recommend creating a section to segregated the dicta from the holding/reasoning of the case

10. Chapter 1 Exercises • Discourse Community examples: • Is this a sub-community of a larger discourse community? • Are there sub-communities within your immediate discourse community? • Name three vocabulary words that might have a special meaning within your community: • How would you help bring a novice into this discourse community? • Looking to the future, do you expect your methods to be used by your law school professors as you work at becoming a member of the legal discourse community? • Why is reading important to becoming a member of this discourse community?

11. Chapter 2 Exercises • Is this an edited or an unedited case? How can you tell? • In what geographic region was this case decided? How do you know? • What was the general view of smoking as a health issue at the time this opinion was written? How do you know? • Write brief on separate page or in separate document. • What was the most difficult part of writing that brief for you? What made writing that part of the brief difficult? • Evaluate against sample brief provided on p.30 of Reading Like a Lawyer

12. Next Week • Sampling of the types of reasoning encountered in judicial opinions and that you will use as you craft arguments • Previewing the “steps” that will help you become an expert reader sooner rather than later • Additional details provided about the “self-regulated learning” cycle

13. Resources • Michael Hunter Schwartz, Expert Learning for Law Students • Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else • Ruth Ann McKinney, Reading Like a Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert • Leah M. Christensen, assorted articles