“The delicate quest for approbation walks a fine line between
vindication and the initial toady stages of compromise.”
The author of that statement, Professor O.R. Powell, looked out at the
fresh faces in his Contract Law class. He waited for total effect and
decided to wait as long as necessary to someone in the class to
respond, in anyway, to his remarks. The class, with their heads in
their books or typing on their new computer, were showing no signs of
genuine interaction so he continued to wait. By this time, even the
slowest stenographers finished and one by one, timid faces peered
up at him through stupidly long hair or over laptop screens with no
indication of understanding. No one wanted to engage him on this first
day but he knew that somewhere in the group, someone was dying to lock
horns with him on this or some other, hopefully related, subject. This
was going
to be a long journey; this class was going to be together for an entire
academic year and Contract Law was the first big hurdle which weeded
out a fair number of potentially weak attorneys and all with a weak
heart and a distate for civil discourse.
He planned to continue to read off his prepared text with hopes that
eventually one of his students would either have the desire to debate
him or at least request further enlightenment via an unscripted or
unplanned conversation.
Professor Powell was a full Professor of Law with numerous awards and
related recognition for his writings. Possessing no interest in the
federal bench, he had concentrated on honing his teaching and writing
skills and allowed many of his peers to slog through embarrassing
confirmation hearings. He had seen far too many talented lawyers either
prostitute themselves for confirmation or fly directly into some
partisan maelstrom resulting in long-term damage to their career. He
stayed away from the urge to don the impressive judicial robes in order
to say and teach what he thought while taking lengthy but appropriate
amounts of time to compose legal writings which were embraced by
scholars all across the ideological fine line that he enjoyed walking.
The problem with publishing papers is that you will be held accountable
for decades of old opinions. The true content on one's opinion rarely
changes but circumstances around them always did and that is what the
jackals on both sides of a debate honed in on. Powell had no time for
the games and felt that there had to be a place for an active thought
process.
After many years of ever-changing attitude adjustments, he realized
quietly that he indeed loved teaching the law. The law itself had its
charming moments but the ongoing pursuit of the truth was always under
attack and Powell found refuge in teaching first-year law students
contracts. During their first year, the combination of fear and
adrenaline resulted in rapt and white-knuckled attention and in the
right hands, Powell learned he could make a real difference in how they
would eventually think as attorneys and in addition; if he could have
some fun with them along the way, all the better.
"My feelings whether or not any of you are comfortable or happily
engaged in the pursuit of knowledge are inconsequential. In fact, the
only contract you and I are engaging in today is my assessment of your
ability to retain standard but needed knowledge. Over the next nine
months, you will be pulled out of your timid seats and will be forced
to defend opinions. You will be tested from both traditional and
non-traditional approaches but one thing must remain clear in your tiny
little minds: You will need to care about the law. And if you start
keeping score of your wins and losses in this classroom, you will have
a very exhausting year."
Powell
waited and looked around slowly. Certainly someone would say
something in reaction to his verbal abuse. However, nothing was said
from the entire group and note taking smartly ceased.
The heads slowly began to pop up again until the room was orderly with
eyes tight on his form. It was similar to him engaging in a staring
contest with a pride of passive lions; whatever he did was passively
recorded but nothing he did could get someone to leave the pack.
"During the year," continued Powell, "Many of you will be suffering
unexplained events ranging from idiopathic illnesses to the loss of
some inconsequential freedom of discretion."
Again, he waited and hoped someone would say something. He continued to
scan the crowd until one small-faced student looked up and tentatively
raised his hand.
"Yes?" said the Professor. His voice was further amplified by the
combination of his growing excitement and the crowd's collective
silence.
"I think you are full of crap,” said the student.
The Professor smiled and thought that there would be hope for this
class yet.
The class took a shared inhale of the already-electrified air while
Powell and the student began a personal staring contest. Powell had no intention
in resolving this tension; it was too important to today's lesson. The
student, not sure of her role, had no interest in hiding from the
statement. She felt compelled to call this Professor arrogant and way
down deep, she was confident that she had been baited by this guy and
she was never one to shy away from a challenge.
"I applaud both your brevity and candor but will ignore your salty
language. Does anyone, other than your brave classmate, know why?"
Again, the silence filled the room. Powell wanted to pull another face
into the conversation but instinctively the group hunkered down behind
their barriers; pens at the ready.
"Anyone? Bueller?
The joke got a nice cordial laugh and as the ice was breaking, he asked again,
"Does anyone know why I am not taking offense with this student's
comment?"
A few tentative hands began to rise.
Powell quickly pointed at a young woman on the other side of the room.
"You, in the blue, tell me why."
"Because you don't want to treat a student poorly?"
"No, not even close but I will credit it as a good guess. Someone
else?"
The same group of hands, sans the young woman's, rose again. Powell
pointed at a young man, sitting by the door.
"You."
"Because you baited her?"
"Correct."
Professor Powell gathered up his materials and headed for his door.
This was a great time for a perfect exit. The conversation of the last
five minutes was a great springboard for the class to start talking and
there was no value for him to hang around to reassure the engaged that
they were on the right track. Powell left out a side door and was at
least five minutes ahead of the most excited student but his office
hours would show who wanted to talk. Surprisingly, no one came to his
office but what Professor Powell didn't know, but was hoping, that the
class remained the lecture hall to continue to argue and to organize an
effort to demonstrate some collective moxie in the near future.
Five minutes went by and no student had moved from their seats. As the
best estimate, the class was not supposed to end for at least another
hour and these 1L's didn't know what to do. There other classes had
began and ended on time and everthing said by their instructors were
safely recalled and already highlighted from the pre-reading. Finally,
the student dressed in blue felt compelled to speak said, "I think he
wants us to figure out what he said."
"What do you mean?"
"'He said, Many of you will be suffering unexplained events ranging
from idiopathic illnesses to the loss of some inconsequential freedom
of discretion.'"
"What does that mean?"
"I have no idea," said the only student who was declared correct by
Professor Powell. "But we can either work this out here or we can all
go our separate ways and begin to dread the next class tomorrow."
"I propose we sit here and come up with an united front." That comment
was said by a back-row student who had just decided to engage. "Either
he is just crazy or this is what he wants us to do today."
Being the last class of the first day, a majority of the class remained
to discuss the problem. In a few minutes, they had cobbled together all
his comments and quickly wrote the main points on the board. The groups
broke into smaller squads to either attack or qualify his comments and then reassembled
to share their findings. Each piece of the puzzle was disjointed and
open to numerous interpretations and it eventually led to the mass
reading, in unison, of his comments. After that exercise, they realized that he had to
be kidding. These jumbled-up comments had no real substance and only
because they were uttered by a living legend did they avoid standard
scrutiny from the audience.
"I think the old guy collectively jerked our chains," said the young
woman in the blue. "Oh, and my the way, I have no intention go being
referred to as 'the one in the blue' for the rest of the year. My name
is R'Lou Jefferson."
The group all smiled and made a point to introduce themselves to each
other:email addresses and general contact information was exchanged as
most of them were still in the hunt for study group partners. As they
walked out, there was an noticable order to their exit; all cooperating
and showing some common courtesy, the flow moved quickly out the down,
the lights were turned off and the door slammed shut. The game was
apparently on.
The next day, Professor Powell walked into the class and he saw thirty
faces staring at him demonstrating neither fear or contentment. Smiling
out the group, he said, "Now, we might be getting somewhere."
The class kept staring, they were not going to get away with any more
meandering soliloquies on a variety of subjects: the children appeared
locked and loaded. He looked around the room, making eye contact with
everyone and felt it was time to begin teaching.
"I am going to leave five minutes at the end of class to answer any
questions you may have."
He opened his lecture notes, turned on the display monitor and took off
his watch and faced it towards him.
He spent the lecture telling a story about the key foundations of
contract law; ranging from classical contract theory and ending with
the concept of a complete contract. His teaching style was elegant and
when he saw a student drop their head to take a note, he would pause
and tell them to listen instead of writing. He knew that the first few
days established the key concepts of contracts and he had to make sure
the group collectively saw this information as true foundations rather
than a typical overview of a subject.
True to his word, he stopped his remarks with five minutes to go. He
closed his lecture notes, which he never had referenced, and said to
the class, "Now, what questions do you have about anything?
The students adjusted in their seats, looking around to see if anyone
had the gumption to say their opinion of yesterday's events. Finally, a
hand went up in the back.
"Yes?" said Professor Powell.
"What the hell was yesterday all about?" The tone was polite but the
desire for enlightenment was obvious.
"I assume you are referring to my opening remarks."
"That is correct." The tone became calmer and Powell liked its apparent
glide path and detemined they were now ready to start learning about
the law behind the law.
"Yesterday, I saw approximately 30 first-year law students intimidated
and hiding behind bad hair and laptop screens. Today, I see the same
thirty students looking directly at me seeking enlightenment and that
is what I want to happen. I am not the bad guy nor am I the person you need to
impress. You need to start to stand on your own metaphorical feet and
take on the law."
"If you think you will achieve your goals based on your note-taking
abilities, you are sadly mistaken. If you think the court of public
opinion is important to the pursuit of the law, you are not only sadly
mistaken, you are also delusional and if you think I am training you to
rely on rote memorization to periodically throw up finite facts on
examinations, you are nuts." Professor Powell paused and continued, "To
learn the law is to make no assumptions about the facts: whether I am a
blowhard yammering on for ten minutes or if I am an eloqent orator that
keeps you spellbound with the golden tones of my voice, it matters not.
What matters in law in general and contracts in specific...it is one
concept: the collection and analysis of facts. Cold, hard, indisputable
facts and don't act if you are a victim of a false doctrine: get active
and stay playing offense."
"Please engage with me on any issue and do not give me any relief
outside of common courtesy. If you continue to swallow masses of
information and feckless data, you will lose the salient points of the
larger issue. Focus in on the facts and stay true to case law:
everything else is just clucking. One can argue that you might learn
more by accident than by specific purpose in this classroom but I don't
care the journey as long as you trust your reading of the facts, your
work ethic and try to learn to love the law."
The room again was silent as the day before but he saw little lights
going on inside their tiny youthful heads. "This is a good day" he
thought.
"Any more questions?" asked Professor Powell.
There were none and this time, as the time before, that was his goal.
He loudly snapped his lecture notes closed for a sound effect and
headed towards his private exit. He looked back and said, "I will see
you tomorrow, study hard but start thinking harder."
