“I like good strong words that mean something.” Little Women[1]

My jaw dropped.  She nailed it.  She explained to our class not just where—but how—this 1L’s memo could be more synthesized, more precise, and more logical.  I could not have done it better. 

But remarkably, she was herself only a 1L.  In fact, she was the 1L who authored the memorandum only a week earlier.  And even more remarkably, several of her colleagues did the same thing with their own work in that same session, only a few weeks into the semester.

Professors—and perhaps law professors more than most—can usually rely on the architecture of the place, the costuming of the participants, and even the nature of our audience for at least some of our success in the classroom. In a normal year, I know I benefit from the kind of people in the room: a captive audience who have been rewarded for sitting quietly and attentively for sixteen years. I benefit from the students’ relationships with one another: they enliven and enrich the class discussion and the classwork.

Most students come to law school with a vague sense of the acronym IRAC (the traditional legal writing format of issue, rule, analysis, and conclusion), and some reluctant willingness to use it: they know they are graded on writing in IRAC form and they want to get good grades, so they try to use it.