The Legal Classroom Experience (2018)

we're gonna start this with a mock cold call and then we'll go on and we'll talk about some ways to you know we'll talk a little bit behind the scenes of the cold call and ways to prepare and things like that but we're just going to start it the way that I would normally start class so today we're talking about Parker versus 20th Century Fox if you've read the case that's great if not no big deal soum is men trek so big Shirley MacLaine fan do you like it alright well then I guess you deserved that Academy Award so what's going on in what's going on Parker alright so she's gonna do this she was gonna do this music alright they had this plan of this musical about Amelia bloomer you familiar with Amelia bloomer at all no so bloomer girls I guess it was gonna be a great family about a million more who was a musical musical comedy who's a Amelia bloomer was a turn of the I guess previous century feminist right who actually did not invent bloomers that is a myth but but but was a big booster of them and eventually actually got they got caught up and there's bloomer thing and she actually in the long run discouraged the wearing of bloomers because people had gotten so caught up in the fashion that they weren't paying enough attention to the issues so this is an historic moment right in in Hollywood and Shirley MacLaine it's going to be Amelia bloomer but like every case something goes wrong so why so in this case they elected not to make movie the studios sent her a letter saying that they were going to reach their contract to avoid damages they offered her okay so from bloomer car all right to big country big man okay so write its contracts we gotta know the terms so what kind of terms well or the terms of the original agreement right because they're gonna breach that agreement so he's caused folding money right even even today 750 that's real money right all right so she gets this money right she gets seven or fifty thousand dollars and she gets to be in the musical right and and this is a thing for Shirley MacLaine she was a she was him she did singing and dancing and stuff like that and she's got these approval rights right for the dance director and the director and all right so 20th Century Fox were they were they doing here they're gonna they're gonna breach how are they going to breach they're going to breach oh hello more eggs okay so any question at all that they're not breaching right so they basically admit that they bleach although I think maybe we should come back and revisit that in a minute and so what's their argument right they admit that they breached so contracts supposed to pay her 750 she wants her 750 she failed to mitigate so what does that mean what does it mean to fail to mitigate damages at first okay right so limited to employment contracts you don't remember I don't think so in like torts and anything where you can collect well so mean but so but specific to contracts right so there's this concept of mitigation and here we have this instance right where they were gonna pay her 750 to do something right they basically they decide they're not going to do that thing right and so now that I want to pay the 750 and the general argument as well you know we offered you this other thing we were gonna pay you the 750 anyway you should have done it so that sounds reasonable to me so who wins okay so why okay so one of the things that's going on here right is that we're at summary judgment right so that's going to affect how the court approaches the problem over the the kind of information the courts going to want with regard to that but I want to try to bracket that for a second and so today were gonna give her 750 they were gonna make the movie they don't make the movie they're still going to give her the seventh they they want to give her the 750 to do something else but that's not okay so I'm trying to figure out why that's not okay alright why can't you know I mean what she's you know what's he supposed to do so you're just gonna sit around and do nothing and collect your 750 I mean that sounds that sounds like a good deal right that's the deal that I want so yeah so why doesn't she have to take this other job for be country a big man employment that's different and what she was different and inferior or yeah so I mean okay so let's think about this so how is it different this one is both dip and inferior okay so let's talk about that so court figures that they come up with this test right different are inferior so how is it different or inferior musical is different income and fraud well so I mean she doesn't get to approve the dance director in big country big man with what does that matter yeah there's no I mean right there's there are a limited number of westerns in which there are dance directors but this is not one of it so okay okay so there are these differences right so let's say that I drive dump truck right I'm we form a contract I'm gonna drive a dump truck for you and it's gonna be a yellow dump truck right and you breach it might say hey I'm not going to do that instead I've got this orange dump truck for you to drive right pay the same same our simulation all that jazz but right different color what do you think or yeah I would a certain affirmative defense they are different okay so but they're different right ones yellow ones orange so you're gonna have to pay me anyway I don't have to drive the dump truck here was that country were unreasonable well but I mean I mean isn't that I mean isn't that the crux of their argument right we we offered her this alternative employment she refused this alternative employment I mean it seems to me that there's a pretty big gap here right between what she wants which is 7 and $50,000 for doing nothing right and what they want which is to pay her and have her do this thing that's like the difference I'm trying to figure out right how much is there so in my dump truck case do I have to drive the orange dump truck in order to get paid or can I sit at home okay but what what do you think is it different or okay so what's the deal so why don't why do I have to drive the dump truck but Shirley MacLaine doesn't have to be in the drama a difference is like the color effects are when your job required to perform it okay so there's some difference in there I mean but I'm still not exactly sure what that difference is gonna be so what about the descent so mr. Yost what what does the descent have to say about all this basically that is really hot okay I'm gonna hold it down so the descent Startalk by basically saying that in their mind the question here is hat was the plaintiff acting reasonably in their attempt to mitigate and in there or where does that come from where does this reasonableness so I've got different right I've got different or inferior over here from the majority and now you're talking to my reason was so where does that come from so the majority actually did talk about reasonableness in one of the footnotes but basically said that in their opinion the reasonableness only refers to if the plaintiff in their efforts not necessarily what if they're differentiating between the different types of employment but did they reasonably like try to mitigate their damages and it seems like the dissents opinion is that it hinges more on if the differences between the two types of employment are reasonable or were they reasonable and rejecting it as a different or inferior kind of employment okay reasonable in rejecting so the dissent thinks that McClain has to be reasonable in rejecting the alternative and so then what is the majority think the reasonableness has to be it my understanding of reading the the footnote was that they were saying they cited a case and said like the effort has to do with they refer to effort instead of it because as an in each case the reason most referred to was that of the efforts of the employee to obtain other employment that was not different or inferior okay and what kind of efforts did McClain make here she didn't have to make any efforts here right I mean they offered this thing up right big country big man here is she didn't do anything at all so if we're going to evaluate the reasonableness of her effort that's gonna be kind of hard to do she didn't make any effort to find another job and she wasn't in the the movie studio isn't asking her to make any kind of effort to find another job so okay that's possible right so now we've got these two different approaches okay so what do you think do you think the who do you think's got the better the better part of this argument is just honestly I feel like the dissent is more I think I agree more with the dissent in that well because they're there other part of it too was that they they weren't necessarily saying these types of employment are not different or are different they were basically saying that should have been up for a jury to decide like there was a tribal issue of fact there okay so that goes to the summary judgment standard right so the case is on summary judgment so the question and the summary judgment case right it's whether or not there's a triable issue of fact right or there's a an issue of material fact so okay but look I mean there are all these cases right so different or inferior so why isn't I mean this is different or inferior isn't it so what's all this talk from the dissent about the reasonableness of her decision they think it's interesting that the majority latched on to that phrase specifically because other California courts had held other like other terms is substantially similar comparable employment in the general line of employment and they thought it was interesting that the majority latched on to different or inferior as the standard and that they do kind of say we don't think that that should be the standard but if that's okay if that's how you want to use it but they think they're distorting that standard by saying that just the mere fact that these two films are different makes them different enough that they're that she was reasonable in rejecting the mitigation at that point right so do you I mean so but wasn't she I mean isn't big country big man obviously not as good I think what I struggle with with that from her perspective if I were the plaintiff is looking at what she what she's saying that if it were me and I'm a Musical actor and I'm being told that no you need to go do this drama like how does that that doesn't look like it's a good mark on her career necessarily maybe if she's trying to establish herself as a Musical actor then maybe being in a Western drama is is significantly different and could hurt her career so that I mean there's a lot of wiggle room there I think with arguing if it's different enough to don't the terms of the contract prohibit that argument right so you know one of the terms of the contract is hey our only obligation here is to pay you the 750 right so we don't have to make the movie we have to pay you the 750 and doesn't that mean that she doesn't really have a claim to all this other stuff right I'm you know I'm glad to have this job I want to establish myself as a Musical actor right there's all these great things about it turns out people care about more than just how much money they make right they want to have other aspects of what they do things on their resume or they enjoy doing it or don't but seems like the contract itself precludes that argument by saying like all we do all we owe you is the 750 that there were other terms that she had control over that she got refusal on the director she got to approve the screenplay and they admitted that this new one because they claimed there's not enough time to do that that she doesn't so I mean you could make the argument that that in itself is that that doesn't have anything to do with the clause about just paying or like they'd given her other privileges that they took away in the second contract that could have had a bearing on on her career or how the movie progressed her and that kind of stuff so yeah that provision is a mess right because that provision basically says we only have the obligation to pay the 750 under the terms of this agreement right so on one hand right it looks like it's just talking about the 750 on the other hand it invokes all the other terms of the agreement like what are you supposed to do with that so I think that's probably good enough to sort of establish the back-and-forth and I thought so I guess next we're gonna sort of talk about ways that you might think about preparing this case you know to get called on thank you very much to to Marnie Lisa great odd I don't know if you want to come up and join us here in case you want to add comments as we as we go along but some or you can you can talk from the air it's up it's up to you always fine so anyway what was all that what was that about what what was the point of that what what how do you think about even beginning to prepare for that kind of experience so I want to talk a little bit about that point you know how you might sort of approach reading this kind of material so this is a new kind of thing for many of you reading a case and you've you've read it you you kind of have to struggle with it and and this is a lot of what you're going to be doing in the first year is reading these kinds of things reading these kinds of cases and preparing for class is actually a crucial part of the experience of of law school it's it's an important part of practicing law generally it's easy when you see it on TV or you see it in the movies people just sort of walk in and they just seem to just know everything and they just wing it you they never show you all the hours and hours that people spend preparing and thinking about how am I going to say this how am I going to present it how am I going to organize it and that's a lot of what lawyers do that's a lot of the the value that lawyers bring to the table and in fact the first since I'm an ethics professor I will mention the first ethics rule is competence you have to be competent and part of competent is being prepared and so preparation is is crucial and preparation means reading but it's not only reading it's a certain kind of reading reading is necessary but it's not sufficient it's got to be active reading so what I mean what I mean by active reading so first of all the easy part is you're gonna be reading a lot of words that you've never seen before you've never heard the I mean even the dissent use these fancy words not even legal words then real words I have to look them up I don't know what the heck is Intendant or whatever it was that the dissent said so look them up if you if you come across some word whether it's a legal word you should have a legal dictionary or access to a legal dictionary they're probably all online now anyway so if you come across a word you don't know look it up and and and write it down write it down in the in the in your book and in in somewhere else and and try to try to remember you in the sense what you're doing in part is learning a new language it's not completely a new language but a lot of this language is new how do you talk what is an appropriate way for lawyers to talk what kinds of things are sort of in bounds or out-of-bounds for lawyers to say as part of what you're what you're doing you want to in addition not treat these things like sort of your novels that you want to put on your shelf and keep in pristine condition you want to take notes take the hell out take notes all over the place on these things I'm a highlighter myself so here's my highlighting you know I have a whole color coding system that I've used since law school or maybe since I started teaching I have blue for certain things red for certain things professor Nakamura has his own system so whatever system works for you that you develop and you can use and you're not a highlighter that's fine if you just want to take notes or underline or circle things do that so I'll tell you one thing just as a right off the bat you have the name of the case right it's being Parker versus 20th Century Fox all right and professor Nakamura has one of the questions he asked was who won the case and you may have read it oh gosh who's Parker who's 20 Century Fox who won this case what I always did for the beginning of law school was I circled the winner in the name of the game so that way at least I could know the answer to that question if someone asks me who won the case I circled it so that's the winner I also so there's a plaintiff and a defendant right you learned about that from Professor Spencer earlier today right so I put a little p over the plaintiff and a little D over the defendant or if you want to be fancy use Greek letters PI or Delta all right you know some people will use those things so I know that the plaintiff is who the defendant is sometimes I'll put underneath the names of the people who they are you know so Parker is the quote employee in this case Fox is the employer right so what what are the roles that each of them is playing in the in the case and then I will also put who is appealing and whether the court is affirming or reversing the appeal so all that information is like get tripped up by that and I have it in my book so then when I'm teaching it and I forget who won the case I can look at my book and say oh yes now I remember - one day Parker won the case okay so so do that so take know whatever system works best for you take notes circle things write things in the margins circling another thing that I like to Circle another question you you heard professor Nakamura asked and this is a very important thing in terms of reading cases and and any kind of law statutes constitutions with regulations whatever you're reading you want to pay particular attention to things like conjunctions and or but if all those things I Circle every one of those because those things obviously can be very important different or inferior versus different and inferior those are two very different standards now it may not it may or may not make a difference in this case but in some cases whether it's and or or or if or unless or those kinds of things can make a huge difference so I I circled those if I if I come across the word I don't know I'll circle that and put the definition somewhere in my in my notes so all those kinds of things are part of active reading but the more important part I think of active reading is to think about questions that come up as you as you read think about counter arguments where or things that might be said so these are cases that were these are appellate cases mostly what you'll read is appellate cases you'll read some trial court opinions as well so these are cases that some lawyers thought were worth bringing and worth arguing about and the losing lawyer thought it was worth appealing right so there are probably arguments to be made on both sides and part of the discussion that you heard from Professor nakawara I think brings that out that there are arguments that can be made on both sides in these cases in other cases so in this case you're helped out to some extent because you have a dissent which gives you some of the arguments against what the majority of the court is saying but there's no dissent try to think of those things yourself as you as you read because some lawyer would have had to think of those things when when the case was brought one way to think about it is suppose the case in the book we're going up on appeal again suppose there were a super Supreme Court above the Supreme Court of California and you were gonna be the lawyer arguing against this case what would you say what kind of arguments would you would you make against that or think about there may be another case you may be an employment lawyer in California and you'll have another case and you'll have to either distinguish this case say why no no this case is very different the actor should have three actors should have taken this substitute or it's exactly the same it's just like Parker right so even if the case is not further appealed there'll be other cases where there'll be variations on on this so you want to think about okay what are the limits of this how far do we want to go with these things another thing you want to think about because it's a contracts case so and one of the things we think about and professor nutbar touched on this a little bit in contracts is the course is not simply for lawyers who are litigating but also for lawyers who are business lawyers who helped write draft contracts so in a contracts case you want to be thinking about all right suppose this case came down and I'm an employment lawyer I work for a movie studio let's say do I want to now change anything in the contracts that I have with my actors as a result of this case do I want to put in any kinds of qualifications or rewrite things in a certain way because that's really how contracts get drafted something gets litigated and one side loses and they say oh gosh I should have put that in my contract I should have written it differently so you want to think about those kinds of things as as well so so those are at least some some general points I want to turn now to how one might think about sort of breaking down the opinion and you're going to talk a lot about this when you learn about briefing cases and and things like that but the opinion here has a certain structure to it and most opinions have this kind of structure they may not put everything in exactly the same order but they generally cover the same kinds of things sometimes they make it easier for you especially in the more recent cases because they put little headings like Roman numeral headings Roman numeral 1 or Roman numeral 2 and then you could sort of see how they're dividing up the sections this case doesn't do that so there are some cases especially the older ones that don't don't do that but it's pretty easy to sort of figure out where the different sections are in the in this opinion so most opinions will start out with the facts right so professor Nakamura asked about facts and there was a little discussion about what the what the facts are and so that's where the opinion starts as well it starts out by setting forth the facts and so you want to think about and we will talk about in in our classes about where these facts come from they don't just drop down magically out of the sky all right and so this is one of the things that lawyers have to do is they have to take for example the stories that their clients tell them and make a narrative about it that makes sense from a legal point of view as opposed to a lay person's point of view who might tell this story very differently you can imagine if Shirley MacLaine walks into her lawyer's office and starts telling this story she would not recite the facts the way they're recited in this case or the way the students so Avery recited the the fact she would have a very different way of explaining what happened to her as would the lawyer for Fox if he were asked to explain or the let's say an executive for Fox's attic or whatever whatever his name was who was the the executive Front's would have a very different way of explaining the fact so so when you look at the facts you want to try to think about you know how did these facts come to be that's one one kind of thing you want to think about but you also want to think about things like how are the facts set forth in the opinion because one of the things that lawyers do with that's not only do they put them together and try to make a coherent story about them that fits into some legal framework but they're also trying to persuade you with the facts right I mean we know from from reading all sorts of different kinds of materials that you can use words to persuade people of various things and there are more obvious and more subtle ways to do it so one question you might ask is okay when the facts are being presented here are they being presented in a neutral way are they being biased in any way are they telling us things in order to sort of make us sympathetic to the way that they're they're seeing the case right so for example the majority in the opinion mentions the fact that shirley maclaine was only given a week to make a decision about this about this movie what does that have to do with anything right well what it might have to do with is here's the majority sort of telling us we ought to be sympathetic to shirley maclaine because she was only given a week to make this crucial decision in her in her life so whether or not that's what the court had in mind is not clear but you always want to be on the lookout for those kinds of things when you read when you read the facts are they are they being biased are there facts that are missing right so you may look at this case and you say gosh I think I would know how to resolve this case if I only knew this other fact right or there may be other facts maybe you don't know what the answer is or you just think you know why didn't they why didn't they write down this fact why did they tell us about this you know they don't tell us for example why it was that Fox didn't make the picture they don't tell us why Shirley MacLaine turned it down does that matter well do we care why either of those things happened right those are those are questions that you might want to ask and that a professor might be interested in pursuing with you as well right what other facts might you want to know so are they saying too much are they saying too little about what is what is happening in the in the case and which facts are to use a little word material which are the relevant facts that you really need to answer the question that's being presented in the case and this is a case where the the opinion is pretty sparse it's pretty concise in its statement of the facts it doesn't tell us very much other than what the court thinks is necessary to resolve the case sometimes if you have a descend the dissent may bring up other facts that the majority doesn't bring up that doesn't really happen here but in other cases you read that a sense of well you know the majority makes it sound all this way but they're not talking about this other thing which to me makes the case very different so you want to pay attention to those kinds of those kinds of things so the facts are one section of the opinion the next section of the opinion and sometimes this is put first in opinions it varies is what's called the procedural history so this is sort of what sir Spencer went through with you what happened to this case once it was filed so one way to think about it is the facts are what the people in the case did the procedural history is what the lawyers did once the lawyers got the case so the procedural history will tell you well the case was filed and there was a complaint there was an answer they mentioned in this case in that the complaint had two different claims in it there were two different arguments two different sometimes called counts that were made and that's another source of things to think about well there are two counts is the court discussing both are they the same are they different if they're different how are they different right so that's that opens up a whole other area of questioning that a professor might or might not pursue depending on what their interest is in a particular case the procedural history will often tell you if there's a lower court opinion they may summarize the lower court opinion they may then talk about okay well this person appealed and this is a summary of their argument in the appeal here's what they're contending in the appeal when you see those you want to make sure that you understand what those arguments are because it's very likely that a professor will ask that I think professor Nakamura asked that question okay so what is the basis for for the appeal here right so you want to make sure you can articulate those kinds of those kinds of things so so the procedural history is is the next part the next section of the opinion the next part is the court sets forth a couple of rules or a couple of principles that the court thinks are relevant for resolving this case and in this situation the rules are based on cases case precedent this is what's called the common law case you will learn about you will learn about that but the court is setting forth these rules now one thing that's interesting and a professor Nakamura didn't get into this a little bit he did but in many cases you will the court will sometimes state of rule and it may then explain to you why this rule exists or why you know how how courts have come to think about the reasoning or the rationale behind this rule now interestingly in this case the majority doesn't do that it doesn't really explain why we have this rule it just sort of says here's the rule now the dissent does a little bit more than a sentence gives us a little bit more information about why we have this rule of mitigation this mitigation rule and the and the exception but this is another area for exploration right because you read a rule in in a case and the first thing you should ask about if the court doesn't ask this question or the court doesn't addressed this question is okay why would we have this rule how would the world be a worse off place if we didn't have this rule or what is this rule about what is the what is the point of it so that's another area where you can you can look at it and say okay here's a question here's a way to think about being a more active reader what's what's the point of this rule if the court gives you a reason you can ask is it a good reason do I agree with this reason or is there another reason is there a better reason for having this rule or should we not have this rule at all is this a stupid rule right so that's another thing that you can you can think of that so and that's really crucial because as you will learn in in your first year of law school it's turns out to be very difficult in many cases especially these kinds of cases that you will be reading to figure out how to apply a rule without knowing what the point of it is without knowing why we have the rule in the in the first place and so because the majority doesn't give us that that that gives room for a lot of questions about okay well would you would you think this is a meaningful difference or this is is this a different during fury or kind of movie or that kind of a different kind of inferior movie so and it's very hard to answer that in part because we don't really know why we're making these distinctions it doesn't necessarily mean that if we know why it'll be any easier but sometimes it is a little bit easier to to do that so we have the facts we have the procedural history we have the statement of the rules in this case the court then goes on to state the issue the issue that's another thing that you will be you know what's the what's the main question on on the appeal in this case really what we have is we have rule and we have kind of an exception we have a general rule that has something to do with what's called mitigation you have some obligation to take a substitute contract for the one that is not being performed but there's a limitation on it there's an exception the exception is you don't have to take the substitute if the substitute is somehow different in some way that the majority in that tend to have some disagreements about and so that's a of course one key kind of dispute thing that will give rise to disputes in in these kinds of cases a rule and an exception in many cases you may have two different sets of rules and the question will be which set of rules is the more applicable one depending on how you characterize what's going on in a in a case so that's another source of of questions so here we have the court actually telling us what it thinks the issue is and that's another disagreement between the court and the dissent the dissent has a different way as was as came out in the discussion of framing the issue of stating what the issue is and that's one of the sources of disagreement and so therefore that's likely to be a source of questions from the from the professor so now in this case the court also states a couple of things that aren't the issue which is kind of an unusual thing to do right you know usually they just say this is the issue but here the court says there are certain things that aren't the issue and part of that is also to highlight a difference between the way the majority is viewing what's going on especially with respect to what's called reasonableness and the dissent which has a different different perspective on that so again you want to pay attention to those things one other thing that I just want to mention that again came up in professor Nakamura discussion and that is footnotes right so you'll have footnotes in some of these opinions and you know sometimes you're used to reading things and yeah footnote I aren't going to pay attention to that don't skip the footnotes in these opinions the footnotes are often very important for I mean so they they're used for a variety of reasons there's no hard and fast rules about use footnotes and courts use them for different reasons here the courts are used the the court in the Senate are using them for several different purposes one they're using them to sort of set forth things that are too elaborate or too detailed they don't want to clutter up the opinion with it so you have these long let's say contract terms or long quotes from a case or something like that so you stick it in a footnote so it's not it's not busying up the the language in the in the opinion so that's one reason another reason may be to kind of respond to something let's say and if there's a dissenting opinion you might have a footnote in the majority opinion saying well the dissent says this but the dissent is wrong for the following reasons or there may be some case that the the court wants to distinguish and they stick it in a footnote to distinguish that case that doesn't mean it's unimportant it may be very important that may just be the court trying to minimize something that actually is quite interesting and quite difficult and they're trying to sort of you know put it in the closet somewhere so you you want to pay attention to that because you can be sure that professors will ask you about those things okay well did you look at footnote 3 what at footnote 3 say about this you know how come how come that's not important right so if they talk about you know if they talk about things in the air think about you know why it why are they putting that in the footnote is there something to what's what's going on what's going on there all right sue one thing I'll say about footnotes is remember you're reading edited case books right so the court might use lots and lots of footnotes in this opinion and that's fine they can use them for whatever they want to do and Law Review articles oh man even more so okay but these are edited case books which means that the case book editor thought that the footnote was important enough to include in the case these aren't all the footnotes in this case these are just three of them right there could be 25 footnotes in this case and they took these three out so you know it's it's context specific but in in case book cases chances are decent that the footnotes are we're at least significant to the case book editor maybe not the the person who's teaching the case but they were important enough to somebody to actually edit them in the case but yeah I'm speaking about it's actually a good the good thing you brought up case books so one of the things that's that I think people don't pay enough attention to is sort of where something where a case fits in with other things that you've been doing so obviously this is your first case that you're reading so it doesn't fit into anything cuz this is the first one but once you've read a couple it's very common for a professor to say to you okay well you've now read these three cases now this one alright so how does this case compare to these others is it is it consistent is it inconsistent how does it fit within the framework that you're trying to develop because every course is trying to develop a certain way of thinking about a body of law how do we put all the pieces together and another way to do that is by looking at the case book where does the case book put this case in you know where do they think it fits and why do they do it so usually it's based on what the nature of the legal principle or the rule in the case is right so this is a case about mitigation which has to do with damages or remedies for breaches of contract that's usually a topic in contract law what are the remedies for breaches of contract now interestingly if you happen to look at the heading for this this excerpt from the from the case this case book we don't know we're not given the whole table of contents everything but this case but you can see from the heading this case book puts this case in Chapter one and they title the chapter legally enforceable promise basic and recurring themes so that means that these case book authors put this case in the beginning because they think it's representative of some important themes that will be developed throughout the course so that's another thing to think about okay what themes do they think are important in this time in this case about you know it's a very unusual case Shirley MacLaine is given this picture in another picture what does this have to do with contract law generally why would there be any general themes coming out so what are the general themes that you might identify from this case you know and it turns out you know we will talk about that when we when we talk about contracts you know what what the themes are we may emphasize different themes the different extent but that's another thing for you to think about as you as you read okay so we have the facts which I put in blue we have the procedural history and the arguments made by the parties I like to put those in green I put the dissent in green too because I run out of colors after a while then we have the legal rules I put the legal rules in red right so they're highlighted here the issue I put in yellow so there it is and then we get to the analysis or the reasoning of the opinion now most people when they come to law school think okay I just have to memorize a bunch of rules and then I study for the bar exam and learn all the rules and then and that's fine and the rules are important however more important especially at the beginning is the reasoning part the reasoning part of the opinion that's where you'll get most of the questions from the professors about okay they're making these arguments in applying the law to these facts do these arguments really make sense how you know and of course there were a lot of questions to Professor nock more about exactly that kind of thing and more that he could have asked that he didn't in the interest of of time so there are lots of ways to think about the reasoning section the easiest is just to look at these argument you know what make sure you understand what the arguments are and ask whether or not they make sense do they make sense do they really are they following the rule I mean you can go back and look at the rule and if you go back and look at the rule and look at how this court is applying it you could probably find things that don't really fit exactly the way the rule is is stated the rule is kind of you know the rule was developed in in other kinds of cases and this is a different kind of case in certain ways right you know so the rule was developed for employees right you could ask the question you don't know anything about this or you might not know anything about this but is is Shirley MacLaine even an employee right so if she's not what does this have to do with her so that you know professor not quite asked well does this apply to other cases as well right so that's one question well is this rule generally applicable to these other cases does the rule apply I has the rule ever been applied where the person who's breaching the contract is the one who's making the offer of the substitute and if not you know should it should they should the people who are breaching get to sort of force the substitute on you two to take right should should should we have different rules for that or not right so these are things that you could ask in terms of when once the court starts the analysis aren't they really following what the rule what the rule said of course one common way to kind of test the analysis part is to ask hypothetical questions and professor nock board did that with his example of the different colored truck you know so sometimes professors will ask questions about using a different scenario than what's in the case sometimes they'll look at the case itself and ask you hypothetical variations based on the case so one thing that's very common that you should pay very much attention to if you have in this case you have the analysis section where the court gives essentially three different reasons for why it thinks this second movie big country big man was meaningfully different from the first one is that it's a Western the second is that it's filmed in Australia versus Los Angeles and the third is the contract terms aren't exactly the same you know she had Shirley MacLaine that veto power essentially over the director and the script in the first one but not in the in the second one the court looks at those three things that's enough okay we've heard enough those those are meaningful differences end of end of case so anytime you have a court giving multiple reasons for something that invites the natural question all right do you need all of these things is one of them enough right so it's very common 20 these three things you can you can guess a professor will ask something like okay well suppose the contract terms had been exactly the same but the but it was still a Western and and it was still being filmed in Australia right with the case come out differently suppose it was still big country big man but it was being filmed in Los Angeles instead of Australia right so you could make all these kind of variations where you say all right you have one of the three things or two of the three things instead of three things would that make a difference to the to the majority so anytime you have cases where they're making multiple arguments in favor of a certain position you could always ask that kind of always ask that kind of question alright one thing that I have to point out because this is a pet peeve of mine and in the majority opinion although it shows up a little bit of the dissents opinion as well the majority talks about the fact that it is clear that the trial court correctly ruled clear clear is not an argument all right anytime you see clear or you you're tempted to use the word clear you should hesitate to to do so because very often not only sometimes when someone says it's clear actually is clear but sometimes when they say it's clear they're covering up something that's not so clear and they just want to convince you of something without making a good argument for it by just saying oh well it's clear that this is I mean if it was so clear how come the dissent is so exercised the valid how come the dissent has this long elaborate response to what the majority is saying you know how could it be clear if if you have this very coherent and cogent argument on the on the other side so be very wary anytime you see clearly or clear or as the majority says by no stretch of the imagination can these pictures be be considered similar by no stretch of the imagination area is there a separate Oscar category for westerns and musicals and you know things like right so the Oscar people don't see them as meaningfully different I mean they could you know Broadway has suffered categories from musicals but the the movies don't at least yet I mean I guess now they're having a separate category for popular movies Golden Globes I mean so is it so by no stretch of the imagination and musicals in the same category well sometimes we do right so you know so those are another that's another form of question that one could ask now one other thing that I want to mention just about the structure of this case is at the very end of the opinion before we get to the dissent the majority also mentions and this also came up a little bit with Professor nock Moore's questioning the majority mentions this alternative this alternative way of thinking about the the case based on the first footnote so the first foot no it hasn't been you so far they just sort of stick it in the air and you might say well what does that first foot know doing there they never they never refer to it well they refer to it at the very end of the opinion where they said well there might have been an alternative way to view this this case where maybe mitigation wouldn't be a question at all maybe there isn't even obligation to mitigate in this kind of case based on the nature of the contractual provision and footnote one but the majority is we don't need to get into that because we've already decided we've resolved the case the way we resolved it we don't need to answer give her give another argument in favor of our result now sometimes courts will give alternative arguments especially if you have a lower court that may worry about the fact that it can be reversed on appeal and so the lower court to cover its bases because maybe they don't want to be reversed they'll say okay well here's one way that this person can win and even you don't like that way here's another way that the person could win but if you're the Supreme Court of California you don't have to do that you don't have to convince anybody because no one is going to be no one's higher than you at least with respect to California state law this is not going to go to the US Supreme Court this this case so they don't have to do that but they might I mean sometimes they might do it because they want to give guidance to the lawyers and that jurisdiction so they want to give extra information but they don't do that here so again here is another possible source of questioning because the professor can look at that and say okay well what about this other argument could that have been better how come the dissent doesn't talk about this argument you know they want to send it back to trial but they don't they don't address this argument that the majority sort of throws in at the very at the very end right so that's another potential source of questions something else to think about as you read the as you read the case okay so so I think that gives you a sense of the structure of the opinion of course here we have a dissent and professor Nakamura brought out some of the ways in which the Sen approaches this case differently from the way the majority approaches it but at least that gives you a sense of what I mean by active reading when you're when you're looking at these things these are the kinds of questions that are likely to come up now there is no way that you're going to predict all the questions that a professor can ask and in fact if you did we'd be very upset because the what are we doing here you don't need us right you don't need us if you could figure out all the questions from from reading the cases when you just sort of start out as beginning of law students then we basically have no function you could just go read it on your own and be done with it so so there's no there's no shame or there's no embarrassment that you should feel in not you know like oh gosh I never thought of that question how did they come up with that question you know we've come up with these questions in part you know sometimes we've taught this case for many years and we've you know the more we read it the more questions we think about or sometimes students will ask questions and okay oh that's a good question I never thought of that then next year we ask that question when we teach the when we reach the case so so there's you know there's no way that you're gonna think of all the questions that we're gonna ask but this will give you at least a strategy for the kinds of things that are likely to give rise to two questions that professors will will ask so I will stop there and let professor nock more tackle the question of okay so why are we doing all this so I was actually so I was gonna say one or two things about what but professor Cohen said so but the first thing I was going to say was the last thing that he said which is you know there's a lot of stuff in this case we could sit down for a couple of hours and talk about all the different issues in this case there are a couple basic rules of contract law that are embedded in this case that you would kind of have to understand in order to get the nuance of this case you are not you know don't worry about that if you understand what's happening in the case and you can basically track the reasoning there's no way you're going to be able to anticipate all of the different things that we may or may not ask about it in one year I might ask one thing another year I might ask a different thing right depending on what's going on in the class or what strikes my fancy that day so don't worry about that at all right we will do that we will figure it out now the the corollary to that which kind of goes into why we're doing what we're doing is you know when we start talking about the case go with the flow right you might show up to the class with idea about what's going on the case say oh yeah well you know the majority is clearly right this dis Western that's a stupid movie I wouldn't even want to see that movie much less be in it right well that might not be where we're going right we might be trying to go somewhere different as long as you've got kind of the raw material and in I don't want to say in your head but as long as you've processed the raw material that's fine and you'll be able to kind of go with us and we'll pull you along right but if you show up and you've got a really fixed conception about what's supposed to happen in the case you know and you stick to that that can make it a little bit tougher so you know that being said if the case isn't going if the conversation isn't going the way you anticipated it to be going that's fine right that happens all the time and that's really kind of why we do this at some level so and the second thing I was going to say was about procedural history in these cases as a practical matter procedural history can't basically determine the case I think the fact that this is a summary judgment case you know essentially at least for the descent determines determines the case don't worry about that either you're gonna figure out this procedural history thing as you go right and if you show up and and you know if this is a contracts case it's a contracts case I'm going to be there to teach you contract law and to talk about contract law and if you kind of miss the fact that it's a summary judgement that the cases on summary judgment as opposed to judgment notwithstanding the verdict like that is probably not going to be a big deal that's the kind of thing that you're going to be able to recover from in class and go oh yeah good point right that shouldn't be the thing that we focus on so it will matter in the long run but you'll get used to using those concepts they will become second nature to you do not do not sweat that upfront about you know where it happened you should think about it but like with all of these things you're going to be getting used to that and those are really general terms and skills that are going to apply to all these different classes so I mean the reason the reason why we do it this way or this why some of us do it this way not all of us engage in Socratic dialogue but you know a fair amount of us do is really you know we're asking you questions because we want you to ask you questions you know whenever you are looking at these cases and this is basically a restatement of what Professor Cohen just said you know when you come to something you should be asking yourself why did they say that what prompted them to say that why do they think that the relevant standard is different or inferior you know what drove them to that oh they cited this case that's their justification you know well why is that a good justification well in the common law system start decisis means something yada yada yada right and you just kind of keep going with that a little bit and that kind of questioning will become second nature right as you go but it's hard to develop at the beginning and that is basically why we're doing this if we wanted you to memorize the rules of contract law I could put up a PowerPoint we could do this like in an hour and a half and we could all take the rest of the semester off right that is not what we're doing here we're trying to develop this habit of questioning right you should be questioning everything that you read as you go through just ask another question and and so you'll say something and I'll ask you a question about that right to get you ostensibly to ask yourself the question that I am asking you oh why do I think that MacLean didn't have to take this other job well why do I think going to Australia is worse than going to Los Angeles you know from whose perspective does it matter you should keep basically asking yourself those kinds of questions and that's what we're doing so so long as you've got the fodder right the facts and the rules in the procedural history and understanding sort of what's happening in the case then we'll talk about what the relevant questions are and like I said you will start to do this yourself right you'll start doing it to yourself you'll start doing it all the time I can tell you right your relatives will not be happy yeah this is this turns out not to be a good aspect of your marriage sometimes right that you know being married to somebody who engages in this constant questioning uh it can be a little taxing or at least so I've been told by someone I'm married to but it will become basically sort of second nature to you and that's why we really go through go through this so if you want you to explore those ideas I want you to explore the ideas that are developed in the case we want you to do that through questioning and that's basically why we wind up asking all these questions and so that's really what we're coming to class to do is to go through that kind of interactive questioning with you and because for some of these cases you know like this case you know Parker if you were really into mitigation of damages as a rule we could probably derive this case without knowing the facts of Parker at all we could just have a conversation and probably come up with this so and that's true of a lot of different things so that's really what we're into you know you're you are kind of stuck though with the rule that you're that you have in the case so you know I think for a variety of reasons the majority has got a real problem with the way that they derive the rule I think that probably became clear as the conversation progressed Maureen is stuck with that right so you know the fact that I don't like the way that the majority came up with the rule is not Maureen's problem right and and that's okay right she's kind of stuck with it sometimes the sometimes will ask you to comment on what they did sometimes we just want you to make the argument you know I put her in their shoes and I and I put Seth in the descents shoes you can do it with the two different sides there's all sorts of different ways you can do this you should get used to doing that too you're not you're not not only you not their arguments you're not your arguments you get to make arguments that you don't agree with right that's one of the freedoms that you have as a lawyer and certainly as a law student should be trying them up it's the only way that you can test them and you know when fessor cohen talks about it it sounds like an awful lot of work but like I said you know walking is actually an awful lot of work it just becomes kind second nature in this in this will at some level but that's that's really what's behind the cold calling and then you know there are any number of ways or reasons why we will focus on what we focus on in the case and so you know could be because of the connection that it has to another case it could be because of something we're thinking about talking about in a few weeks there's any number of reasons why we might have to size one aspect or another in the case if that wasn't what you were gonna emphasize in the case that's fine too I so I didn't I ended our conversation by saying alright I think that's good right so that's not how I end conversations in class the way I always basically end conversations in class the same way I'd say any questions hey and that's actually what we were going to sort of talk about next I wasn't saying that to you I was saying that to y'all I was a that was part of this I mean oh so another another thing that I will do sometimes you know people come in they've been they're coming from lunch so they're thinking about something else or whatever I will ask people if they've seen is Shirley MacLaine movie right don't worry about it well you know I'm just just a little conversation right maybe it's irrelevant so every now and then professors will say something that is not relevant to figuring out the case or maybe they big Shirley MacLaine fans or maybe not so much right or whatever so you know again it's not you know you can imagine walking out of the class and going oh my god I've got to see this Shirley MacLaine baby you do not although in terms of endearment is quite a tearjerker there's no doubt about it so we were talking about yeah so what just picking up on one thing the president awkward I said about the the reasons we read cases and when we ask questions that's one way to think about it that goes along with what he was saying is it's almost like when you're learning law you're learning how to practice law so I mean practice is a very good word it's almost like you're learning a sport or you're learning an instrument so if you're learning an instrument like a trumpet right it's one thing if someone says okay tell me how you would finger a b-flat it's another thing to actually play it right so when you when you're reading well you know you could sort of say okay well I understand what the rule is but unless you're actually using it unless you're playing it unless you're doing you're using it and and massaging it and and and stretching it and and trying to use it in some way that a lawyer would use it you're not really getting the full extent of what lawyers actually do how lawyers actually practice so when we're asking questions we are actually training you to do law this is what doing law is it's like learning to play an instrument it's like learning to play a sport you are practicing that activity it's an activity it's not just it's just not a set of a set of rules actually goes sort of actually both the next I think the next two topics right about asking questions in class and then we were and talk a little bit about about post class wrap-up kinds of things so you know I only have I guess I have a couple things to say about asking questions in class and I think we should open it up a little bit more the first is you should do it right you know going exactly to what professor Cohen said you know as you're as we're going through this the point is not to learn the rule about you know employee mitigation of damages and Califf in 1970 right it's to go through the exercise of doing the analysis and thinking about it and and so you should be doing on your head as we're going and you're gonna have questions that come up right and if they're relevant go ahead and ask them I learned I learned something from students every class right every class I teach a student will ask a question that will get something out of so you're all really smart people we're not going to talk about all this stuff that's in the case you know we're gonna talk about the stuff that we think is important but you got questions or you want to connect it back to something or else or whatever passed them you should be thinking as you're going so that you can ask questions if you've got them okay the big corollary to that is when your colleagues ask questions listen right so both chances are pretty good that if somebody else is asking a question it's a good question right and if you didn't think of it maybe you know that's okay like you should be thinking about it right that they're gonna wind up asking stuff that you didn't think about and that's good you have a lot of other people there who are really also really smart who are thinking about stuff they might ask stuff that you didn't it's about an issue that you didn't even see you could learn an awful lot that way and you know also you're gonna want to listen to the exchange right that happens as a result of the question so you know definitely definitely I would say from my perspective as a professor it's great when people ask questions but don't tune out just because it was another one of your colleagues who asked a question that's a temptation I actually don't permit computers in class for most of my classes but for the ones in which I do you know I can hear when people are typing in when they're not and I can tell that people stop typing when their colleagues ask questions and I think that's a big mistake you should really be paying attention when your colleagues are asking questions yeah even if even if you don't agree with them you should be thinking about why you don't agree with them if someone makes a statement that you think is silly or that you think is is wrongheaded then you should be trying to formulate in your head okay what how would i phrase this differently how would I respond to that question how would think about it because again if you think about what warriors actually do lawyers are constantly in that kind of position you're sitting in a courtroom and the lawyer for the other side is is having a discussion with the court or having a discussion with a witness and you want to think okay well is that a fair question is that a legitimate point of view do you know how am I going to respond to to that if if a partner is talking to another partner and you're sitting in the room in a meeting you know and they're there making arguments back and forth and you might say to yourself that's not a good argument we can't win on that argument so you always need to be listening to what other people are saying because whether you agree with it or not you want to be evaluating it and that's a constant practice a constant skill you need to be developing so so I completely agree with with that now one other thing going back to the how we learn from questions not only do we learn things because people ask questions that we we had thought of but questions even if you think they're dumb questions or bad questions are very helpful for the professor's because they help us learn where you're not getting it if you're not getting something then we need to correct it right we need to figure you know we need to explain okay all right I can see here this is not really getting through you I need to explain this a different way so you're actually helping us explain things in a better way if you don't ask the questions we have no idea we think okay you got it fine we're moving on right and then you know the train has left the station you lost your chance to to sort of ask that you could come after two office hours and things like that but but this way it's it's it's something that everyone can benefit from if you ask the question in in class now you know sometimes there will be times where some professors might cut off questions or stop questions because they want to get to in the next case or they're trying to stay on schedule or things like that or they might say you know could we take this up after class or come to my office hours or things like that so so again don't take that personally it's just that there are competing goals here yes we want to answer all your questions but we also want to try to you know stick to a certain kind of schedule I'm less of a schedule person than other people are but I know there are people who are very much stick to the schedule kind of people so so again it doesn't mean that we're not interested in the questions we're very interested the questions but sometimes people need to cut them off or or make make room for other kinds of other kinds of goals the the other thing that I would mention in terms of class participation is and again this goes along with what we've been saying is there is no shame in being wrong and there is no shame in saying I don't know you know I mean sometimes you just you don't know I mean or if you're wrong you know all right I was wrong I misread that or yeah I didn't see that or something that's that's fine that's part of the learning process this is where it's okay to make mistakes right nothing someone's life is not hanging in the balance if you make a mistake here so this is where you should make the mistakes so that you can learn from them and then when you're out practicing law hopefully you won't make as many at least as many important ones here so so that's part of what the learning experience is it's not something to be embarrassed about we all are and we can't help it that's human nature especially type-a personalities like all of us all right so you always want to be right all the time I understand that I'm the same way but you know it's in the back of your head just keep in mind it's it's okay it's okay to be wrong your life will not end most people will forget about it the next day they won't even remember what you said or what you were wrong you know I think I remember the first year I was teaching you know I was teaching a case and I completely blanked out in the middle of class and I just I couldn't remember what case we were doing what I was asking her anything and I I probably stood there for maybe 30 seconds until it came back to me and I went back to my office after the the class was done and I said that's it I can't be a professor I can't do it you know I'm a failure you know that no one's gonna pay attention to me and I came back you know I got over I came back the next day and everyone was there and it's like it never happened you know so the two people who were sitting out there listening you know maybe they thought oh that's weird he just sort of stopped talking but you know then II we're not yes but they didn't hold it against me and your classmates won't hold it against you I mean it'll mean a lot more to you than it will to them and so you know again yes it's it's painful no one wants to be wrong but don't it's not the end of the world that's more energy of thoughts about question asking questions in class which you get out of it yeah I would say the one thing that really goes through my head if I'm about to raise my hand first off is is this something that's gonna benefit the class but I think there have been times in class where somebody raises their hand and ask some off-the-wall hypothetical in a world that will never happen and you're sitting there going like oh my god like but I feel like more often than not if something's burning in your mind it's burning in everybody's mind especially this first year and I think it's really you're gonna feel like people are gonna view you as being a gunner or like super nerdy if you're you're constantly raising your hand but for me I'm sitting here going you know what this this education isn't free and I'm here to learn from expert while seriously and I'm here to learn from the experts in my field and these when you're sitting in a class with Professor Cohen freshman Akbar and contracts they're here teaching that for a reason ask the question and I think as you go you're gonna start getting more and more confident that people aren't thinking that you're stupid or people you know they're going oh my god I'm so glad yeah so cuz I've been thinking the same thing for the last hour like what is mitigation mean and I still don't know anything so I just echo that that I think for generally people come in and think that like the classroom is this scary militaristic environment where if you get an answer wrong like they're marking your grade down and it I think I would just urge you to come in prepared do the best you can to read if you don't 100% understand everything just trust that by the end of class you're gonna work through all that if you get called on and you're not getting it right your classmates are all sitting there thinking what they would be saying anyway nobody's gonna remember it and my first cold call I literally my class had like bailout partners and they didn't know they were my bailout partners so she's like wow bailout partners would you you know like to help him out and they didn't know it so everybody just sat there and stared at me for like five minutes and then they were like oh yeah anyway and but nobody remembers that here we are two years later I did fine I got through it and so I just I would take what they're saying is this opportunity to come into class with with an understanding of what you think the case is what you think is going on and like you said be open to that changing sometimes somebody's question will make you realize I didn't understand this case I thought I'd but I don't or if you're that person that's like I can't get to the next part of this without understanding this one thing but I think everybody else looks really confused to raise your hand and ask it and I think you're going to get more confident in doing that and being able to speak in front of people and that's a whole part of this process too so don't view cold calls in classes this super scary thing where everybody's judging you and people are gonna think you don't belong here I've messed up so many times in class and have professors tell me very politely like I don't think you got that I don't you know and I'm going okay I'm glad because otherwise why are we here so just take a deep breath go into the first class do the best that you can and nobody here is out to to belittle you or make you feel bad about not understanding the cases or the law because that's the whole reason we're here the case I read your story with seven pages it took me three hours yeah lost my mind in tears today and it took me about 25 minutes to understand at least going on and it's like the six or seven each so like get better as you go and don't I mean don't let that I literally went home you realize that what you're learning is complex and that it's not scary yeah for me I end up having to read every case that I can assigned at least twice justice and this will happen to all of you at some point you read it the first time and you it could have been in a different language like I don't know what I just did for the last hour I couldn't tell you that mitigation was even an issue and there's like less we two will regroup figure it out and jump to be discursive I just keep going um something that I figured out during my 100 year is that a lot of things in the law school sounds scary but they're just things that you've been doing your whole life they just have a few different scary name right so a close call you're just answering a professor's question you you're all excellent students that how you ended up here like you've got this you know what you're doing it just has a new fancy scary game you know how to do this you've been doing it three years you're just having a conversation with your professor and I think asking questions in class when you have real questions is helpful I ask more questions than anyone else but other people have those same questions I think where it starts to be tricky is when um like professors get impressed by your questions but this is not the time to be impressing them so if you're going on Lexus and looking at discussion questions and then closing them as though they're your own question - try to be impressive right like people do that how about this I've learned something questions they are so helpful to everyone mom and I think talking with your friends is really beneficial right so when I don't understand things you're going to be in a sack Shane you're going to know each other talk about it that's what you guys are here for it's going to make you more prepared it's gonna make you understand things better and it's gonna make it so that when you get into class ameka cold Club you've got talking about the law you have sort of a firmer understanding of the word I would use that with how um these types of conversations actually look like and then the one other thing that I'll say reading these cases are hard there are resources online that you might want to turn to or like supplements or things that give you an overview of the cases and you might be tempted to look at those things before a football especially in the beginning because you don't want to feel silly and I would just urge you to stay away from those at least at the very beginning because that is a disservice to yourself a big part of law school is trying and failing and trying again and grappling with really hard days until they've actually become easier real and if you are sort of searching out crutches at the beginning it's just going to make it harder for you yeah I mean I think that's right I think that's right I haven't really thought about the supplement thing but again you know we're not really here you can get rules out of the supplement it's not gonna do you any good we were going to talk a little bit about after class as well though I think it goes to two Marines point about before class which is so I start I start most of my classes with a little recap of what I did in the last class not everybody does that but I would think about trying to do that after class you know we get some time little perspective sit down and think about well so you know how would I put this together with the other stuff or how did my perspective change whatever it doesn't have to be a big formal thing the biggest thing I would say is talk to your colleagues you know it goes to what professor Cohen said about practice the more you talk about this stuff the batter right and so and and the discussion you have with them is gonna be basically the same kind of thing as the discussion that you have with us except for there aren't as many of you so it's gonna be more interactive discussion but the more that you can talk to each other about what you're studying and what you're learning the better it's you know the the study group thing you're gonna be so like the Paper Chase and maybe you see the Paper Chase like so two things about the Paper Chase well maybe three things about the Paper Chase one is a study group is not a place for you to extract information from other people and it's not a place for them to extract information from you that just is not what happens I mean you can try to do that it's not gonna happen you know I've learned criminal law basically by explaining it to one of my classmates when I was in law school you know and I got much much more out of that conversation than she did I Karen tu right so the interaction is really what helps you write the second thing about the Paper Chase is that the Socratic dialogue in the Paper Chase is absolutely horrible not good the only blonde is better and then in so many ways and then and then the third thing and about the Paper Chase is that you too are capable of becoming insufferable as the protagonist in the chain Paperchase so be careful about that but but you need to definitely you know spend time working with your colleagues outside of class yeah it is I think you know other than being prepared you know just having the basics of preparation done for class it's the most valuable thing that you can do here is just talking with each other about what you're doing in class I think we're sort of at the end of the hour so all right so if you have any questions we're gonna be around or I think we're gonna be at the social yeah social so please come talk to us good luck [Applause]

Channel: University of Virginia School of Law

Views: 5,470

Keywords: George Cohen, Thomas Nachbar, cold calling, law school, legal classroom

Id: V-tE38HE9MY

Length: 77min 43sec (4663 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018