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you were doing in the library, you could solve the most complex legal problems in the world. But it was plain in listening that that kind of skill would not be developed merely by taking the walking tours of the stacks which the librarian suggested or doing the reading on legal research. You would have to go up there and work with the stuff, fail, get frustrated, try again.
    I was willing to do it. I was determined to do it. By the end of the day, that had become my reaction to all of the signs of hard things ahead—a new purposefulness, hardy resolve. Everything I’d encountered so far—the law, my classmates, the great pace of discovery—had left me in deep thrall and I was bent on making sure that continued. I would have the best of it, I decided, whatever the obstacles.
    Over the weekend, I studied hard. I did not want to feel again the helpless ignorance of the other night. I outlined carefully the chapters of text assigned in both Criminal Law and Contracts, then I went over the two cases Perini had given us, a number of times. I did scrupulous briefs for both cases, each word weighed, every angle considered. I rehearsed what I would say if called on. I paged through the law dictionary until I had virtually memorized the definition of every term important in the opinions. I was going to be ready for Perini, totally prepared.
    I was too absorbed to notice that I had already been lured onto enemy ground.

September and October
    Learning to Love the Law
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    9/8/75 (Monday)
    Just a note before I leave for school.
    Today is the start of regular classes. We will now commence “normal” law school life. The 2Ls and 3Ls will be present and the section will begin the schedule we’ll be on for much of the year. This semester we’ll have Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and Torts. The latter two courses last only one term and they’ll be the subjects on which we’ll take our first exams in January. Second semester, Contracts and Civil Pro continue, Property will be added and we’ll each be allowed to choose an elective.
    We’ve been warned that today’s classes—Criminal and Contracts—will not seem much like Legal Methods. The courses we begin now are considered the traditional stuff of law school, analytical matter, rather than mere how-to. Unlike Methods, these courses will be graded, and they’ll be taught by professors, not teaching fellows. The classes will be made up of the whole 140-person section instead of a small group. And, most ominous to me, the instruction will be by the noted “Socratic method.”
    In a way I’m looking forward to Socratic instruction. I’ve heard so much about it since I applied to law school—it will at least be interesting to see what it’s like.
    The general run of student reaction is most succinctly expressed in a comment I heard from David this summer, the day he showed me around the law school. He was kind of mimicking a tour guide, whining out facts and names as he took me from building to building. When we reached Langdell, he stood on the steps and lifted his hand toward the columns and the famous names of the law cut into the granite border beneath the roof.
    â€œThis is Langdell Hall,” he said, “The biggest building on the law school campus. It contains four large classrooms and, on the upper floors, the Harvard Law School library, the largest law school library in the world.
    â€œThe building is named for the late Christopher Columbus Langdell, who was dean of Harvard Law School in the late nineteenth century. Dean Langdell is best known as the inventor of the Socratic method.”
    David lowered his hand and looked sincerely at the building.
    â€œMay he rot in hell,” David said.
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    The Socratic method is without question one of the things which makes legal education—particularly the first year, when Socraticism is most extensively used—distinct from