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what students are accustomed to elsewhere. While I was teaching it was always assumed that there was no hope of holding a class discussion with a group larger than thirty. When numbers got that high, the only means of communication was lecture. But Socratism is, in a way, an attempt to lead a discussion with the entire class of 140.
    Generally, Socratic discussion begins when a student—I’ll call him Jones—is selected without warning by the professor and questioned. Traditionally, Jones will be asked to “state the case,” that is, to provide an oral rendition of the information normally contained in a case brief. Once Jones has responded, the professor—as Socrates did with his students—will question Jones about what he has said, pressing him to make his answers clearer. If Jones says that the judge found that the contract had been breached, the professor will ask what specific provision of the contract had been violated and in what manner. The discussion will proceed that way, with the issues narrowing. At some point, Jones may be unable to answer. The professor can either select another student at random, or—more commonly—call on those who’ve raised their hands. The substitutes may continue the discussion of the case with the professor, or simply answer what Jones could not, the professor then resuming his interrogation of Jones.
    Professors’ classroom procedures differ so widely that this description cannot be called typical. Some professors never ask for a statement of the case, commencing discussion with a narrower question instead. Some interrogate students for thirty seconds—others leave them on the hot seat for the entire class. A few professors never do any more than ask questions, disdaining any direct statements. Most, however, use a student’s response as the starting point for a brief lecture on a given topic before returning to more questioning.
    However employed, the Socratic method is often criticized. Ralph Nader has called it “the game only one can play,” and there have been generations of students who, like David, have wished curses on Dean Langdell. The peer pressures which Peter Geocaris described to my Methods group during orientation often make getting called on an uncomfortable experience. You are in front of 140 people whom you respect, and you would like them to think well of you.
    Despite student pain and protest, most law professors, including those who are liberal—even radical—on other issues in legal education, defend the Socratic method. They feel that Socratic instruction offers the best means of training students to speak in the law’s unfamiliar language, and also of acquainting them with the layered, inquiring style of analysis which is a prominent part of thinking like a lawyer.
    For me, the primary feeling at the start was one of incredible exposure. Whatever its faults or virtues, the Socratic method depends on a tacit license to violate a subtle rule of public behavior. When groups are too large for any semblance of intimacy, we usually think of them as being divided by role. The speaker speaks and, in the name of order, the audience listens—passive, anonymous, remote. In using the Socratic method, professors are informing students that what would normally be a safe personal space is likely at any moment to be invaded.
    That feeling might well have made me more attentive in class, but it also left me quite agitated when I went for the first time to take my place in Criminal Law, that day last September. It was a little after 9:00 A.M. and I hunted down the rows to find my seat. At most law schools, Harvard among them, class seats are assigned in advance. The allotment is random and there is a different seat for each course. Every student’s seat number is recorded on a diagram of the classroom which professors normally have before them at all times. Many professors cut students’ pictures out