Here’s the thing, though: law school does this *very poorly*, in large part because most professors use the Socratic method to try to make people think a certain way without explaining what it is they are doing. https://twitter.com/danepps/status/1302609076241813504

The lack of explanation is *extremely* valuable if you want a clear separation between students who Get It and students who Don’t, but it’s not the most effective way to teach that group of people how to think.

If I contrast law school with, say, my scientific education, I can point to *numerous* times when *how* you are taught to think is *explicitly* taught—backwards and forwards and sideways.

Particularly since 1L grades count so heavily in the job search, the fact that many law professors simply *do not explain the thing they are teaching* means that law school grades end up being a game that is won by those who understand the game. https://twitter.com/SaadatiSoto/status/1302741746866991104?s=20

This places a huge burden on first-generation students who don’t have a support network—to figure out a game that they’re only being taught indirectly.

I *loved* law school while I was doing it, because I figured out the game and I was extremely good at it.

But many students are not told that they need to figure out the rules on their own, and they discover they’ve been playing by the wrong rules with first semester grades.

This is an intensely cruel and biased system, and there’s maybe a million reasons why I’m not a law professor anymore, but this is one of them.

The system for selecting law professors largely selects those people who figured out the game very quickly, which means that the people teaching by and large think that *figuring out the game* is a necessary part of the game, and so continue to teach it badly, if at all.

I had some amazing professors in law school, and I don’t want to discount that.

But one of the things I used to say in exculpation was, “they’re not hiding the ball, they’re showing you how to juggle.”

And that’s cool, and it’s true, but the vast majority of my professors did not say that was what they were doing.

So many students were left confused as to what they were even supposed to be learning.

If law school really taught you how to research and think critically, fewer law professors would use the Socratic method.