OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

exhorted?) us to rewrite previously turned in work. The first time, to set the record straight on a story another classmate told about us, was understandable. But the second, which was to our reflection papers to a standard we would be happy if a law firm partner saw, could not have come at a worse time than the same weekend our LPS final memo was assigned. It was an outrageous request for an ungraded class to go back and re-do our work for the semester. If these reflection papers were for our benefit, they did not need to be up to partner standards. If they were practice for producing high quality work, a clear expectation of what that product was supposed to be from the start, which we never received, would have put us in a better position to accomplish that. Additionally, the reflection papers we were assigned were drastically longer than the papers others were assigned. Other classes were kept to a 1-page limit. We were told that writing one sentence as a response to each item in a 6-part question, which would be one of multiple questions, was not sufficient work. Thus, this class was a disadvantage, not an advantage, compared to other students who were similarly using this time for this class and compared to our 1L peers who could use this time to study. Professor Baker’s choice to keep students late after class to lecture them for being late from the break is what I will remember most from this semester, and seeing that as his response to their mishap broke my, and other students, interest in not only the class but in him as a mentor. Professor George similarly bullied another student - driving her to tears after class when she talked with friends about the professor’s comparison of her to a prior student - but before the next class session Professor George apologized by email and the student really appreciated that. Had he used the opportunity as a positive teaching experience (what are the benefits of being on time? How do people feel when others are late?) or a community-building opportunity instead of a retributive one, it would have been a better experience. What this class lacked was the camaraderie we formed with our professors in other classes, where even when there were things we found frustrating there was enough good to let that happen. Meeting once every two weeks meant there was no hope in fostering a community except one of shared chagrin and, dare I say, dread. The skills Professor Baker sought to teach us paralleled the advice we received from other, more specific and capable-in-their-field sources in the school. I am only a 1L so I do not know what is coming for us in future years. But my inclination is to advise that the professional success professors focus on the things the rest of the school doesn’t cover. No PCD lectures (though it was helpful, it was not stuff we hadn’t heard before), no student panels (though it was helpful as well, we’ve heard it all before), no exam prep (It was outrageous to me that he skipped through slides another professor had made while saying that we could read them ourselves. Let the professors in each class, or ASP, do this). Stick to the meditation, the diet, the sleep, the time management, the exercise, the posture. That is plenty of topics to cover in our limited class periods. Think about what we could have done! After a guest lecture from a nutritionist, we could have been responsible for a diet plan, and writing

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