OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

The level of ambiguity of this course needs to be improved, I understand that this area of law may be black and white, but when I or my peers posed questions that were well thought out she would respond that she could not answer that or repeatdly say we could find the answer in our "small universe". We repeatedly had days off of class (I beleive 4) for guest speakers and told how little material we had to cover, but are ending the course seeming as we still have so much to learn that could have been taught on those 4 classes. Classroom control was also an issue, this professor let students get way off track and would go off on tangents that confused the class as a whole. Very inteligent professor who I beleive knows her stuff, but cannot effectivly communicate it to students. I believe that Professor Burstein is an extremely intelligent and accomplished woman. I think she is VERY passionate and loves to teach. But I think she was not meant to teach a 1L course. She made us feel dumb and would purposefully ask us incredibly difficult questions. I understand cold calling is a part of law school, an incredibly important part, but with that being said Professor Burstein would grill someone for 45 minutes on questions and never even seemed to agree with their answers. Additionally, if we asked her questions she would barely answer them and overall make the learning environment feel toxic. She was flat out rude to students and would make snide remarks. Her teaching style is not really effective because she doesn ' t teach by rule or statute, she teaches by case. Which is honestly not applicable for civil procedure in my opinion. Professor providing helpful slides/presentations Providing direct answers to questions. Often times we would ask questions and not get answers, or she would ask other students to answer in her place. Never felt like there was a concrete answer to any questions posed. Objective presentations rather than politically charged Availability for office hours Posting slides to Blackboard on time Practice questions From what I have been told, other classes taught on Civil Procedure are typically not as terrible as the experience I had, so I cannot speak to what aspects the actual course can improve on, since my experience seems drastically different from others I have talked to. As for the instructor improvement, I believe this course, perhaps even the school, is not suited for her teaching styles. I have never heard a professor simply say "I don ' t know" to questions asked in the classroom so many times in all my years in school. As someone who is put in charge of our entire understanding of this material, I believe we deserve to be given more than that. I understand not having the information to answer a question, but to just stand there and say "I don ' t know" and then move on to something else is incredibly unhelpful, not to mention disrespectful to the student who likely had a hard time asking the question in the first place. It would also be helpful to go over the material in depth, something we did not do. Aside from having multiple classes where we had guest speakers instead of lectures, which we clearly needed since the material was so difficult to learn, especially on our own, we also

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