OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

at a disadvantage for all of the 1L practice exams because we were using a different book and she told us not to go to the school-provided practice exams. She was constantly in a bad mood in class and it made me reluctant to come, and I know it made me and a lot of other students really nervous to sit in class because of the way she would talk to us. Unfortunately, most of it. If it wasn ' t for the TA piecing things together, I ' m not sure I ' d feel ready for the final whatsoever. Professor Burstein constantly reminded us that she felt as if "civil procedure should be a 3L course" and that "this course is only 4 credits." It was exhausting to hear this because I did not choose to take this 1L and I did not choose for it to only be for one semester. She clearly knows the material but I don ' t believe she is a good fit for teaching 1Ls. She treated her classes like philosophical discussions and seemed frustrated with us when we didn ' t understand foundational material. I certainly understand that law school is not meant to be easy, but she seemed to have too high expectations of what we ' d come in knowing right off the bat. Her class lectures were solely about the cases we had to read; we ' d spend roughly 45 minutes on each case we had to read picking apart the very small details that never seemed relevant to the takeaways we should be aware of. I did not gather a solid understanding from her slides or lectures regarding the major takeaways and rules to be aware of - I relied on the TA and myself to piece together this course. The way she speaks to students is truly incredibly disrespectful, I ' ve never seen anything like it. I certainly expected the socratic method when I began law school, but her unique method is much more brutal than other classes. She keeps students in the hot seat for 45 minutes and often asks for opinions/views regarding the case on the spot. If the student in the hot seat responds with a question or responds with a lack of confidence, I ' ve seen her laugh while responding to the student. We ' re adults and I don ' t feel seen that way by Professor Burstein. She is also disrespectful towards the profession and fellow lawyers. She showed us different pleadings, which was interesting, but would stop the class recording to say "how poorly the lawyers wrote this." She said it often enough to where it came off that she felt she was better than most lawyers. In addition, she clearly favors IP and Patent law because she brought it up SO often in class to the point that it got distracting and I ' d wish we could resume talking about civil procedure. Also, the textbook chosen is incredibly confusing and took hours to decipher single cases. It presents questions without including the answers. Professor Burstein would expect us to answer the questions while reading, but she also would not include the answers within her lectures. Similarly, she would begin + end each class with specific questions we should know the answers to..she also would not provide the answers to these. In addition, if a student asked a question in class, she ' d often just refer to a page in the textbook to find this answer. We tried to explain that the textbook is difficult to understand and we ' d like for her to explain it to us but she often would not do so. Lastly, I never felt that Professor Burstein genuinely wanted us to succeed. I ' ve never said that about a professor before and it certainly

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