OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

some ill-conceived notions of what the class was being a first-gen law student. I know that jurisdiction is important to cover before FRCP, but maybe a few rules can be dribbled into the first few weeks, to introduce the concept of learning rules, prepping students for the back half. Overall the class structure was good though! Prof. Burstein is clearly knowledgable and acts as a library of insight into this legal field. It goes without saying I have a great deal of respect for her status and experience. However, there were multiple points in the semester where a divide between her expectations of us and our real capabilities came to the foreground. Prof. Burstein was occasionally dismissive of my colleagues ' questions in class. Some questions were irrelevant, but the tone in her responses felt more dismissive than other professors encountering similar questions. That distinction soured the learning environment. I recognize that gender bias might influence that perception, but that sentiment is widespread among my section, bridging across my male and female peers. Additionally, Prof. Burstein set up only one office hours session this semester and often directed any inquiries to our TA. That made Prof. Burstein seem inaccessible at points which was frustrating because she ' s so knowledgeable and could give very relevant insight. Separately, Prof. Burstein asked we wore masks this semester. It was not an inconvenience and her justification for family ' s was not a concern. However, our zoom lectures were much more engaging because we could see her facial expressions. It made the learning environment more exciting and strengthened the bond between her and our section. In her next class I would hope she will consider that benefit in light of the issues we encountered together this semester. When going over cases, the focus is so microscopic that the big picture gets lost. Being expected to know everything in the book when it is not reviewed in class or discussed but it is fair game for the exam is very stressful and seems a bit unfair especially if we didn ' t cover it together to know what the professor wants. When answering our questions, the professor doesn ' t always answer the question that is asked or instead would give an "it depends" answer or "I need more information" which, fine there ' s ambiguity in the law but maybe telling us what extra information is needed or giving us examples like if this then that so we can better understand would be helpful. Somehow our frustration with these "it depends" answers got back to the professor and then in our next class she added a PowerPoint slide basically telling us we had to get used to ambiguity in the law. There was a topic we were all confused about one day in class (i believe it was in rem jurisdiction) and the professor kept answering the questions the same way which wasn ' t helpful and then said something to the effect of "I feel like you guys aren ' t getting it" and then we moved on. Perhaps taking different approaches to answering questions or explaining things in different ways would be helpful in the future. All of our class lectures were recorded except the last 4 over zoom. I found this to be a bit unfair since new material was being covered in these sections and I would have no way to go back and review the lecture if I still had questions or wanted to re-watch it while studying for the final. I

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