OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

understand that professors are not required to record their lectures, however, if they record every single one throughout the semester, it shouldn ' t matter if we moved online or not. Before the end of class when we were given time to do our evaluations, the professor talked about how these evaluations basically are inaccurate due to the subjectivity and bias that goes into them which didn ' t seem right. Maybe next time not including these details right before we complete our evaluation would make things feel less awkward and unprofessional. I found Freer ' s Civ Pro text to be, by no small margin, the worst of all 1L textbooks I was assigned. I also found Professor Burstein to be deeply disrespectful, condescending, and at times outright rude. She often refused to answer student questions in such a way that demonstrated she didn ' t really listen to what they were asking--numerous times multiple people had to rephrase the question repeatedly in order to try to get an answer. And this was not, as she loved to rail against, an example of students asking for a black-or-white answer to some question. I believe we all understood that the topics in the class don ' t really have black-or white answers. The sort of questions she refused to answer included, "what ' s an example of one additional fact that would push you towards X or Y answer?" On at least one occasion, Professor Burstein literally rolled her eyes at students. I cannot fathom how this could be acceptable, I found it particularly offensive, and it frankly made me lose most respect and trust I had for her. Our midterm review was one of the most hostile learning experiences I ' ve ever had, and it had a huge negative impact on nearly the entire class. Professor Burstein seemed noticeably uncomfortable lecturing in an in-person classroom environment, more than once seeming resentful in responding to relevant and well-intentioned questions about the material. During our remote Zoom lectures near the end of the semester, she was visibly more at ease and comfortable responding to questions. Prior to these sessions, however, the Zoom meetings with guest speakers we were asked to attend had little relevance to civil procedure and focused more on other aspects of the speakers ' legal careers. The time spent on these guest lectures would have been better devoted to more focus on the course material. Professor Burstein ' s inclusion of a mock midterm exam in the course was appreciated, but executed poorly. The prompt for the essay was excessively focused on distractor information, with almost the entire hypothetical constructed around a torts concept (contributory liability) that Professor Burstein explicitly stated in review that we were not meant to address. We reviewed the exam through peer grading, which did little to help us understand the standards we would be expected to meet in the final, and Professor Burstein seemed highly reluctant to clarify those standards. She explicitly stated on one occasion that viewing an example of what she considered an exam worthy of a top grade would "terrify" us, implying that her standard for a top grade is one she consciously does not expect any student to be capable of meeting. More transparency about exam grading standards would make future mock exams more useful. I think the important thing for students in their first semester of law school, is to have the

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