OLDFall 2022 Law School Course Evaluations

and Understanding Course Material: Professor Burstein refused to give us any opportunities to practice and gage our understanding of the course material - outside of the mock midterm. Rather, she told us that she did not believe in supplements and that it would not be possible for her to provide us with any practice questions because her previously-taught civil procedure course was 6 credits. While the mock midterm was helpful, it was only practice on half of the semester ' s material and did not touch on the more procedural topics students are now struggling with. I would recommend that Professor Burstein is more proactive about helping her students understand the course material and if she does not want to herself, then to be open to directing them towards material that will help them gage their understanding. Accessibility to Professor Burstein: Professor Burstein closed herself off from students shortly after the semester began and remained inacessible to them for its remainder. Within the first few weeks of school, she told us to attend our TA ' s review sessions, to ask our TA questions, and if any were still unanswered, then to come to her. She never had regularly scheduled office hours. She organized a meet-up with students on one occassion to discuss law school generally, not the materials in her course. When students approached her after class, she would direct them back to the casebook to have their questions answered, or, to Academic Support. Candidly, the reason that students are approaching a professor is because they do not understand the materials in the casebook - directing them back to the source that they do not understand is not particularly helpful. Furthermore, as mentioned above, Professor Burstein refuses to provide guidance on other supplements or practice materials, so I do not understand how she expects students to have their questions answered and reinforce their understanding of the course material. Professor Burstein ' s refusal to help students made it difficult to enjoy her class, because she came across as disinterested in engaging with students and helping them master her course material. Professor Burstein constantly lectured us on having to become comfortable with ambiguity in the law and a lack of answers. I think she misunderstood our requests for help as wanting specific answers when what we wanted was help with learning the information better. The casebook that was picked by Professor Burstein did not do a great job at explaining the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. With that, Professor Burstein would focus majority of classes on the substantive case law and its facts rather than how the rules can be applied to different situations that we may see in our professional careers. One aspect of the course that could be improved is that I would change would be to use Professor Glannon’s book regardless of if he is the professor of the course or not. When you have such a standout professor in a field at your institution, having other professors learn from his book and teaching style would ultimately give students the best instruction. Another aspect of instruction that could be improved upon is a more positive attitude by Professor Burstein. There were class periods where she would be blatantly rude to my classmates and not answer questions that my classmates and I had because “I don’t teach tort law” even though the questions were applicable to the content that she was

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