one year down, two to go

so i guess it's about time for me to discuss what has been the most dominant feature of my life for the past year or so: law school. this past may, i finished my first year at the fine institution known as the university of south carolina school of law.

as the cliche goes for american law schools: "in the first year of law school, they scare you to death. in the second year, they work you to death. and in the third year, they bore you to death."

despite thinking that i was ready for the fire after working at law firms in new york and DC for a couple of years, and hearing all about what to anticipate once i went to law school, i must concede that i was pretty scared at times this past year.

in property class, especially. by the middle of my second semester with professor burkhard, however, i grew to think of him as the best professor i had had during my first year and felt comfortable going to class. but it took about five months of fear and panic before i could fully appreciate the maestro that he is. a more serious teacher than he i have not had. by "serious," i mean that he seems to approach class like an award-winning actor approaches a play on broadway. his level of preparedness for a one-hour class is astonishing. it seems as if every minute of the class is laid out in advance, and he certainly knows who he is going to call on before class begins. almost all professors i know use notes from years past and probably improve upon the "script" and delivery of the information they seek to convey and abstract from their students. professor burkhard's script, delivery, and abstractions just seem to be better than any other professor i have had so far.

and this level of preparation is also expected from each and every student. on the syllabus that he handed out on the first day of class, he stated: "for each hour of class, i expect students to prepare approximately three hours outside of class." he means it. his assignments were actually not that long compared to some other classes, but the level of understanding that professor burkhard expected out of the reading was at a higher level than anything i had ever participated in in my higher education learning experience. there were times i came to class having read a case three times through, thinking there was nothing he could ask that i did not know about in that particular case. and, yet, somehow i would still often not have appreciated a major point of the case, at least based upon professor burkhard's expectations of what it means to understand the legal significance of a certain opinion of the court.

i do not recall being humiliated in class, and professor burkhard, to my recollection, did not intentionally humiliate a single student all year (as you will often hear is done by some other law school professors, both at usc and at other schools). but there were definitely times when i felt that i or other students let the class down by not being fully prepared for the burkhard interrogation process. i do not anticipate being an attorney who deals to a large degree in property law, but i am certainly grateful for having had such a great professor, who, by the way, is a pretty big ohio state buckeyes fan.

in a few weeks, i guess i will begin to see if my second year teachers are going to work me to death...