“Ms. Everett.”
My heart thumped; my stomach jumped; and I felt my face heating up. I knew it. Just like 1L. I knew I’d get called on the first day again. Here we go. I looked up at her, signaling I was ready for the inescapable interrogation.
“Ms. Everett. How is the Freedom of Religion Clause implicated in this case?”
“You mean like what does it say?”
She stepped forward. My voice had compromised my position in the auditorium, and she focused her gaze. “Yes. What is the Freedom of Religion Clause? What does it say?”
“Well, um, it says. It says that Congress can’t establish…” Wait. Is it that Congress can’t make a law that establishes a certain religion? Or that it can’t prohibit someone from practicing … “Um. The government can’t make one religion…” Crap. Now my voice is getting all shaky. Just read, Angel.
I looked down at my scribbled notes in the margins of the casebook. “It says that the government can’t make laws that establish a certain religion.”
“Right.” The professor walked back to the center of the horseshoe-shaped room, and reiterated, “Congress cannot make a law that establishes a certain religion or prohibit an individual from practicing his religion.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and she moved on to the next student. But, as evidenced by the increased pace of my heartbeat, my adrenaline had not subsided to its resting level. Thankfully, that was imperceptible to the fifty-nine other students in the room, but secretly, I was ashamed that even in my final semester of law school, I was still getting nervous about these cold calls: I mean, the question wasn’t even hard. Who doesn’t know what freedom of religion is? Why do I get so worked up?
I gently packed my notes, highlighters, and spiral notebook, walked out of the auditorium, and dropped the class.
Although I knew I was doing what was best for me and my learning style, I could not help but feel ashamed, defeated, and like a failure for not rising to the occasion and conquering another cold-call class. After all, I am a 3L. I recalled how my 1L professors defended the Socratic Method by praising the development and growth they would witness: “I cannot tell you how great it feels to see a timid student evolve, or to see the glimmer in her eye when she thinks herself through to the correct answer.” As I walked out of that class the oppressive thoughts met me in the hallway and followed me to my apartment: What is wrong with me? Why have I not evolved? Why have I not conquered the cold call?
I had not conquered the cold call because I had not yet sat down to reflect on my law school experience and generate a guide to cold calls. But now, I’ve done just that. Too bad I’m about to graduate, so I no longer need a how-to guide, but to those who dare to be subjected to this ritualistic hazing component of the law school experience, the forthcoming posts will be dedicated to cold call tips.
One. Answer with an outline nearby.
During my first year I thought everyone in my section was a genius, or at least, benefited from some nebulous privilege that escaped me. They were giving perfectly crafted, correct answers to the most specific, nuanced legal questions. I could not help but think: How did they know that? I mean, the professor would ask random, detailed questions about the context of the case, the justices, or some other obscure fact that may or may not have been mentioned in the reading, or if it was mentioned, it was a brief sentence amidst a haystack of sixty pages. Nevertheless, students would give perfect, cookie-cutter response, pleasing the professor’s ears. I would leave class and find the minute piece of information embedded in the reading. Oh. There it is. How do people remember all this stuff? How do they know? Well. This is Harvard. They are geniuses.
Or not.
Maybe they were just equipped with a really good outline from a former student.
Now that I am able to reflect on my law school experience, I realize how staged many Harvard Law classrooms are. I felt so lost my first year because everyone (or at least many students) had a copy of the script, except me. The questioning, the back and forth. The perfectly-crafted answer to the complex hypothetical posed by the professor. It was all a show, with the answers scripted into the outline, and we, professors and students alike, just continue to play along under the guise of learning. Whereas law professors uphold the Socratic Method as a valuable teaching method: “See! The student gets it. She reasoned her way to the right answer,” the reality is she got the “right” answer because she reviewed her lines.
Having an outline in class would have helped me realize that those who miraculously knew where the professor was going in her questioning; telepathically knew how to follow her reasoning; and remarkably knew how to answer with calm perfection, were not geniuses whose intelligence was out of my grasp. They were students who had knowledge of the law school outline.
So, if you want to conquer the law school cold call, get an outline. Follow the script.
Two. If you are able to interject a question, don’t let it be a fundamental one.
It was the last week of October 2013, the fall of my 1L year. Now, late-October is a critical time during one’s first year in law school. It is far enough into the semester where 1Ls start thinking about their first-ever law school exams, but exams are still far enough away such that they have time to create a study game plan. My section’s social committee had gathered to discuss plans for the upcoming Halloween Party, but a committee member voiced concern that folks probably weren’t going to show up, since it was getting later into the semester and people were getting stressed out. Another committee member used the same evidence to promote the party: “No guys. We have to go, and get everyone else to go, and like everyone’s gonna have a good time. I mean, yes people are stressed out and that’s exactly why we need to do this. Think about it—We don’t know if we’re supposed to be outlining. Nothing makes sense. No one really knows what ‘consideration’ is…”
The huddle erupted into laughter.
I chuckled, but I also experienced a brief revelatory moment in the joke. In our contracts class, the professor kept reiterating that a contract is only a contract if there is “consideration”. He used to say it like it was so intuitive, like 2+2 can’t help but equal 4:
“A promise must be exchanged for consideration.”
“A contract is only valid if there is some consideration offered.”
“Guys. Remember. There must be some offer and acceptance and some form of consideration for the promise.”
I used to always think: What the heck is consideration? I dared not ask it though. I mean, in a sea of highly-theoretical, abstract, nuanced questions —“So say there is a subsidiary to the original offeror of the contract, is that subsidiary liable to the offeree for the initial contract terms?” “What about conditional consideration?” “That is valid even in a contract of adhesion, right?” — I did not have the guts to raise my hand, compromise my identity as an imposter, and audaciously belt a basic question: “What is consideration?”
Could it be that others didn’t know what consideration was, either, and asked these high-level questions to fit in? to feign comprehension? to conquer the cold call? Welp, as it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what consideration was, and I wasn’t the only one who knew not to ask. Because we all know there is no room for fundamental questions at Harvard Law, especially if you want to conquer the cold call.
Angel Everett is a 3L at Harvard Law School.