C.C. Langdell

The picture above is of Christopher Columbus Langdell who was appointed Dean of the Harvard Law School in 1870. In that same year he published the first casebook, his Cases on Contracts, which revolutionized legal education. He also invented the "Socratic Method," perfected by his hand-picked successor, James Barr Ames. Things haven't changed much since.

From the Law Library Blog

The following appeared on the Law Librarian Blog. It's quite interesting and worth reading during the first few weeks of law school.

Student Tendencies to Self-handicap in Law School
Self-handicapping is a set of behavioral strategies employed before a performance that permits the individual to avoid receiving information that threatens self-esteem. Catherine Ross Dunham (Elon University School of Law) reports her findings on self-handicapping law school student behavior in Hidden Obstacles in the Mass Culture of American Legal Education: An Empirical Analysis, 32 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 237 (2007) [Westlaw]. The results of Dunham's study suggest that "an individual student's self-attributed achiever type correlates to the student's year in law school and GPA. Most significantly, the results of the study suggest that a law student's GPA correlates with the student's self-handicapping score and, further, that GPA is predictive of his self-handicapping score." [JH]

Precedent and the "Web of Law"

During the first few classes I will be talking about the nature of contracts, legal analysis, and analysing cases. I will also be giving you passwords so that you may access a new legal metasearch engine [ MetaJuris 1.0] I have developed in conjunction with Danico Lee at the Information Technology & Telecommunications Center here at KU. One of the base search engines incorporated into MetaJuris 1.0 is PreCydent, developed by Prof. Tom Smith at the University of San Diego. This data base and search engine permits you to discover how many times a particular case has been cited by other cases and gives you, therefore, an idea of the "authority" of the case as compared to other cases. Those of you who are familiar with citation indices, most often used in science, will be familiar with this notion. For those of you who are not, don't worry; I'll explain it. In the meantime, I suggest that you all have a look at Prof. Smith's pathbreaking article, "The Web of Law." It can be accessed online at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=642863. Depending on your computer and network connection, you may have trouble downloading or viewing the complete text. If this occurs., you should use a law school computer since the law school is a subscriber to the SSRN network on which the article resides. When you read the article, do not be frightened either by the mathematics or the technical computer jargon. Just get the basic idea of what Smith is saying and I'll explain the rest in class.

Legal Dictionaries

I have added links to two free online legal dictionaries to the class website.

The image, above, is from a cigar box ca.1880 portraying Lincoln as the iconic country lawyer. For more fun legal images see: www.thelegalantiquarian.blogspot.com

For those of you new to Lawrence who want to see what is going on here, the local newspaper is the Lawrence Journal-World. I write a column, mostly about law and the university, every other Wednesday. The next one appears on Wednesday, 20 August. The website is www.ljworld.com.

Welcome to Contracts I (Hoeflich Section)

Welcome to the Contracts I Blog at KU Law School. I will be using this blog to inform you of reading assignments, class meetings, to answer questions, and to share with you other things which strike my fancy. You are welcome to post comments and questions which arise from class.