This document last modified Aug 15, 2006

Class meets from 2:00 - 3:20 on Mondays and Wednesdays in Room F108

For the first class please read the assignment in unit one of the syllabus.  Please also regularly visit the class blog. 

General Information

1. Getting Started
2. Class Style
3. How to contact me.
4. Course requirements
5. Grading
6. Disabilities
7. Class Blog
8. Paper Options
9. Answers to frequently asked questions:
1. How long should I be spending on homework each week?
2. Where can I look things up if I’m confused?
3. Will this be on the exam?
4. What can I do to get a better grade on the exam?
5. My grades have been disappointing. What can I do to improve?
6. I never did much writing in college, where I can I get writing help now?
7. What can I do to help me become a better lawyer?

Getting Started

Please do three things before the first class

1. Acquire the first set of materials from the Distribution Center.
2. Visit the class blog.
3. Follow the additional instructions for the first assignment at the class blog

Class Style

I hope that most of the class will proceed by discussion most of the time.  Most of the technical material is in the first few classes, so I’ll be doing more lecturing and explaining at the start than I hope would ordinarily be needed.

I tend to lead discussions with a lot of questions. Some of them are leading questions, some of them are misleading questions, but oftentimes they are just plain questions as I am curious as to your views, or I have no idea what the answer is either.

How to contact me.

I urge you to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions about the class. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to come and see me (or phone me) early in the semester if you think you need help understanding something. If you are doing the reading but still feel lost or confused, don’t wait until the last three weeks of class. I can help. But not at the last minute.

You can call me at 284-4285. Most days, I am in and out of the office. If you get my voice mail, leave a number and state when is the best time to call back.

You can come by my office, Rm. 382, any time, but since I’m in and out erratically, I advise you to call ahead and make an appointment I sometimes get busy and may have to ask you to come back later. I’m also available at other times by appointment.

Probably the easiest way to contact me is to send me e-mail at froomkin@law.miami.edu. Include a telephone number if you prefer a more human response.
 

Course Requirements

Attendance. I used to be a total softie about attendance. People took unfair advantage. So now I overcompensate and play hardball. I will take attendance as and when it suits me, which tends to mean just about every class. If you miss a class I don’t want to hear your excuses unless it involves a hospital (for you or yours) or worse.  You do, however, get two free passes so you can cut twice with no questions asked — but miss more than two classes I reserve the right hold it against you in some way relating to class participation credit. The more classes you miss, the more I may hold it against you. If you are consistently absent (missing more than seven classes) I will contact the Dean of Students office and ask them to drop you from the class.  But so long as you skip no more than two classes I guarantee you will not suffer any deduction from class participation credit, so there’s no need to even bother with excuses for the rare and inevitable absence. Please make every effort to come on time. If you can’t make it on time, it’s still better to come late than not at all, as a lateness only counts as half an absence.

Taping. No classes may be taped without my specific permission, which will not be given for reasons other than verified medical emergencies, or to students with particular disabilities.  Tapes make me nervous. 

Grading

• Exam. Grades will be based primarily on an open book in-class final exam. Please do not contact me to discuss exam conflicts as this undermines the blind grading system.  Contact the Dean of Students office for all exam conflict issues.
• Class participation. Extraordinarily good class participation will raise your final grade by one level (e.g. from a B+ to an A); good class participation will raise your grade by one level if you are close to the line between two grades; very poor class participation will lower your grade by one level if you are close to the line between two grades (this, I am happy to say, is very rare); outrageously bad class participation (i.e. disruptive or offensive behavior) will lower your grade one level (exceedingly rare). Very poor attendance may contribute to a diagnosis of very poor class participation.

  For your information, I have now given a whole grade decrease twice in my teaching career.  In one case the student missed *a lot* of classes. In the other the student was repeatedly rude and abusive to peers. 

  In general, you will find it to your advantage to volunteer, and not to your advantage to pretend to be prepared when I call on you. You will find it highly costly to disrupt class by talking or acting in a manner that disturbs your neighbors (my pet peeve). Unless you are on call, you may pass if called on as long as you I urge you not to pass — admit you are not prepared, and we will just take it from there. Please note that participation in the class blog counts towards class participation credit (both positive and negative).

• Mechanics of Grading. Consistent with the law school’s rules, I grade all exams “blind” — I see only the blind grading number, not your name.  I do not curve grades in this class; the chips fall where they may: in theory there could be all A’s, or none, although reality tends to fall between these extremes.  After I turn in the exam grades to the Registrar’s office, the Registrar’s office produces a list of names and blind grading numbers so I can factor in class participation.  However, I ask my secretary not to show me this list, and instead I am given a list of blind grading numbers sorted by the class participation grades (one star or two stars) I have already given to my secretary.  I then compute the final grade.  I make it a point to not know the names that go with an exam until after the final grade has been turned into the Registrar’s office.  Once grades are turned into the Registrar’s office, the law school’s rules prohibit me from changing a grade for ANY reason other than clerical error.  These are rare.
• Your chance to be a natural resource. A small number of students will be selected in advance to be “on” for each class (the exact number depends on class size).  

Disabilities. This class, like most law school classes, is heavily oriented toward reading a large quantity of difficult material in a small amount of time. If you are aware that you have a learning disability, or if you just think that it takes you twice as long to learn things by reading as other people, please talk to the Disabilities Issues Coordinator, Assistant Dean Marnie Lennon who can tell you about resources here that you may find valuable. All discussions will be totally confidential. Any student who believe (s)he suffers from acute “stage fright” and underperforms in public should see me early in the semester to see if we can work out special arrangements in which you e-mail some answers rather than giving them orally.

I’m counting on you to participate online — and I’ll reward quality participants with class participation credit.

Please try to think of the web tools as an extension of class: anything relating to the substance or procedure of the class is welcome, but irrelevant things are not. The usual rules of civility apply to posts just as they would to class. And, I give class participation credit for thoughtful, relevant, pithy, participation on the list, just as I do for similar contributions in class.  Please note that quality is more important than quantity, although quality in quantity is the best of all.

Paper Writing

There is no paper option for this course.  If you have a burning desire to write a paper come talk to me about independent writing credit. 

Answers to frequently asked questions:

How long should I be spending on homework each week?

A long time. This stuff is not easy and there is quite a lot of it. The average law school class ratio is 3-5 hours of reading for each class hour. I aim to stay within these norms, but to err is human.  I’m told I get awfully human sometimes.

Where can I look things up if I’m confused?

The World Wide Web is a good place to look for information, although there’s always reason to doubt the accuracy of what you find. If you are confused about something - or if you find something that sorts out your confusion - please send a note to the class mailing list. I’ll be watching the list and will try to answer questions posted there. If you are too shy to post to the list, you can email anonymously, or you can send me a note and I’ll strip off your name before replying to the list. Please note in your email that you wish your identity kept out of any public response.

Should I buy a commercial outline or horn book?

If you hear of a good one for this stuff, please let me know.

Will this be on the exam?

Anything we discuss in class, on the blog (so long as it’s relevant to the class, of course), or that appears in the assigned portions of the syllabus, or any additional photocopied readings that I assign or hand out is fair game for the exam, unless I specifically say otherwise.

What can I do to get a better grade on the exam?

The number one most common error on law school exams is a failure to read the question carefully. Students tend to prepare by subject, e.g. “the Erie doctrine”. When they see a question with the word “Erie” in it, they take it as a cue to write down everything they remember about the Erie doctrine and the Erie line of cases regardless of its relevance to the question. This is rarely a good move, if only because you waste time you could have spent writing something relevant, and it’s usually a particularly BAD move on open-book exam, where the premium is on analysis and application, not rote memory. Read the question. Try to figure out what the point of it is. Stick to the point in your answer. My questions are rarely as simple as “tell me everything you remember about the Erie doctrine”. And I do not give partial credit for correct but irrelevant information. (I do sometimes give partial credit for correct but misplaced analysis of a complex problem caused by a “wrong turn” at an earlier stage of the analysis, but that’s a different scenario.) Having said all that, you should of course make full use of relevant cases, citing them by name. Cases are important. But so are other things.

The number two most common error on law school exams consists of misunderstanding the nature of legal writing. Good legal writing is clear, precise, and well-organized. It is written in plain, simple English, with as few long words as possible. (Yes, many judges do not write well.) There is no point in trying to be clever or funny. At all costs avoid using fancy words if you are not absolutely certain what they mean. You are being graded on substance, not style. Resist the temptation to use slang (”Get real!” and “Strike three!” are unfortunate examples from past exams). Resist the temptation to use legal or Latin terms if a simple English word will do. Don’t quote rules at length (they are being given to you as part of the exam). But do be sure to cite rules and cases where relevant, and to explain the relevance.

A related, and also frequent, error on law school exams is a failure to be sufficiently specific. Legal writing is a form of technical writing. It thrives on precision and often on detail. I suggest that you always avoid the passive voice because it allows you to neglect to specify the identity of the actor in your sentence. It’s far better to use a boring writing style “Subject, verb, predicate” over and over again than to be confusing or to leave out something important.

A third, surprisingly frequent, error is forgetting the point of view you are supposed to take in answering a question. Some questions ask you to be the judge; others ask you to be the advocate for a party; still others may require that you step back from the fray and adopt a policy perspective. There are differences between these roles. For example, a judge is quite likely to be concerned about judicial economy. A litigant is only going to urge a course of action that furthers judicial economy if it furthers her interests; otherwise, a litigant is going to try to explain to the court why a particular outcome is just even though it is not the most efficient. On the other hand, just because you are a litigant does not mean that you ignore authority contrary to your position. The best arguments are those that take full account of the strongest possible argument on the other side and demolish it; the worst arguments are those that sound like the author never heard of the other side … and if there is authority for the other side, the author of the weak argument may be facing Rule 11 sanctions. If a question asks for an argument, make one; if it asks for both sides, make two arguments and be sure you label which is which.

My grades have been disappointing. What can I do to improve?

The first thing to do is to make an appointment with the professors who gave you the disappointing grades in order to discuss the exam. Although your professor cannot change the grade, you should find out what went wrong so that you can avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

I never did much writing in college, where I can I get writing help now?

If you have reason to believe that you need additional help, feel free to talk to me. Also, you should watch for announcements about the U.M. Writing Center. Note, however, that the kind of help you are likely to be offered from me will probably mean extra work for you, such as writing additional practice essays.

What can I do to help me become a better lawyer?

One of the best things you can do is become well-informed about the world around you. Subscribe to a national newspaper such as the New York Times or the Financial Times.