How I Would Change the First Year of Law School (Part Four)

After finishing Criminal Law, I would have first year law students study Civil Procedure, which to my way of thinking is the most important first year subject for a budding lawyer. I say this because whether you are seeking injunctive relief for a possible violation of a federal statute, trying to collect on a debt or defending against a multi-million dollar personal injury case, you will be invoking the rules of civil procedure.

Who should teach Civil Procedure?  Trial judges–active or retired–would be the best choice to teach this subject, since judges write procedural rules to help us manage our courts and our cases. While Civil Procedure was my best subject in law school, I really did not fully understand the subject until I became a judge. The rules of civil procedure give judges a track to run on and a means allow us to bring order to the chaos of a lawsuit.

My theory of the subject is that civil procedure is a means of communicating with the court and–coincidentally–with the other lawyers in the case. Civil procedure is the most essential tool of a trial judge.

In my ideal class, I would begin with the first day of class and teach using lectures, cases and pleadings to be filed in a hypothetical lawsuit. As the semester went on, the students would be able to actually observed the sort of pleadings filed in lawsuits.

One of the silliest things about my first year of law school was having gone through six semester hours of Civil Procedure without ever having seen an actual pleading in class–not even once. Teaching Civil Procedure without exposing the students to pleadings and other court filed documents makes as much sense as teaching a course on some aspect of Art without ever showing the students a reproduction of the Art discussed.