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

After mastering the intellectual nooks and crannies of Civil Procedure, the students would probably appreciate a breather. So I would expose them to Real Property, which in its first year introduction is mostly an intellectual museum rather than anything alive and vibrant.

I would cut this course down to two hours per semester and teach it via lecture exclusively in the first semester and in the second semester rely heavily on teaching aides such as deeds, leases and injunctions for specific performance.

Since there are very few cases in Real Property that offer the student either literary brilliance or lucidly explain the history behind the theoretical structures of the subject, if I were forced to teach the course, I would treat the first semester as a History class and supplement the lectures with selected readings from cases, hornbooks and articles.

My proposal for teaching the course may seem radical, unless you ask yourself:

How can a law school morally justify forcing a student to waste an entire semester reading ancient, badly written cases dealing with such hoary topics as the Doctrine of Ancient Lights or Possibilities of Reverter or Hypothecation?

 

I submit that spending a semester reading ancient cases about these rather obscure matters is indeed a waste of time and tuition.

In the second semester, I would expose the students to actual documents used in practice such as deeds and leases; how titles are searched; title insurance policies and the use of equitable remedies in real estate litigation.

Who would I get to teach Real Property?  I can think of no specific background that would make one better prepared to teach the course. Rather, I would suggest that care be taken to hire peppy, energetic teachers in this area, because of all of the subjects taught in the first year of law school, Real Property can be the most tedious.

Here I would gladly suffice a bit of practical experience in return for the ability to keep the students awake and mildly enthused.  Preference would be given to teachers who could avoid speaking as if they thought that the world consists of only three pieces of property–all of which end with the letters “acre.”