ABSTRACT
Both teaching and learning are successfully accomplished in the typical American law school during the first year of instruction. Law students arrive fresh and ready to study law. They learn to brief cases and slowly begin to master the give-andtake ‘Socratic’ approach adopted by most professors.1 The students are invigorated and challenged by the law, and ultimately learn some of the basic critical analytical skills needed to engage in legal practice. First-year professors are motivated and energized by the level of student preparedness and curiosity. Certainly, there are ways to improve the first year, but for the most part it works well. By the time these same students enter the third year of law school, however, the motivation and energy are mostly gone. Teaching often suffers as a result. Why is this? Perhaps part of the reason is that, by the third year, students have become familiar and bored with the Socratic give and take, they know that performance in class and on the exam do not always correlate, and they have more or less mastered the analytical approach to case law and statutes.
