ABSTRACT
This chapter examines law professors' claim that they teach according to Socratic method. It suggests that legal education can best be described in terms of the paideia offered by Socrates' great rival, the Sophist Protagoras, and not in terms of that offered by Socrates himself. The chapter offers a definition of the actual method of instruction employed in legal education, and shows why it is inaccurate to speak of this as Socratic. Within limits set by historical context, then, law school Socratic method is, ironically, the method of Protagorean education. The chapter establishes an analogy with Protagorean paideia. It demonstrates the strength of the analogy with the Sophists and, and considers the troubling implications that follow from the analogy. Protagoras was never attacked personally in Plato's dialogues, but Socrates regularly expressed his scorn for Sophistic paideia, for legal advocacy, and for the legal mind itself.
