Thank You, New Yorker

After a week off, yesterday I started doing homework again. Summer classes haven’t started yet, but law professors typically assign reading for the first day (which is tomorrow). That allows them to jump right into the course material when class begins. That practice is especially applicable to summer classes because they only last five weeks and each class session is long. We have to have something to talk about (besides the syllabus) for our first two hour class.

This looks like the ocean, but it's the James River (see map below).
I stopped by one day during my week off.

My first class is Evidence. It isn’t about how to present evidence for a lawsuit or the best way to prove a case, it’s about the rules that govern what evidence a lawyer can and cannot use. For example, a lawyer cannot submit evidence that is irrelevant, redundant, or meant only to waste the opponent’s time and money.

So far I’m pleased with the textbook for Evidence; it has cartoons.

I was standing in the "you are here" area on the left.
Jamestown is on the right side of the map.

My second class is Professional Responsibility, which is about the law that governs lawyers. One of the main topics is how to balance the needs of a client with the moral responsibility to do what’s right (because those two duties don’t always align perfectly).

This is a Yorktown Snowflower Tree.
You can probably see how it gets its name (close-up below).

I’m also a fan of the PR textbook. In the introduction, it decries the “autopsy method” used in so many law classes in favor of a story problem approach. Rather than dissecting a judge’s analysis of the problem by reading and discussing a court opinion, the book gives situations based on real cases and lets the students do their own analysis. (Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law, 3d Edition; Lerman and Schrag, 2012, p. xxxvi.) Although I don’t know whether either method is more useful or effective, I love the term “autopsy method.”

Flowers on the Yorktown Snowflower Tree.

I also like the PR book because in its list of changes (presumably improvements) from the previous edition, it includes the following: “We have increased the number of New Yorker cartoons from 22 to 31.” (Id. p. xxxvii.)

A sense of humor is a good quality in a textbook.

I have no idea what these are. But they look neat.