How Not To Use Office Hours

Ed. note: This article is part of the Introduction to Law School series, powered by Thomson Reuters. 

I had Elena Kagan for civil procedure during my first year of law school. I was bad at civil procedure. I went to law school to argue about social justice — and zoning; I freaking LOVE zoning regs. I didn’t go to figure out all this juris-my-diction crap. You can cram your International Shoe right up your you know where.

After being bad at her class for a while, I decided to go to her office hours. I had a plan. A mission. I decided that, instead of just being anonymously bad at civil procedure, it made sense to go and try to explain why I didn’t like paying attention to her class. I wanted to explain why I had better things to do with my brain.

Just… think about that for a second: I’m a 1L, and in my 1L brain I thought I could explain to a law professor — one who now sits on the Supreme Court, no less — that her class wasn’t for me. To her face. Evidently, I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot; I wanted her to know for sure that I was an idiot.

My actual argument is kind of a blur. I mentioned something about how the “white man’s” rules were actually part of what was holding the country back. And that focusing on procedure was just there to trip up valid plaintiffs the court didn’t want to listen to.

I remember her smiling. I remember her not arguing with me. Then she said: “I clerked for Thurgood Marshall. He would be disappointed in this argument.” (Ouch.) “Marshall once said to me that the RULES are what allow all people to play on an equal footing.” Then she stood up and pulled a book off her shelf.

“Have you read this?”
“No.”
“I want you to go to page [whatever].”

See, when Kagan tells you to read something, she doesn’t mean it in the abstract. She means for you to sit there and read it right away. She’ll wait.

She invited the next student in while I read, and the next one, until our time was up. “I hope you’ve learned something today.”

I had. I learned that you shouldn’t go to a professor’s office hours solely for the purpose of making a total fool of yourself.

– – –

If you’ve recently started law school, chances are people have been shoving down your throat the importance of attending office hours. Most of those people, however, probably can’t articulate why office hours are so important. They’re just one of those things people like to tell you that you should do — like flossing.

There are lots of websites that regurgitate advice on how to get the most out of office hours, but there are not enough that tell you what you really need to know — namely, what not to do during office hours.

Thankfully, we’re here to help. If you plan to take advantage of office hours, here’s a list of “Don’ts” to keep in mind:

Don’t go just for the face time. Let’s be blunt: You shouldn’t go to office hours if you don’t plan to actually get something out of them. At the very minimum, have at least one vaguely intelligent question ready. Law professors are busy people, and many, quite frankly, wouldn’t even have office hours if they weren’t required to. While everyone is always so focused on making a good impression, it’s also important to avoid making a bad impression. The last thing you want is for your professor to remember you as the student who wasted her time.

Don’t go in unprepared. The purpose of office hours is pretty simple: You’re there to learn something. So, not only should you have a question ready, it better be a pretty good one. You want your professor to see you’ve actually been studying the law (this is law school, after all) and are there to seek help with something you’ve already tried to figure out on your own. A vague “I don’t understand the rule against perpetuities” isn’t going to cut it. No one understands the rule against perpetuities, and your professor doesn’t want to spend his office hours giving yet another lecture on it. At least have a specific fact pattern ready that you’ve thought through.

Don’t treat office hours as a private tutoring session. Office hours are not a substitute for actually doing your work. You should only take a question to your professor when you’ve exhausted every other means of trying to figure it out. Asking your professor is your last line of defense, not your first. Also, remember you’re not the only student in the class. You should expect others to be there, and you need to have realistic expectations about how much time you can monopolize. There is no chance you’ll get 10 questions answered or your whole outline reviewed, so choose your battles wisely.

Don’t use office hours as a weekly brown-nosing session. Generally speaking, law professors are a smart bunch, and with this intelligence comes a finely tuned BS detector. Professors can spot suck-ups a mile away. While brown-nosing can occasionally work, more often than not it results in an epic fail. Waste your professor’s time with stupid questions and you’ll likely find yourself in the Socratic hot seat for an uncomfortably long time. Moreover, law school grading is typically anonymous, so becoming teacher’s pet is useless when it comes to the final.

Don’t expect to get secret insight into the final. Speaking of the final, office hours are not the time to demand answers about what will be on the exam. In fact, they’re not a place for you to be demanding anything. Particularly with respect to the final, there’s no reason for your professor to give you an advantage over anyone else in the class. Law school is about learning the law, not just passing the exam (at least from your professor’s perspective, even if it’s not yours). Disregarding what your professor is trying to teach you and only talking about the final is a sure way to get on her bad side.

Don’t go to show you’re smarter than your professor. As we said, law professors are smart. Unquestionably, they’re smarter than you are when it comes to the law. It doesn’t matter how many news articles you’ve read about stop and frisk, we can guarantee that your Con Law professor knows more about it than you do. While intelligent debate is one thing, telling your professor that he is wrong about his area of expertise won’t do you any favors. At best, you’ll leave feeling like a fool; at worst, you’re now his new favorite punching bag in class.

Don’t go looking to make friends. Office hours are not happy hour. You’re not there to make friends with your professor or with other students. For starters, you shouldn’t be surprised if your genius professor is antisocial; a lot of academics choose the field precisely because they don’t have to interact with a lot of people. Moreover, professors meet hundreds of students every year. There’s simply no incentive to befriend every one of them, nor would it be possible to do so. And if you’re looking to bond with other students, try study groups or Bar Review rather than wasting your professor’s time.

Don’t go dressed like a slob. Now, we’re by no means saying that you need to don your best interview suit before you stop by office hours, but you should take it somewhat seriously. You never know when you’ll end up working with a professor down the road or when you might need a recommendation. So leave the lululemon gear at home and clean yourself up a little bit. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Stay tuned for the next post in our Introduction to Law School, a series powered by Thomson Reuters.