Law Schools, Law Students

Law Students Can Use This Coloring Book To Get A Good Grade In Secured Transactions

Yes, you can really use a coloring book in law school!

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Dear Law Students,

Grab your highlighters.  I know you have a full set of different colors.  Maybe even two.  You used them in your 1L year to highlight the holding in pink, the facts in yellow, the procedure in green, etc.

Today, we will be using our colors to fill in between the lines of Color Me Secured: Exploring Article 9 with Crayons (affiliate link), available on Amazon.  Now, before you reject this book (either for adoption in the classroom or for your own descent into Article 9 purgatory), hear me (and its authors out).  To paraphrase Shakespeare, though this seems madness, there’s sound deliberate teaching method in it.

The authors, Marc Roark at Savannah Law School and Colin Marks at St. Mary’s Law School, worked with illustrator David Spear to produce a coloring book that one should consider giving to that one two-year old who wanted to go to law school.

My brief but impressive venture in journalism starts now…

LawProfBlawg: How does this book help students understand UCC Article 9? 

Marc Roark:  I think there are a couple of ways the coloring book aids the classroom experience.   One is the reality that students, though they are surrounded by secured finance in their every day lives, have very little experience in the processes or the behind the door workings of those secured transactions.   So one of the things I think we do well is pull back the veil a bit to show how these specific terms and words have meaning in the everyday world.

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Another is that it’s a not-so intimidating format that students can wrap their heads around.  You might be intimidated by the 15-pound code book that you struggle to understand, but who’s afraid of a coloring book?  We wanted to create the book like a workbook-style production where students did some exercises, some content, and some coloring.

The second idea here is that some students are drawn to more artistic sides of their brains than linear sides.  So the coloring allows for them to tap into that side while absorbing a bit of content.   I think that there is a real potential for some students to latently absorb material just by being in the content of the material.  The fact that you have to use your brain in the coloring process means that using the book is not a completely mindless activity.

LPB: As opposed to highlighting an entire casebook yellow.  Got it.  Okay, that might be fine for them. But why should I use it in the classroom?

MR: From a teaching perspective, I think this is exactly what Grant Gilmore would have imagined was behind all of the language, technical rules, and processes — trying to reduce the realism of commercial law down to rules that don’t hinder the way business works in the world.  By depicting what happens in transactions through illustrations, it allows students to tap into their own experiences and attempt to understand the world of secured finance through a familiar set of constructs.

The other thing is that coloring has a therapeutic value to it.  So some students (and I have seen them around campuses all over the country) have taken to the adult coloring book phenomenon.   We’d say that if you are inclined towards such ways of anxiety or boredom relief, they are better uses of time in class than say, ugly fashion blogs or fantasy football.  Again, it’s all about keeping the brain engaged in some way.

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LPB: Do you really expect students to color? Be honest.

MR: Whether we expect students to color — I’d say, it depends on the student.  But, why not give it a try?  It certainly can’t hurt your understanding of proceeds.

I’ve read the coloring book (the whole thing!).  What’s impressive to me is how intuitive the book is.  I suspect that has to do with the fact that the two authors had to communicate with the illustrator in a way that didn’t involve referring to a statutory supplement. Roark discusses that interaction here.

My one caveat about the book is that its premise is entirely fictional.  It involves two law students slugging their way through secured transactions, and one is a little lost.  How plausible is that?

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here.  He is way funnier on social media, he claims.  Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at [email protected].

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