Get To Know The Socratic Method Before You Go To Law School

Yes, you're going to get grilled in class -- but it's for a good cause.

onApril 4, 2019 at 3:15 PMApril 4, 2019 at 1:10 PM

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There’s a tendency to feel attacked when you’re put on the spot and where what you say and what you think is questioned. There’s a tendency to feel like the person who is doing the questioning has it in for you, and the longer that a law student believes that, the worse that they’ll do in handling the Socratic method. The purpose of doing it is not to make you, as a law student, feel bad about yourself. It’s really to force you to defend what you say you believe or what you say you think and to do it in a public setting.

— Mark Tyson, a Seattle-based business lawyer who graduated from the University of Washington School of Law in 2013, offering his thoughts on why the Socratic method is still used in legal education today. As Professor Nora Demleitner of the Washington and Lee University School of Law notes, being cold-called in class may seem intimidating, but “[t]he goal really is doing well on the final exam.”

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.