The Pace of Law School Classes

There's a nice post from the weekend over at Yayarolly Goes to Law School regarding the pacing of law school classes. You know what I am talking about--the professor who spends a lot of time on stuff early in the semester, and then in a panic covers skads of material in the last few weeks. Bad.

One of the easiest mistakes to make in teaching a law school class is to try and cover too much material. It is far better to try and cover fewer things well than to cover many things in cursory fashion. It goes back to the cliched (but true) statement about learning to "think like a lawyer." Surprisingly, however, sometimes students don't understand this, and feel cheated when you don't cover the whole book. (Kudos to Yayarolly for getting it.)

So here, in no particular order, are some of my thoughts on the matter:

• I never liked it when a prof could not pace a class well. Fortunately, that rarely happened to me in law school.
• Pacing a class well does not always = keeping a consistent pace. I typically move more slowly early in a course, and then speed up once we have first principles under our belts. In 1L classes this tendency is more pronounced.
• All classes are different, and teaching is not a rote activity. So this also affects the pace in a semester.