Capitalism at its Finest: Pre-Law School Socratic Training

Normally, blogger filters out comments that blatantly advertise some crappy product. But yesterday, one slipped through and I awoke to find a comment advertising for this god-awful product. Usually, I'd have a concern about promoting the product, but this one is so bad I can't see any sane person being interested. So I will commence with the lambasting.

The idea is this: the only way to prepare for law school is by taking classes. So, if you enroll in our program, you can take four weeks of classes with actual professors working with the Socratic method. From the "About the Program" page:

The program exposes students to

• the Socratic method of teaching,
• reading cases as a foundation for their law school education, and
• the new, foreign language of law with which all first year law students struggle at the outset of their legal education.

...

We aim to keep the required time students need to prepare minimal while still providing solid exposure to the language of the law and using cases as a basis for learning in law school.

The LSE program simulates law school as accurately as possible. The program does not provide an introduction to the content of law school – the substantive law – instead it aims to teach students how to learn in (and enjoy) law school once they start.

First, how do you give students the flavor of law school is their preparation time is "minimal?" The real joy in law school is when you have 50 pages on civil procedure to read and no real time to actually read some of the driest stuff on the planet.

Second, if you have a Bachelor's degree, you should be able to read an opinion and figure out what happened. With Google, you can look up any pesky Latin terms the court uses. Honestly, if you can't read and understand a case without someone holding your hand, a crash course program isn't going to help you any.

But at least the students will get to feel the advertised terror of the Socratic method, of being in a room with 60+ other people who all stare at you while some smarmy asshole in a toupee throws out absurd hypotheticals while you hem and haw and think of the best way to show him you actually did the reading so he'll put a check mark next to your name, right?

Uh...no.

Once enrolled, students need only a microphone and a headset or speakers (web-cam participation for students is optional), a web browser installed on their computer, and a decent internet connection.

We can't have digital law schools, but digital pseudo-law school preparation courses? Party on, Wayne! And look, kids, you don't even have to SEE the person who's doing the Socratic method on you! No eye contact; victory for social anxieties, eh?

Conceding that the Socratic method is hard to deal with for some, this product just ain't going to help you. The fact that the professor is staring at you is part of the game. So is the fact that you're often not prepared because you really didn't have to read everything two or three times. Neither of those are going to be present when you can sit at home in your pajamas and listen in. And not every does the Socratic method similarly, so knowing the style of one doesn't necessarily help you with others.

So the program is of dubious quality and I haven't even tried it. But what's the cost of this thing?

$395.

No, I didn't make that up. They're charging $395 for six sessions of this shit. (But they offer limited scholarships!)

My guess is that it's really that expensive because they're supposedly hiring law professors, although they don't actually name them and the link says they're soliciting for more. A search around their website finds only one cited - a "Professor Johnson" - and there's no school listed.

Similarly, the Founders names are absent.

The founders of the Law School Experience are all former law students – now current or former attorneys and professors. We all enjoyed law school greatly – the people we met, the academic challenges – but we were not ready. No one really is.

And yet they give us no names. This should be a red flag.

Another red flag? They seem to have given themselves a Yelp review. And they're spamming websites like this one.

In the end these people are leaches feeding off of the law school marketing machine and its recurrent theme of law school prompting fear, which prompts aggressive spending on preparation materials. These people are a lower-rent version of what Bar-Bri and Kaplan do.

Look, if you want to go to law school, law schools are fairly open about letting students sit in on classes. Email the admissions department and see if you can see a 1L class, like Civil Procedure or Torts. That will give you a real idea of what to expect - and a real idea of what is expected of students. Given the really high number of attorneys in this country, it's not insurmountable.

And for the record, I have yet to be in a class where what you do in the Socratic method has a significant negative effect on anyone's grade. Aside from drafting classes, 99% of law school grades are determined finals week in my experience. This is especially true for the 1L year when the professors know very few students. If you do especially well on the Socratic stuff, you might get a bump on your grade, but that's about it. Read the syllabus. For most classes, even if you show up unprepared and nervously mumble your way through Socratic dialogue, you grade will still come down to finals.

It can be nerve-racking, but from my experience, how well you do on it really isn't that important unless you're one of those tools who really wants to impress your classmates, who probably going to think you're a big-league douche, anyway.

If, after my consumer review, you STILL think this product is a good idea, let me make you an offer:

I will do what this company does for $13.50 an hour.

I'm not kidding. Send me an email, I'll give you three or four 1L cases, you'll send me money over paypal, and then we can talk over the phone as if we were in a law school classroom. I'll give a five-minute lecture, make an awkward joke about alimony payments, and then I will spend 45 minutes being a complete dick to you.

Act now, kids, my summer is filling up fast with your peers who will all get A's.

I believe some law schools have "boot camps" to help with the anxiety of 1L. But paying $395 to sit in some online cesspool while some third-tier professor looking for a paycheck talks to you about a random case is not worth it.

And you have to wonder about the group of law graduates setting up this site. If they all could make $100k+ a year, why are they adding this worthless product and its scam-like website to the marketplace?

Let that one digest.