Teaching the Law School Curriculum - Institute for Law Teaching ...

Property 325
already do that. I address myself instead to the more mundane attempt to introduce property concepts to students
in more pragmatic ways. Professors may continue to address their favorite themes just as before, with only
the background context for the class discussion of these themes being altered.
A major characteristic of what follows is the absence of a systematic lawyering style or development of lawyering
styles. The teaching technique described here may appear almost random because the approach taken in each
class is driven by the subject matter rather than by the technique; the course taught is Property rather than Legal
Process. Desirable as it might be, for instance, to begin with drafting of simple documents rather than with litigation,
if the first topic covered is adverse possession most scenarios would have to be wildly unrealistic to support
drafting or planning questions. The approach taken for each topic has been developed by trial and error
rather than through a priori thinking.
A second feature is the omission of large, complex questions such as those the problem method of teaching
tends to emphasize. What is presented here is more disjointed. Each rule or doctrine is given its own set of questions,
best suited to get to the practical application of that rule or doctrine. Since the next rule to be covered
might require switching sides or changing facts or moving to a different setting, too much flexibility is lost if all
issues on the day’s agenda are attempted to be integrated into one single overarching problem. To the degree that
readers of this article do want more than the atomistic approach presented here, they will have to supply their
own interconnections. Most of this article consists of the actual questions put to the students. I think that it will
be more helpful to fellow instructors, especially those new to the teaching of Property, to provide the literal text
of questions to ask in class rather than with a conceptual but elusive theme for discussion, leaving them to figure
out how best to go at it. I have put all questions to be addressed to the class in italics as well as within quotation
marks in order to more clearly separate them from the pedagogical commentary accompanying them.
The questions are generally addressed to the students who are asked to be lawyers for the day, Laura and Larry
in this article. Other students are designated as the principals for the transaction and topic under examination.
By keeping their identities constant for the duration of the topic, one less variable is introduced and there is less
of a need for cumbersome labels in the discussion. It is easier and more realistic to say in class, “What about Sid,”
than to say, “What about finder #2?” But this is hardly essential if your style is otherwise.
[This article is excerpted and adapted from Teaching Real Property Law as Real Estate Lawyering, 23 Pepp. L.
Rev. 1099 (1966).]
A Preface to the Teaching of Common Law Estates
and Future Interests
Roger Bernhardt, Golden Gate University School of Law
At the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, my beloved Property professor, Richard Wellman, would introduce
the study of common law estates and future interests by distributing a handout which concluded with the
instruction, “Don’t panic.” In my own teaching, I have not perpetuated the injunction against panic, for fear of suggesting
an option that might not yet have occurred to the entire class. Nor do I predict that the study of estates will
be pleasant or easy, because students have heard otherwise and I would be jeopardizing whatever credibility I might
have earned during the first weeks of the semester. Rather, I tell my students that they are about to study an arcane
system, whose mysteries give the profession they are preparing to enter a monopoly on important information. Because
it would be in nobody’s interest to simplify or reform the system having once mastered it, I assure students
they will profit from the situation. This always seemed to resonate with classes in the 1980s and 1990s.
The best thing about teaching estates is that it appeals to an entirely different subgroup of students than were
attracted to the preceding topics. Symbolic logic mavens, silent during the law of finders and adverse possession,
emerge from the woodwork to participate in class discussion. Similarly, the law of estates operates like the onset