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

366 Sales and Secured Transactions
Ungraded Drafting Assignments
Feedback and Evaluation
In Secured Transactions, weekly (or bi-weekly) drafting assignments and other practical exercises allow students
to apply the law and test their skills. They also allow me to gauge where the students may be having problems.
I do not grade these assignments, but students will receive a grade reduction if they do not participate. I
review the assignments, make simple notations, and hand them back with general comments to the class (in writing,
if I do not want to use class time) on strengths and weaknesses. You can direct the students to prepare these
in teams of two, if team learning is part of your objective. Some examples:
• Interview a secured transaction lender or borrower to determine the basic terms of the transaction, the factors
the lender/borrower considered to be important, and what, if anything, the lender/borrower would do
differently in a future transaction (be prepared for a lot of automobile purchases and a few gems from students
who interview lending officers).
• Draft the granting clause of a security agreement for a hypothetical transaction.
• Prepare a proper financing statement for a case (I use a case we read for class) in which the security interest
was held to be unperfected due to an error in the financing statement.
• Take a photograph of a consignment, bailment for processing, or leased equipment in the real world
around you.
Chattel Paper Extra Credit
Karen M. Gebbia-Pinetti, University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law
Over the years, I have done just about everything I can think of to get my students to understand what chattel
paper is. I have described it, diagrammed it, provided examples of it, explained how it is functionally different
from accounts and instruments, and even had students act it out. Although I remain convinced that the concept
is not that complicated, the reality is that many students for whatever reason simply do not understand it.
In recent years, I have begun offering extra credit to students who choose to create some artistic depiction — such
as a picture, a flow chart, a story, a poem, or a song — that illustrates or explains chattel paper. Although the students’
creations are only occasionally helpful to classmates, the students who do them definitely come to understand
what chattel paper is and how it functions. They also get an opportunity to tap their creativity, which I find
helps retain their enthusiasm for the course and the subject.
Rule Maps
Stephen L. Sepinuck, Gonzaga University School of Law
One very useful technique for understanding related statutory provisions is to map out their rules. The act of
doing this often aids comprehension to a significantly greater degree than almost anything else the reader could
do. A prime candidate for this is Article 9’s collection of rules on the efficacy of financing statements, which is
divided among several different sections (§§ 9-338, 9-502, 9-506, 9-516, and 9-520). I advise students to map out
these rules, by which I mean not merely what provision of the Code applies but the applicable standard or standards
that govern the efficacy of a financing statement for each type of error that a financing statement may contain.
To give students the incentive to do this, I review and comment upon the effort of each student who submits
a chart to me. I also distribute my own chart to those students (and to those students only).
Stephen L. Sepinuck, Gonzaga University School of Law