The First Day of Class: A Guest Post by Kevin Lapp

First things first: thank you to Colin Miller forinviting me to guest blog here at EvidenceProf blog. I taught Evidence for thefirst time last spring, after having taught the Lawyering course (first-yearresearch and writing) at NYU for three years. This blog, and Colin, were ofgreat help in getting me through that first exhausting Evidence prep.

As someone who is new at this, I’m in the big tinkeringstage with the construction of my Evidence course now. I have a better sense ofwhat I want to, and am able to, accomplish. And so it is along the lines ofteaching Evidence that I intend to concentrate my postings over the next coupleof months. And what better place to start than the first day of class. I amcurious about what people do with their classes on Day 1, and what they hope toaccomplish by doing so. The particulars of any class certainly matter, such asclass size, whether it is made up of only 2Ls (or only 3Ls or some kind ofmix), whether the class is required for graduation or not, etc.

For us here at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Evidenceis a required course for 2Ls. Most students prefer to take it in the Fall, andit’s offered in big rooms, so I have an enrollment of about 108 students. Myexperience as a Lawyering professor has greatly influenced my pedagogy. I valuean inter-active classroom, which means that my class is not dominated by mylecturing, but regularly involves students speaking to the class or amongst themselvesin small groups. I also believe that in-role exercises are important to thelearning and training that a good legal education should provide, so mystudents regularly find themselves cast in the role of proponent or opponent ofa piece of evidence articulating arguments to students in the role of judges,who then offer a ruling supported by reasoning. 

With this in mind, my first day looks something likethis.

After a brief introduction, the first hour involves an exercise wherestudents in role as attorneys articulate arguments either for or against theadmission of particular pieces of evidence, and other students in role asjudges give a ruling (last year, it was a witch trial; this semester, it isbased on the George Zimmerman trial). They discuss the items of evidence insmall groups first, and then we reconvene to have a class-wide discussion. Duringthe class-wide discussion, I’m listening for key vocabulary and ideas that willplay major roles throughout the year. We’ll take votes on the individual items,and I’ll record the results.

The lesson is not designed to teach the substance of anyactual rules of evidence, nor does it expect any such knowledge. Instead, I’mhoping to put before the students the situation that lawyers confront over andover again: figuring out what evidence exists, deciding what evidence they wantsomeone else to hear/see or not hear/see, and thinking about how a lawyer getsthat evidence “into evidence.”

There are others goals to this first hour. I want tooffer a thread that will run through the entire course. By choosing theparticular items of evidence carefully, and recording the class rulings, I willbe able to bring back the exercise throughout the semester. When we get tocharacter evidence, or a particular hearsay exception, or expert testimony, Ican remind them of their ruling and reasoning on that kind of evidence on Day1, and we can see whether their intuitions matched up with what the rulesrequire and whether their reasoning matches the Advisory Committee Notes (orthe position of critics of the rule).

I also want to set the interactive tone right away. We’llbe doing several similar exercises throughout the semester, so from day one Iwant them to see that they will be active participants in their learning in theclass. Additionally, I want to create space for issues of difference, be theyclass, race, gender or otherwise. While the exercise itself is indifferent toGeorge Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, the many dynamics that surround discretelegal issues matter, and I want my students to know that they can raise thoseissues when they spot them, and we can discuss how they relate to the rules ofevidence.

In my next post, I plan to discuss what I do with thesecond hour of the first day. I’d be interested to hear what others do withtheir first hour/day, and what other “Teaching Evidence” topics would be ofinterest. Whether it be selecting a textbook (or not using one at all), usingvideos and other multimedia in the classroom, guest practitioners or classvisitors, field trips, homework assignments and graded/ungraded work other thanfinal exams, it’s certainly something I’ve spent many hours pondering. 

-Kevin Lapp