What Litigators Can Teach Americans Once They (Re-)Learn It Themselves

We all heard the very first day of law school exactly the same spiel, often multiple times. You remember: "We are going to teach you here to think like a lawyer." So said some stern administrator at an initial gathering designed to map out your three-year future. Or perhaps an exuberant professor enthused to the same effect at a first class meeting as he gleefully bore down on you with the Socratic method. Was it promise or threat? We hardly knew, though we expected it to be true. Law school, we were sure, was to begin with some kind of intellectual deconstruction process whereby our brains would be scraped down to their bare foundations, leaving us uncertain how, not to mention what, we were to think. Then would follow the building up of a new mental structure, the columns and beams of which were to comprise a unique form of logic and reasoning, and the rooms fitted out with the substance of the law. The result, we knew, would distinguish us throughout many