Methodology

I hate Socrates. Nothing personal. Socrates lived roughly two thousand four hundred years ago, he never had a chance in ancient Greece to impact me directly, but his “dialectic method of inquiry” leaves its sticky-fingered prints on my mind. At least he went out like a champ. Hell, one strange night I almost went out like Socrates. Doesn’t mean I want to live with his method.

It doesn’t help that the Socratic method comprises the historical backbone of everything law school stands for. Alongside case study (the primary method of learning the law), “we” (lawyers) learn by question and answer. Professors question, we answer, professors question our answers, professors give right answers, professors move on. Though nowhere near as grueling as army boot camp, I like to think of this legal training as the pure mental equivalent: it breaks you down then resculpts you in the image of what the professors (and the profession in general) want of us.

Some of our finest moments come in the spotlight. All alone, sweating in your seat, frozen on a stage of one, the only people in the world you and the professor, struggling for answers, stricken with a peculiar strangling of the throat and that odd swimming feeling inside your head, like you’re paying for coffee with straws, sweat pooling beneath your palms, eroding at your laptop hand rests, the human brain casts peculiar revolutions in its tiny orbit, and the strangest voices, strangest words, emerge from your cottony mouth. Just as often as not, you crash and burn, but once in a while, the flames catch but they don’t consume, and you burn bright, brighter than justice.

Patent Law sports a roster ten weak (could we really be considered strong?). Professor K.C. (from here on out, in honor of Herman Edwards’ new charges, we shall refer to her as The Chief) throwsback to the glory days of Socrates’ dialectical method, choosing a subject and asking him or her questions for fifty minutes at a time. We have not been questioned so since those halcyon days of First Year (bow your head when you utter its name, foul sloth! You sully its name with your unworthy lips, shall you also show disrespect?), especially Torts and Professor D.G.

Professor The Chief herself could best be described as severe. Her clothing is prim, smart, well-ironed, and the latest fashion from Puritan society. The bun she binds her hair in is so tight it is a minor miracle it doesn’t rip right out of her scalp, though if it did, there would be nary a blood stain. Her face is functional. Attractive without being gorgeous, features all in their proper place, nothing out of the ordinary. She comes in on time, leaves on time, and glares like an old streetlamp if you come in even thirty seconds off of her schedule. Severe as a third degree burn.

You see where this is headed. Patent Law on Mondays convenes for two hours, with a ten minute break halfway through. After the break, and a brief introduction to the concept of utility, Professor The Chief decides to ask Mr. [T] some public policy questions about the utility requirement. (As part of the professional training, the hardcore professors refer to us by last name only. This creates a strange juxtaposition in my mind, as ofttimes I’m accused of being old enough to be a freshman in high school, yet the pseudo-respect afforded me at this institution belies such accusations. Strange.)

Mayhaps I have not conveyed this environment well. This is a serious business, and we are professionals-in-training. Understand that more often than not, when we get going, lives are at stake. People’s well-being is at stake. There should be nothing funny about this, given what keeps the scales in balance.

Yet, because its so morbid serious, we should inject levity into the proceedings. I for example do so by getting low grades, which are just funny in general. Sometimes, when the mood strikes me, and I know the next fifty minutes will be filled with naught but my thin voice quavering into the intellectual abyss, I crack jokes like eggshells. And so did the hour begin.

Refer back several paragraphs. Professor The Chief, like so many, knows not Momus’ light touch. So it was when the good professor asked me about the benefits and drawbacks of patenting nonuseful patents, I tried to give an example via a combover patent. Perhaps my delivery was off, the timing was all wrong, I don’t know. Cracked not a smile did the good professor. At that point, we launched into our discussion of Brenner v. Manson and In re Brana (see section II). Therein spread the scorching desert, therein had I lost my mind.

After the cases, Professor The Chief described in brief the Juicy Whip case. She mentioned the immorality of beverage dispensing facades, then asked me a question. I threw my hands up and cried out, I can’t answer, I’m so distraught over learning about this. Utter befuddlement painted her face with a frown and a questioning glare. I broke with social mores, and the reward was slight confusion. Thus do I reclaim what they take, Here do I nudge the line in the sand with my toe. Soon after, she drew a comparison between this and the Santa Claus debate with kids (Real or Fiction? More at eleven.). To which I raised my hand and asked, “Santa Claus, what do you mean?” At last she got the message, smiled an awkward smile, coaxing long-dormant muscles into action, and told me she would explain it after class.

One of the worst things about law school is that suspicion that, no matter how hard I try, I would never have been, I will never be, a good law student. Maybe I topped out at twenty-one, and intellectually it is all downhill. Fine. But as long as I go here, they will ask me questions. So long as they ask me questions, I will crack jokes. Learning is a two way street. Their job is to teach us something about the Law, but in the process, I can manage to teach even Professor The Chief to smile every once in a while.