Harvard Class of 2013 Forum

[mightyaphrodite]

Congrats to Section 2 people! Undoubtedly the best section from last year (Objection, SHUT YOUR FACE)

Sorry that you all won't have Warren (amazing) or Dersh (be thankful), but you have some good ones. And it looks like you got Zittrain to make up for it. Those of you who are in LRW 2A, you will probably learn a lot. Those of you in 2B . . . let's just say it'll probably be a long school year. But the upside is that the Gubs looks like a cross between Conan and Eric from "Billy Madison," so there's that.

[Objection]

Manning is amazing. Zittrain is amazing.

Ps section 2 objectively sucked last year. It was the section that would almost always come up in a "do you know anyone from section 2? I don't" kind of way. Fix that!

[mightyaphrodite]

Manning is amazing. Zittrain is amazing.

Ps section 2 objectively sucked last year. It was the section that would almost always come up in a "do you know anyone from section 2? I don't" kind of way. Fix that!

That's a complete lie. That's usually what was said about other sections. Section 2 was objectively the most involved section last year. Saytp inferiority complex, bro

Also, you <3 me and I'm Section 2. So there's that.

[SouthernElle]

Hey guys, i just wanted to say welcome to hls!! You'll get your refund checks when you get to orientation-probably the first day.

also, friendly piece of advice -- watch out for the sleazier 2ls at orientation.

Haha...

What's the story?

Ummm, she was probably talking about you, goofball

haha, i'm pleading the 5th here. not that i actually know anything about it it since i haven't had con law...

[DoubleChecks]

Anyone know anything about Spaulding, Coates, Manning and Mann?

Manning wrote the book on Leg/Reg, and is supposed to be really good. He's conservative.

Mann (married to Warren) also has a very strong reputation. His teaching is "strictly Socratic" according to TLS. I've also heard his style referred to as "machine gun cold calling".

I'm a 0L, so take that for what it's worth (A 2L friend had Manning and liked him, and I only know Mann from discussions on TLS and offhand mentions in the Warren coverage).

wow Mann...sounds...fun...lol

no 8:20 for section 1 either! whew

[smashedpumpkins]

Can we go ahead and order the books used on Amazon, or are there edition #s that we should be careful of?

[Zara]

Anyone know anything about Spaulding, Coates, Manning and Mann?

Manning wrote the book on Leg/Reg, and is supposed to be really good. He's conservative.

Mann (married to Warren) also has a very strong reputation. His teaching is "strictly Socratic" according to TLS. I've also heard his style referred to as "machine gun cold calling".

I'm a 0L, so take that for what it's worth (A 2L friend had Manning and liked him, and I only know Mann from discussions on TLS and offhand mentions in the Warren coverage).

wow Mann...sounds...fun...lol

no 8:20 for section 1 either! whew

I did a search on Mann and the description of "strictly Socratic" and "machine gun cold calling" seem to actually be in reference to Warren. I found nothing that actually said anything about Mann himself.


And yeah I'm really happy we don't have an 8:20 class!

[mightyaphrodite]

Mann teaches in the same style as Warren. You might be afraid at first, but in the end, I challenge you to find a class for which you are better prepared and remember more material.

Can we go ahead and order the books used on Amazon, or are there edition #s that we should be careful of?

There are edition numbers to be careful of. That said, you can order used books. The online book lists should note the edition you need for a particular class.

[c0rpusdelicti]

Section 2/2A!

I was briefly souped for Warren, but oh well, I'll live.

Any word on Zittrain, Mnookin, Smith, and Greiner (totes sausage - fest)?

[mightyaphrodite]

Section 2/2A!

I was briefly souped for Warren, but oh well, I'll live.

Any word on Zittrain, Mnookin, Smith, and Greiner (totes sausage - fest)?

This will be Greiner's 4th year teaching Civ Pro. He uses a random number generator to come up with who he's going to call on in class. If you pass or horribly bomb, he increases the probability you'll be called on again. If you do anything from slightly mediocre to excellent, then your chances decrease of being called on again. He tries really hard to be well-liked by students and he can be a really nice guy. He can also unnecessarily complicate issues, so be sure you are keeping up with the Civ Pro E&E as you read for his class as well. He's got some sort of fascination with Harry Potter, so get ready to have your assignments and exam filled with names from HP (Severus Snape was one of the people on our issue spotter this past year, I believe).

Oh, you have three assignments in his class. The first one is "graded", but just to let you know how you did. The second and third are graded for real. You can get full credit (15 pts), partial credit (10 pts), or none if you don't turn it in on time. Each assignment is an issue spotter or policy question and designed to give you a flavor of what it's like to take a law school exam, but not nearly with the complexity of an exam. However, it kind of forces you to keep up to date on your notes and start outlining earlier than you might have intended.

His prior exams are basically worthless for figuring out what your exam will be like. His first year exam was unnecessarily complicated. Second year was totally easy. Last year he told us during reading period that the exam was a "stinker" (why he'd put that into our heads pre-exam, I have no clue) and true to his word, the exam sucked. Who knows what he'll do this year. There's just no consistency.

All that said, he's a nice guy. Go to office hours. He does try to explain things more. Fortuitously, a girl in my section asked him a question at an office hours I attended and the answer to it was basically everything that we needed for a policy question on our exam.

[APimpNamedSlickback]

can any of the old timers here talk a bit about section 1's teachers?

[Jasper]

Can someone give us more information about this 2-hr "section meeting" thing on the schedule? I saw some questions about it on the Harvard 2012 board, but no resolution, so I was hoping a 2L might be able to explain.

[sayan]

Section 2/2A!

I was briefly souped for Warren, but oh well, I'll live.

Any word on Zittrain, Mnookin, Smith, and Greiner (totes sausage - fest)?

This will be Greiner's 4th year teaching Civ Pro. He uses a random number generator to come up with who he's going to call on in class. If you pass or horribly bomb, he increases the probability you'll be called on again. If you do anything from slightly mediocre to excellent, then your chances decrease of being called on again. He tries really hard to be well-liked by students and he can be a really nice guy. He can also unnecessarily complicate issues, so be sure you are keeping up with the Civ Pro E&E as you read for his class as well. He's got some sort of fascination with Harry Potter, so get ready to have your assignments and exam filled with names from HP (Severus Snape was one of the people on our issue spotter this past year, I believe).

Oh, you have three assignments in his class. The first one is "graded", but just to let you know how you did. The second and third are graded for real. You can get full credit (15 pts), partial credit (10 pts), or none if you don't turn it in on time. Each assignment is an issue spotter or policy question and designed to give you a flavor of what it's like to take a law school exam, but not nearly with the complexity of an exam. However, it kind of forces you to keep up to date on your notes and start outlining earlier than you might have intended.

His prior exams are basically worthless for figuring out what your exam will be like. His first year exam was unnecessarily complicated. Second year was totally easy. Last year he told us during reading period that the exam was a "stinker" (why he'd put that into our heads pre-exam, I have no clue) and true to his word, the exam sucked. Who knows what he'll do this year. There's just no consistency.

All that said, he's a nice guy. Go to office hours. He does try to explain things more. Fortuitously, a girl in my section asked him a question at an office hours I attended and the answer to it was basically everything that we needed for a policy question on our exam.

Awesome insight. Thanks!

Interesting info on the assignment. How tough is it to get full credit? And why did the exam last year suck?

[mightyaphrodite]

Awesome insight. Thanks!

Interesting info on the assignment. How tough is it to get full credit? And why did the exam last year suck?

Not tough to get full credit. It's not like you have to be 100% perfect. Just spot some issues and give the correct analysis or case cites. Doesn't have to be fully developed. There's a time limit to it and a word limit, so he doesn't expect it to be very in depth or flesh out every issue to the hilt. It's sort of hard to put precision to it. Just know that you will get an idea of what he expects from the first assignment which counts for no points, but they give you a sample grade so you know how you would have done if it was graded.

For the exam last year, it was just very complex in terms of the interwoven issues -- more so than the previous year's exam. There were two issue spotters and a policy question and both tested on material that is just difficult to grasp: class actions, preclusion, etc. (please don't worry about these things until they come up in class. I say this now to explain, not to freak you out ). There were some small twists that could have been easily missed in the exam hypo and that might have completely blown someone's analysis. Perhaps some of the difficulty came from the messed up way that we had Civ Pro last year (two-a-day Civ Pro for the first 2 weeks of school, then two Civ Pro sessions every Friday in October). I think that many people in the course didn't learn as much Civ Pro as they could have because the schedule didn't allow much time for us to let the information sink in between class sessions. Some of the Civ Pro classes don't learn some of the material that is covered in Greiner's class, so you just have a broader bank of stuff from which he can draw exam questions. That's part of what makes his class hard relative to other courses.

[go4hls]

Can someone give us more information about this 2-hr "section meeting" thing on the schedule? I saw some questions about it on the Harvard 2012 board, but no resolution, so I was hoping a 2L might be able to explain.

I was wondering about that too. Anyone care to explain?

[Lysis]

.

[Objection]

Can someone give us more information about this 2-hr "section meeting" thing on the schedule? I saw some questions about it on the Harvard 2012 board, but no resolution, so I was hoping a 2L might be able to explain.

I was wondering about that too. Anyone care to explain?

Just a time slot reserved for section meetings. Rare and usually not mandatory.

[smittytron3k]

does anyone know anything about spaulding for civ pro? apparently he edited the textbook that section 1 is using (babcock et al) but other than that he seems like something of an enigma.

[BlueCivic]

Hey does anyone know anything about:

William Rubenstein
Randal Kennedy,
Yochai Benkler or
Jeannie Suk?

[kmap]

Can anybody tell me if I should be on the lookout for reading assigned for the first day of class? Is there a site where this is posted? Is this even typical or will they not expect us to have anything prepared? I can't move into my apartment until the first day of classes, so it's going to be a horrible first week for me and I really want to hit the ground running with regards to academics.

Thanks!

[Objection]

Hey does anyone know anything about:

William Rubenstein
Randal Kennedy,
Yochai Benkler or
Jeannie Suk?

Rubenstein is awesome. Hands down the best CivPro prof at the school.

[DoubleChecks]

Can anybody tell me if I should be on the lookout for reading assigned for the first day of class? Is there a site where this is posted? Is this even typical or will they not expect us to have anything prepared? I can't move into my apartment until the first day of classes, so it's going to be a horrible first week for me and I really want to hit the ground running with regards to academics.

Thanks!

+1 im interested in this as well -- tell us during orientation? wonder what we need prepared for orientation and first days of class

[jpaul09]

First of all -- to those who asked about Prof. Mann -- he is indeed heavily Socratic. (A favorite of his: calling on people on the side of the room that his back is facing, so as to catch them off guard). He is really a nice person and a wonderful teacher, but he'll do his best to scare you into being totally prepared for that class. Do the reading, and do it well.

Professors will post their syllabi on MyHLS a few days before orientation, if I remember correctly. Yes, you will have regular reading for the first day of class and beyond. You'll have time to do it during orientation. I was also in a situation where I wasn't moved into my apartment (because of the Sept. 1 lease start date), and as long as you know the reading well enough for class, you'll be fine. Please don't be one of those kids who worries that they haven't started outlining by the second day of class. Do the reading, and worry about meeting people and getting your apartment set up. You'll be fine.

[citydweller09]

Has anyone else's section assignment disappeared from MyPlan? In the Current Students tab the "My Schedule" link isn't even there anymore.

[20121109]

Hey does anyone know anything about:

William Rubenstein
Randal Kennedy,
Yochai Benkler or
Jeannie Suk?

Rubenstein is awesome. Hands down the best CivPro prof at the school.

Looks like we're in the same section, BlueCivic Just thought I'd share this. A rising 2L gave me her opinion on these professors!

Suk is supposed to be fab. She's the other half of HLS's rock star couple (along with Noah Feldman). No laptops for notes in her class, but she's supposedly good enough to make that OK. You are DAMN LUCKY to have Rubenstein because he is, by far, the best Civ Pro instructor at HLS. Simply amazing. His Civ Pro final is in-class and seems intense (to me, because I can't imagine only 3 hours for a Civ Pro final), but you will learn the material, no doubt. Randall Kennedy = ♥ ♥ ♥ He's so, so nice and (obvs) brilliant. You'll love him.

Benkler is sort of a dud. I had him last year. The good thing is that you will probably only get called on once in his class, if at all, and it's a great place to do any online shopping....He’s really a hot mess professor. There were days I didn’t take a bit of notes. We would have epic gchats of 40+ people going on. I pretty rarely paid attention. I didn’t find class useful. However, I read the book and read a Gilbert on Property supplement and still got an H. I found Benkler to be pretty fair with regard to exam grading. He doesn’t really talk about exams very much in his class, except to say that he: 1) designs the exam to be finished in 3.5-4 hours, but gives you an 8 hour time block as a take home so it’s not a typing contest and gives you time to think/be more thoughtful about your answers, 2) doesn’t have a sample correct answer. The model H exams that he showed us varied widely. Past exams are posted online. Not sure exactly where, but you’ll be able to find it when it comes time. DON’T THINK ABOUT LOOKING AT SAMPLE EXAMS UNTIL AT LEAST NOVEMBER.

Hope this helps <3