Is consideration really unimportant? Forum

[agathos]

My K professor said he will only use very little time to teach consideration-like half hour...He said consideration is an unimportant. He also will use little time to teach estoppel. It seems like very bizarre. He is a new professor who never teach before....

[law4vus]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

[agathos]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

[law4vus]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

All I can tell you is that if you really want to know about consideration and estoppel, then use the E and Es and learn it on your own. Neither are overly complicated concepts but I wouldn't call them unimportant.

[SilverE2]

My K professor said he will only use very little time to teach consideration-like half hour...He said consideration is an unimportant. He also will use little time to teach estoppel. It seems like very bizarre. He is a new professor who never teach before....

Dude...I just looked at your post history, where the fuck do you go to law school?

[romothesavior]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

Who cares? Nothing you learn in law school really makes a difference.

[agathos]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

All I can tell you is that if you really want to know about consideration and estoppel, then use the E and Es and learn it on your own. Neither are overly complicated concepts but I wouldn't call them unimportant.

Yes, I already did that. However, I want something deep than that. I really like K...I think it is very interesting. That is why I care this so much...So I just read the hornbook by myself?...

[agathos]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

Who cares? Nothing you learn in law school really makes a difference.

Yes, I know that~

[BarbellDreams]

Umm...yes, consideration is important.

[bartleby]

I think it depends on the professor. It's so crazy, my friend at Emory said UCC is useless in K's but my professor has the biggest boner for UCC.

[thedive]

I think it depends on the professor. It's so crazy, my friend at Emory said UCC is useless in K's but my professor has the biggest boner for UCC.

Same here, we spent considerable time just on 2-207.

[bhan87]

My professor spent a long time on consideration, estoppel, and 2-207.

He's skipping the entire chapter on Statute of Frauds.

I think it really depends on the professor, so study accordingly. The E&E for Contracts has very long chapters for the topics it covers, but some may not warrant a detailed study.

[shock259]

I don't think there is a single chapter when we haven't spent extensive time in the Rest or UCC. My outline is like half super-concise paraphrasing of relevant Rest and UCC sections. Meanwhile in most of my other classes, we haven't touched a Rest.

[JCougar]

I think it depends on the professor. It's so crazy, my friend at Emory said UCC is useless in K's but my professor has the biggest boner for UCC.

Same here, we spent considerable time just on 2-207.

We didn't even get to 2-207. Our professor had it scheduled for the last day, but we got behind and didn't even cover it.

[JCougar]

We spent like a month on consideration lol. Whatever, just learn what the professor feels like teaching because he's the one writing the exam!

I know I should only care what he teach. However, I hate that. It looks like I pay money learn nothing... He only read case book for me ..

Who cares? Nothing you learn in law school really makes a difference.

[Bronte]

Umm...yes, consideration is important.

It's really not that important. It's one of those old rules that's easy to test because it makes for good problems. However, many commentators think it's a useless rule in practice. Further, in real business transactions, it very rarely comes up. It's not surprising that a young professor would choose not to spend much time on it.

Edit: Wow, in doing a quick Westlaw search to inflate my ego, I came across what has to be the weirdest law review article ever written: 75 Cornell L. Rev. 987. The first footnote is just... amazing.

[gothamm]

My K professor said he will only use very little time to teach consideration-like half hour...He said consideration is an unimportant. He also will use little time to teach estoppel. It seems like very bizarre. He is a new professor who never teach before....

Dude...I just looked at your post history, where the fuck do you go to law school?

lol...

[BarbellDreams]

Umm...yes, consideration is important.

It's really not that important. It's one of those old rules that's easy to test because it makes for good problems. However, many commentators think it's a useless rule in practice. Further, in real business transactions, it very rarely comes up. It's not surprising that a young professor would choose not to spend much time on it.

Edit: Wow, in doing a quick Westlaw search to inflate my ego, I came across what has to be the weirdest law review article ever written: 75 Cornell L. Rev. 987. The first footnote is just... amazing.

It doesn't come up in real life because every lawyer knows about it and knows that you need it for a valid contract. In the case that you get a lawyer like OP who had a prof that didn't teach consideration, yes, it would become important rather quickly.

[Bronte]

It doesn't come up in real life because every lawyer knows about it and knows that you need it for a valid contract. In the case that you get a lawyer like OP who had a prof that didn't teach consideration, yes, it would become important rather quickly.

That's not the only or even the primary reason it doesn't come up in real life. It's also because the doctrine of consideration has been whittled down to a stub by courts and legislatures over the years. It's also because in the vast majority of commercial contexts, parties are naturally going to make mutually beneficial promises based on the forces of self-interest.

As to lawyers like OP not learning consideration, it would be just one in an infinite array of critical doctrines that you don't learn in law school. How do lawyers get by without learning these doctrines? They research them, or they're taught to them by more senior lawyers. For example, if OP were told to structure a contract, he would look up "requirements of a contract" in, say, American Jurisprudence. He would then learn that there's this archaic doctrine called consideration that he should keep an eye on. It's really not that important.

[BarbellDreams]

It doesn't come up in real life because every lawyer knows about it and knows that you need it for a valid contract. In the case that you get a lawyer like OP who had a prof that didn't teach consideration, yes, it would become important rather quickly.

That's not the only or even the primary reason it doesn't come up in real life. It's also because the doctrine of consideration has been whittled down to a stub by courts and legislatures over the years. It's also because in the vast majority of commercial contexts, parties are naturally going to make mutually beneficial promises based on the forces of self-interest.

As to lawyers like OP not learning consideration, it would be just one in an infinite array of critical doctrines that you don't learn in law school. How do lawyers get by without learning these doctrines? They research them, or they're taught to them by more senior lawyers. For example, if OP were told to structure a contract, he would look up "requirements of a contract" in, say, American Jurisprudence. He would then learn that there's this archaic doctrine called consideration that he should keep an eye on. It's really not that important.

Yes, in a commercial context there will certainly be consideration 99.99999% of the time and thus you won't need to use it. To say that this is a valid reason for not learning an essential element to a contract is pretty bad.

Essentially you're second paragraph says that because he can research the requirements to a contract later his prof has an excuse to not teach him consideration now. I doubt I need to explain why this is problematic.

[Bronte]

Yes, in a commercial context there will certainly be consideration 99.99999% of the time and thus you won't need to use it. To say that this is a valid reason for not learning an essential element to a contract is pretty bad.

Essentially you're second paragraph says that because he can research the requirements to a contract later his prof has an excuse to not teach him consideration now. I doubt I need to explain why this is problematic.

It's only an "essential element of a contract" in name. There's probably more exceptions to the doctrine then there are circumstances where it applies. Further, to call something that's only relevant 0.00% percent of the time (rounding to the hundredth) "essential" is oxymoronic.

Your second paragraph is just a conclusory statement that you're right, so it's hard to address. Although I'm not one to claim that you don't learn anything of practical value in law school, I do think that the main point of the classes is not to learn the substantive law on a practical level. The purpose is to gain a broad understanding of certain core areas of the law, to learn a certain form of critical thinking, and to learn certain technical skills.

Probably the best argument as to why consideration should be taught, which I'll make for you, is that it's a famous doctrine that attorneys might expect you to know. This will be because they learned it, not because it's particularly important.

[Bronte]

Man, I'm going to go through life with breathing problems 0.00% of the time (rounding to the nearest hundredth), but that shit's still essential. Same for my truck's drive train. Just because something is infrequently encountered doesn't mean it stops being an essential element of the system.

Although I agree that it seems that the vast, vast majority of commercial contract situations will have almost zero time dedicated to consideration, you overstate your case.

The 0.00% of the time thing was mostly a joke. The rest of my argument is right there, waiting to be addressed in even a vaguely coherent manner.

[AreJay711]

The basics of consideration aren't that damn complicated. Also, with promissory estoppel it seems like there aren't very many unenforceable promises that people would bother suing over in the first place.

[Bronte]

Like I said, I largely agree with you; from my limited experience and perspective, it seems that consideration is irrelevant (or borderline irrelevant) in almost all commercial contracts. You just overstated it.

Although if we leave "big time lawyer$" aside for a moment, I imagine there are plenty of situations in non-merchant contracts (e.g., contracts between family members) where ignoring consideration would be mind-numbingly poor lawyering.

Yeah I'll concede that the 0.00% argument was frivolous. As to the non-big law argument, I think there's dozens of more important reasons that a fresh JD should not attempt to practice without supervision than that he didn't thoroughly learn consideration in law school, which is something that one can easily learn.

For example, he could learn it by reading this article: 75 Cornell L. Rev. 987. But seriously NR, please read the first three footnotes of that article. It's really worth it in an lol kind of way.

[MC Southstar]

I'm not sure consideration is really that important in practice since I've seen nominal consideration in use all the time in stuff I've worked on, but maybe that is just an exception.