Most of us in the practical blawgosphere don’t tend to spend a great deal of time reading “inside baseball” posts by law professors.  We should if we want to have a better understanding of what the nice men and women who are raising the next generation of lawyers are thinking about.  It’s way too easy to spout baseless opinion about what’s happening with new lawyers while remaining clueless about what’s happening with new lawyers.

Meredith Harbach wrote a very interesting post at Co-Op about lawprof speech,  No doubt she’s going to catch some grief at the faculty party for this one.

I have a thing about verbal tics. It started about the time I began teaching Lawyering at NYU Law. At the time, part of my job description was to help train students to become skilled oral advocates in multiple settings. It was also my first real exposure – eight years out of law school – to the legal academy, from the other side. So as I started my law teaching career by focusing, among other things, on effective communication skills, I simultaneously began my own process of acculturation to law teaching as a profession.

Part of that process included learning the ins and outs of how law professors talk – what I’ll call “Professor Speak.” Based on my entirely-unscientific observations, some of the primary features of Professor Speak include beginning many or most sentences with “So . . .” (others have mentioned this, and it’s by no means limited to law teaching, or even to the academic setting), peppering sentences with interjections of “sort of,” and ending sentences in “right?” (although folks seem to throw in “right?” all over the place these days).  Now, I’ll confess that I was somewhat aware of my changes in speech pattern, but I considered my new affectations part of becoming a law professor, and part of speaking credibly like one. That is, until my husband, who’s a federal prosecutor and gifted (if I do say so) trial lawyer, asked me, “Why are you talking like that?”

Don’t let that last line throw you.  Even federal prosecutors can fall in love and marry.  There’s nothing wrong with that.

If Harbach thinks that academics speak weird, just wait until she takes a hard look at how they write.  The peer pressure to speak kindly about those you abhor can be overwhelming, and it’s nearly impossible to comprehend the secret meaning of lawprof words like “interesting”, which means “idiotic”, or “curious” which means two steps below idiotic.  But the speaking tics are a matter of particular concern since these are the folks molding mushy minds to become brilliant and persuasive oral advocates.

Harbach suggests that the use of “so” to preface every sentence is an affectation to make lawprofs appear smart.  Why exactly that would make anyone appear smart is up for debate, but that’s how she sees it. It seems to me to be at best pedantic, and at worst, annoying.  Then again, I’m not a huge fan of wasted words or placeholders. 

What is clear is that the lawprofs aren’t leading by example,  Indeed, the comments to Harbach’s post suggest just the opposite, though the rationale is a bit “curious”. 

Two thoughts: First, people pick up the verbal tics and habits of those around them mostly subconsciously, so people need not be doing this to “sound smart”. They are often enough not “doing” it in an active sense at all.

Secondly, as to qualifiers like “sort of” and others, they seem to me to have a clear place in academic speech that they would not have in an oral argument. The two activities are just quite different. An academic or scholar doesn’t, or shouldn’t, want to claim any more than she can strongly support. An advocate will often, with good reason, do more than this. If I saw an academic making an argument or a presentation in the same way that a lawyer in court did I’d find it very off-putting and probably inappropriate. In academic or scholarly work the qualified and careful is, I think, more often the right choice.

So (see, I can use it but it doesn’t make me sound any smarter), if I read this comment correctly, academics are entitled to insert placeholders into their speech because they require more time to think as their words convey a greater degree of thoughtfulness and care.  Advocates, meaning us law talking guys, can spew pretty much any darn fool nonsense that pops into our unpointy heads.  We’re not expected to be too smart or accurate.  Heck, we’re either hicks or whores, so we can pretty much get away with anything.  Not so lawprofs, who are held to a higher standard.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’m personally appreciative of the fact that scholars have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the practicing lawyers. You guys know us too well, dontcha?

Harbach, it should be noted, is tasked with teaching inchoate lawyers to become excellent oral advocates.  This is, without a doubt, an critical skill for anyone who plans to stand up in court and represent a client.  Hummina, hummina is rarely effective.  She provides some insight into what she conveys to her students:

Part of our job is to train our students to communicate directly, and forcefully, paring away unnecessary and ineffective words, and tailoring their speech strategically to audience. (As a Lawyering professor, I would cringe to hear my students dot their oral arguments with “like”!) 

Amen, sister.  But I have a question.  If you’re teaching students to tailor their speech strategically to their audience, they aren’t listening.  Are you passing them only because of the curve?  I read and hear quite a bit of argument by new lawyers, and they almost invariably begin with the phrase “I think” or “I feel,” demonstrating a near obsessive level of self-absorption in their own opinion.  What makes them believe that their opinion matters so much?  What gives rise to the belief that their opinion is persuasive, or even interesting, to others? 

I have mixed feelings about this. While I’m not going to defend saying “so” in order to sound smart, I do think there’s a function for verbal place holders and the various equivalents of “uhm.” First of all it gives you time to think. Secondly it lets others know that is what you’re doing. Both of those things seem okay to me for a law professor in a classroom.

Maybe the pedagogical model should focus more on teaching by example?  “Do as I say, not as I do,” isn’t working nearly as well as some scholars think.