Over at blawg wisdom they’re talking about the evils of the socratic method.
Here’s how my professors do it:
Contracts: Scheduled Grilling, Well-done, by seat order. And my contracts professor knows her cases. She knows the opinions. She knows the story. She knows precidents, tangents, and other fun things. She went off on a 20 minute explaination of horse-race handicapping, cockfights, and how they relate to the statute of frauds. The grilling has some seasoning: once you’ve been grilled on a case, you are responsible for it for the rest of the year. If you drew Schnell v. Nell, for instance, you’d better perk up every time someone mentions a pretense of a bargain.
Civil Procedure: Pepper the Audience. This is a fairly new professor, so she’s not so great at crowd control. We get a lot of waiting for volunteers, followed by calling on the usual volunteers. She’s started shifting to calling on people randomly, just to keep us on our toes. Since you can usually say anything at all, it’s not too much of a hassle.
Torts: Strictly-managed Pepper the Audience. On Friday, he looked down at his chart, said “Hmm, I think I’ve called on all of you” and then called my name and asked me about Thompson v. County of Alameda. After our midterm, he’s decided to crack down and be significantly heavier on the grilling. I think it’s a good idea, actually.
Criminal Law: Strictly Scheduled Medium-Rare (seat order again) followed by Heavy Volunteerism. The good part is that she’s looking for answers to her questions. The better part is that she releases her powerpoint slides before the class, so you know her questions and their answers. Then we shift to volunteerism for general discussion. Very abstract instructor, so we get a lot of wild tangents and eliptical arguments, usually provided by the usual gunners.