divine angst

Thank heavens for TNT. If they weren’t telling me every commercial break that The Replacements is a “new classic,” I might never have known!

Something interesting that occured to me yesterday while I was wrapped up in reading:

Are law school and, in particular, 1L classes designed to impart to us a compendium of knowledge about certain subjects—like Civ Pro or Contracts—or are they instead supposed to impart a WAY of thinking about those subjects, specifics notwithstanding?

I know that most response will say the latter is the intent of law school, but then another question comes up: Why, then, do we learn so many specifics? Why am I learning the Restatement on expectation interest and trying to remember the names and details of cases?

I guess I’m just wondering if all this case reading and briefing (however little of it I am actually doing now) is valuable in itself or if it’s worth is in getting me accustomed to reading and thinking about certain kinds of issues. And if the latter is true, can I be more efficient in my reading?