Welp, the article’s title is the point. You’re welcome to spend a couple .6s reading further or you can just say you did and share this to your co-workers — no one will be the wiser. That heuristic goes for Above the Law articles just as much as it does for the sorts of things you find in Law Reviews, take Andrew B. Delaney’s “CLEVER TITLE: EVEN MORE-CLEVERER SUBTITLE ABOUT SOMETHING TO DO WITH HUMOR AND LAW.” While it’s a little hard to tell if the bricks of footnotes are there because he really wanted to impress the sleep deprived law students who had to read his submission or because he’s a David Foster Wallace acolyte, reading it is probably more rewarding than whatever insurance defense work (See footnote 20) you’re stuck on.
While there is a standard amount of puffery — gotta hit those page minimums — it isn’t all just smoke and mirrors:
Efficacy is a word that someone like me might use at a dinner party to sound smart. All it really means is that something “works.” Humor works. “Humor has been associated with a host of positive physiological and psychological effects.” In fact, humor has been shown to better the learning environment and increase comprehension and retention. “Unfortunately, some educators believe their role or their topic is too serious to engage humor or view humor as merely a disruption.” Some of these educators teach 3L courses at law schools across the United States.
Barbri has managed to hire a series of educators that remove the stick from their ass before their lessons, and the extraction serves to make their lessons a bit more memorable:
It isn’t all worthy of praise though — Delaney doth protest too much when it comes to hitting his punchlines. Take footnote 24; it would have been a well executed example of how the academic tendency to hide nuggets of information behind unnecessary jargon and archaic language acts as a barrier to learning, but the “See what I did there?” at the end derails the exercise. You don’t need to direct people toward brilliance — it has the tendency to shine on its own. Sure, he only goes for the “See what I did there?” gambit twice in the piece, but that’s three times too many. At least Jeb Bush’s “Please Clap” was earnest. Teaching with humor is a fine strategy, but if the timing is off or the payoffs are poor, you risk your audience remembering the worst parts of your set lesson plan.
Humor is kind of like jazz in that the jokes you don’t make carry just as much weight. You have to kill a lot of your darlings to get to a tight 5. You can even joke about the jokes you didn’t make and have it rein in chuckles; Delaney nods to this when talking about “The World’s Greatest Law Review Article” — just make sure that the setup justifies the punchline. Shaggy dog stories should never set foot in legal classrooms or lawyer work product.
The real work of the article happens in Parts III and IV. Some sections read like the end of experimental medicine commercials:
Researchers have identified differences between humor styles and well-being. While “positive humor” is generally associated with positive perceptions of social status and well-being, humor that is “self-defeating” can correlate with feelings of not mattering to others. But that’s not an absolute. Self- deprecating humor—which would potentially fall into the “self-defeating” bucket mentioned above—can be an indicator that one is happier and better socially adjusted than most people.
Nonetheless, the advice reads as heart felt. Delaney advocates for law schools to zhuzh up their curricula how-tos with heehees.
Let’s have a required 1L course that gives the students a chance to laugh once a week and let off a little steam—that course can be the vehicle to show how it all ties together and highlights the absurdities that can otherwise be maddening that first year.
While I appreciate the sentiment that schools should make an effort to do so, a mandatory 1L course that “lets students let off some steam” could quickly veer in to compulsory enjoyment territory. Sometimes the most joy I got out of the “We brought Therapy dogs and masseuses to campus!” emails was in reading them, and that’s okay! Provide the options, but requiring them could lead to more fake laughter than the backing soundtrack of a FRIENDS episode. Not to mention if the school sanctioned de-stress class falls flat on its face; that could reveal something even darker:
Maybe a couple of school-funded happy hours at the local comedy club instead? Keep it optional, but still foster some social cohesion and whatnot.
Give the article a read. It’ll probably be the most fun you’ve had reading a law review article. The bar might not be high, but a pass is a pass.
P.S. Related to the heuristic breakdown in Part IV, apparently the phrase “Rule of thumb” does not come from Romulus’ law on the acceptable width of a stick to beat your wife with. Should be good news for anyone else who, like me, has obsessively swapped the heuristic whenever I thought of the phrase. I’ll likely still default to not using it just in case. You know — good rule of thumb.
CLEVER TITLE: EVEN MORE-CLEVERER SUBTITLE ABOUT SOMETHING TO DO WITH HUMOR AND LAW [Vermont Law Review]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.
The post No Laughing Matter: Humor’s Place In Legal Pedagogy appeared first on Above the Law.
Welp, the article’s title is the point. You’re welcome to spend a couple .6s reading further or you can just say you did and share this to your co-workers — no one will be the wiser. That heuristic goes for Above the Law articles just as much as it does for the sorts of things you find in Law Reviews, take Andrew B. Delaney’s “CLEVER TITLE: EVEN MORE-CLEVERER SUBTITLE ABOUT SOMETHING TO DO WITH HUMOR AND LAW.” While it’s a little hard to tell if the bricks of footnotes are there because he really wanted to impress the sleep deprived law students who had to read his submission or because he’s a David Foster Wallace acolyte, reading it is probably more rewarding than whatever insurance defense work (See footnote 20) you’re stuck on.
While there is a standard amount of puffery — gotta hit those page minimums — it isn’t all just smoke and mirrors:
Efficacy is a word that someone like me might use at a dinner party to sound smart. All it really means is that something “works.” Humor works. “Humor has been associated with a host of positive physiological and psychological effects.” In fact, humor has been shown to better the learning environment and increase comprehension and retention. “Unfortunately, some educators believe their role or their topic is too serious to engage humor or view humor as merely a disruption.” Some of these educators teach 3L courses at law schools across the United States.
Barbri has managed to hire a series of educators that remove the stick from their ass before their lessons, and the extraction serves to make their lessons a bit more memorable:
It isn’t all worthy of praise though — Delaney doth protest too much when it comes to hitting his punchlines. Take footnote 24; it would have been a well executed example of how the academic tendency to hide nuggets of information behind unnecessary jargon and archaic language acts as a barrier to learning, but the “See what I did there?” at the end derails the exercise. You don’t need to direct people toward brilliance — it has the tendency to shine on its own. Sure, he only goes for the “See what I did there?” gambit twice in the piece, but that’s three times too many. At least Jeb Bush’s “Please Clap” was earnest. Teaching with humor is a fine strategy, but if the timing is off or the payoffs are poor, you risk your audience remembering the worst parts of your set lesson plan.
Humor is kind of like jazz in that the jokes you don’t make carry just as much weight. You have to kill a lot of your darlings to get to a tight 5. You can even joke about the jokes you didn’t make and have it rein in chuckles; Delaney nods to this when talking about “The World’s Greatest Law Review Article” — just make sure that the setup justifies the punchline. Shaggy dog stories should never set foot in legal classrooms or lawyer work product.
The real work of the article happens in Parts III and IV. Some sections read like the end of experimental medicine commercials:
Researchers have identified differences between humor styles and well-being. While “positive humor” is generally associated with positive perceptions of social status and well-being, humor that is “self-defeating” can correlate with feelings of not mattering to others. But that’s not an absolute. Self- deprecating humor—which would potentially fall into the “self-defeating” bucket mentioned above—can be an indicator that one is happier and better socially adjusted than most people.
Nonetheless, the advice reads as heart felt. Delaney advocates for law schools to zhuzh up their curricula how-tos with heehees.
Let’s have a required 1L course that gives the students a chance to laugh once a week and let off a little steam—that course can be the vehicle to show how it all ties together and highlights the absurdities that can otherwise be maddening that first year.
While I appreciate the sentiment that schools should make an effort to do so, a mandatory 1L course that “lets students let off some steam” could quickly veer in to compulsory enjoyment territory. Sometimes the most joy I got out of the “We brought Therapy dogs and masseuses to campus!” emails was in reading them, and that’s okay! Provide the options, but requiring them could lead to more fake laughter than the backing soundtrack of a FRIENDS episode. Not to mention if the school sanctioned de-stress class falls flat on its face; that could reveal something even darker:
Maybe a couple of school-funded happy hours at the local comedy club instead? Keep it optional, but still foster some social cohesion and whatnot.
Give the article a read. It’ll probably be the most fun you’ve had reading a law review article. The bar might not be high, but a pass is a pass.
P.S. Related to the heuristic breakdown in Part IV, apparently the phrase “Rule of thumb” does not come from Romulus’ law on the acceptable width of a stick to beat your wife with. Should be good news for anyone else who, like me, has obsessively swapped the heuristic whenever I thought of the phrase. I’ll likely still default to not using it just in case. You know — good rule of thumb.
CLEVER TITLE: EVEN MORE-CLEVERER SUBTITLE ABOUT SOMETHING TO DO WITH HUMOR AND LAW [Vermont Law Review]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.
The post No Laughing Matter: Humor’s Place In Legal Pedagogy appeared first on Above the Law.
