Legal Commentary

It may be a little late in the semester for this post, but I've just come back from a very pleasant lunch with some of my students, the second such lunch in a week which also featured dinner with a number of students who "won" an auction with me.  (I was a much hotter commodity last year at Notre Dame just after my Jeopardy win, I must say; perhaps next year I'll go on Temptation Island.)  It has me thinking what a wonderful experience such small-group social encounters with students are, at least from my perspective.  I learn so much from and about them, and their energy is absolutely infectious. 

When I went to Columbia, many of the professors made a point of lunching with students, usually on the school's dime over at the faculty club, and I treasure those memories; what a thrill it was to sit with Louis Henkin and ask him about his recollections of Philip Graham at the Harvard Law Review.  It really humanized a large and often faceless institution, to the degree that a toaster with a giant statue of a man strangling a horse can be said to be humanized, and left me with great personal affection for the seemingly brilliant folks at the front of the room.  I usually end up talking about TV or barbeque, but we can't all have hob-nobbed with the great.

I always make a point of telling students, first-year or upper-year, that I am always happy to go for lunch or a drink with them; I trust most (law) professors do.  Alas, as I am distant and unlikeable and the day is short, they do not always take me up on the offer, but I wish they would.  I would certainly encourage law students to invite their profs out to lunch (especially the ones who don't have a standing invitation to their students to do so; serves 'em right), even in these waning weeks of the academic year.  I know that clerkship committees and various online tips for clerking also encourage students to do this, so they can secure good recommendations, but to hell with cynical  instrumentalism; do it because it's fun.