–From Andy Martinez, University of Wisconsin Law School, Date of event: Fall 2003

During a lecture in my first year Civil Procedure class at the University of Wisconsin, my professor, who had a reputation for being slightly wacky, received a call on her cell phone. She stopped mid-sentence, looked through her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and answered the call and then hung up. She apologized, saying she didn’t know how to turn the phone from ring to vibrate.

Later in the semester, she was giving another lecture, and the cell phone goes off again. She took it out, and looked at it. She said she had to take the call, and everyone in the lecture hall looked at each other, thinking “Is she serious?” So the professor goes out of the room and starts talking.

What she apparently forgot, or didn’t care about, is that she was wearing a wireless microphone so that she could be heard in the lecture hall. So everyone in the class is listening in on her side of the conversation. It turns out that the phone call that was so important she had to take it during class wasn’t about some important case or anything like that, but about her dog’s visit to a vet! She came back, and the class sat, stunned.

–From Name withheld upon request, Michigan State University College of Law, Date of events: Fall 2002

Here are two stories about our Contracts professor. The first situation was in Fall 2002, and the professor was talking about offer and acceptance. He used the example of college house painters who knock on your door and ask if they can paint your house. The professor gave several examples of what your response would be if it were your house and what that response constitutes.

For example, if the house painters say they’ll paint your house for $200, and you say, “OK, paint the house,” that constitutes an offer and acceptance. If the house painters say they’ll paint your house for $200, and you say “How about $150?”, that constitutes a offer and counteroffer.

He was using this quiz method on a girl in my class and when he got to the third example, the professor said, “The house painters come to your house and say they’ll paint it for $200. You say ‘Screw you!’ What does this constitute?” The girl said, “counteroffer”, and the class broke into laughter. The professor just stopped until the laughing subsided and while he laughed a little himself. He said that he wasn’t going to call on her for the rest of the semester. I’m not sure he followed through with that offer, though.

The second situation was in the same class with the same professor. Throughout the year, the professor liked to use a “panel” where three or so students would be called on for the entire class. There were a few students who he later put onto “permanent panel” if they weren’t prepared.

On this day, he was explaining how the system would work, and a kid walked in late to our lecture hall. The way the hall is designed is there are two doors that separate the middle of the room with a walkway –it’s stadium seating. The kid walked in late through one of the doors, and the professor said, “Well, it looks like you’ll be on the panel today.” The kid just shook his head and walked right through the other door.

The class started applauding, and the professor asked what his name was. No one told him. The professor just shook his head and continued with class.

–From John Schrier, University of Maryland School of Law, Date of event: 1982

I’m not sure if its in the realm of “you had to be there,” but here’s a story from Advanced Constitutional Law, taught by “Wild” Bill Reynolds, author of a Nutshell book. This was my third course with him, in my last year and last day of law school back in 1982. Wild Bill had long been known to sketch a picture of a rabbit in a hat whenever a student brought an argument from out of left field.

I’d often reminded him that I hadn’t yet pulled a rabbit out of my hat. Unbeknownst to Wild Bill, I’d been working my way through college and law school as a magician. So on the last day of school, I made sure to bring a point from left field. He laughed, sketched the hat and rabbit, and pointed out that I’d really pulled a rabbit out of that one.

I smiled, removed my cap, and produced therefrom “Buck-Buck,” the baby white rabbit I’d been using in some magic shows.

–From Susan M. Harrelson, UNLV Law School, Date of event: Spring 1999.

Professor Joe Thome taught Contracts II to the charter class at the William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV, in Spring 1999. We went to school in the former Paradise Elementary School, where the classrooms had the most horrible acoustics in history. One night, Professor Thome put down his microphone to take a drink of water, and apparently forgot to take it back up. He walked around speaking into that water bottle for a good five minutes, his lecture completely inaudible, before he needed another drink. When he saw the microphone sitting on the table where his water should have been, he finally realized his mistake.

–From Kelly McQueen, University of Arkansas School of Law at Little Rock, Date of event: 1994

While quietly daydreaming in Land Use, a small upper-level course taught by the venerable Robert Wright, author of not only our textbook but also the Nutshell on Land Use Planning, I was surreptitiously passed a small folded note by one of my classmates. He was looking intently at me. He appeared to be choking. Perplexed, I carefully opened the note in my lap, not wanting to attract attention, reading the words “check out Professor Wright”.

So I did – obviously for the first time since I’d sat down for class –for he had a long piece of toilet paper tucked into his suit pants. It took real force of will to keep quiet, watching Professor Wright walk back and forth at the front of the class, lecturing in solemn tones on serious topics, with nary a clue that a full two feet of white tp followed in wake. It quickly became apparent that it was easier to stifle our laughter than it was to get someone to tell him.

Respected, aged, and in no small measure intimidating, he was just not the kind of guy one wanted to tell that he had brought something back from the john with him. Ultimately our training to be tough, fearless and hardened lawyers failed, and we did nothing. He went the whole class that way – finally exiting the class into the hall full of people.

Maybe one of them would tell him.

–From Cullen McVoy, Hastings College of Law, Date of event: 1969

In 1969, my first year at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, I had the privilege of studying torts under the renowned William Prosser, known as the “King of Torts.” He was getting on in years, and could be seen popping his nitro-glycerine heart medication before class. But he got himself to work every day, driving a bright red Mercedes sedan across the Bay Bridge, commenting that the risks involved in that trip exceeded most of those he discussed in class. He was a great teacher–vital and animated. You could feel his deep love of the law, and life-long commitment to the development of its principles.

[McClurg note: For laypersons, Prosser, who died in 1972, was the main author of the most widely used Torts casebook in law schools.]

Prosser taught that tort principles had to be carefully crafted to balance two objectives: They had to be broad enough to compensate the deserving, but narrow enough to avoid a “flood of litigation.” He often spoke of this “flood of litigation” in dark tones that made it sound like the end of the world as we know it.

Hastings followed the rule that in the first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death. This being my first year, I tried to keep a low profile, and seldom asked a question in class. But this “flood of litigation” captured my imagination, and one day I got up the courage to raise my hand and ask, “Professor Prosser, has this ‘flood of litigation’ that you are so concerned about ever actually happened?”

His response was very long and involved, and I cannot claim to remember or understand all of it. But in the end the answer seemed to be no, it had not happened, at least not to any significant extent. Having surrendered my anonymity and survived, I pushed the question a little further, “Is there any particular reason why not?”

Prosser was not known for his humility. The word at school was “Prosser thinks he’s God, and he may be right.” His answer this time, in so many words, was that it hadn’t happened because he was guiding the courts to make sure it didn’t happen. Astounding as this may sound, he may have been right.

McClurg note. Bless Dean Prosser, one of my all-time heroes. Most people aren’t aware that Prosser was one of the earliest, and funniest, legal humorists. His classic piece, “Needleman On Mortgages,” about a practical joke played on an obsessive law student in search of the ultimate (and nonexistent) law school study aid, is really funny.  It made the cut for one of the top 25 funniest law journal articles in my co-edited book Amicus Humoriae: An Anthology of Legal Humor.

–From Christine Preta, Albany Law School, Date of event: 2002

My Contracts professor—a very smart guy who, unfortunately, recently passed away—was rather eccentric. He often came to class in Hawaiian tee shirts and sandals (even in the winter, and I go to school in upstate NY where there’s lots of snow). Anyway, he had been teaching for a number of years so he had quite a reputation with the student body.

He was extremely Socratic and barely lectured or even answered questions. He always ended up throwing them back at the class. Needless to say, by the end of the year we were all rather frustrated by his teaching (gotta love that Socratic method!). So he agreed to do a review session for three hours before his six-hour Contracts exam.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone—showed up for it. The classroom was packed. It was standing room only. He started the “lecture”—taking questions and actually answering them. Mid-way through answering a question one of his teeth flew out and landed on the desk. He just continued to speak, barely noticing that it had fallen out. The class was mortified—should we tell him? Did he know and was ignoring it?

Finally, I think he realized that no one was paying attention and casually picked up the tooth, washed it off in his coffee mug (which we think was filled with water), stuck it back in his mouth (it must have been a crown or something) and without missing a beat continued answering the student’s question.

It was one of the funniest things ever. Of course, we held our laughter until the review session was over!

–From Tanya Stankunas, Harvard Law School, Date of event: Fall 2002

We were studying Civil Procedure with the irascible Professor Arthur Miller, and discussing counterclaims and crossclaims. We’re deep in the intricacies of compulsory and permissive counterclaims, when a student poses the question: “Can you do a permissive counterclaim, to the compulsory counterclaim, to the crossclaim?”

Miller’s response: “I love it when you talk dirty …”

–From Professor Ken Chestek at University of Michigan Law School, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Date of event: circa 1977.

Our first-year Contracts professor was notoriously more “mysterious” than most of our other first-year profs; we generally had to work pretty hard to fathom what he was asking us. One day in the winter semester he began a class by wandering down an unusually long frolic-and-detour that seemed to bear little, if any, relevance to the subject of Contracts.

We strained to see where he was going; nobody, however, dared to interrupt him. Finally, after about twenty minutes, a student meekly raised her hand and asked, “Professor, could you, um, tell us what case you are talking about?”

The professor looked at her for the longest time, with a blank expression on his face. The rest of us sat dumbstruck, waiting to see what kind of tongue-lashing was forming behind those impenetrable eyes. Finally, without saying a word, the professor closed the book on his podium, and gently laid it down on the desk. We cringed. He then opened up a different book, thumbed through it, and finally looked back up at us.

“I bet you all want to hear about Contracts today, don’t you?”

–From Janet Subers Heydt, Temple University School of Law, Date of event: Fall 1998

On the first day of Criminal Law class at Temple University, our professor (a great prof) was going around the class asking each of us who we were and for a few statements as to what we were all about.

He got to one gentleman in the class, whose name I forget, but who the whole class knew worked for a “gentleman’s club” (a/k/a, a strip joint) as the manager or bouncer. Well, the professor looked at him and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere? I’m sure I know you. You look very familiar.” He was rather insistent that he knew the gentleman.

Most of us left class that night still chuckling! At the end of the year, after I had gotten to know the professor better, I clued him in as to the laugh we had at his expense!