MY SOCRATIC MOMENT.

MY SOCRATIC MOMENT. Kids, you may be wondering if I ever got called and embarrassed by a professor in law school. Not really. The classes were large, and I was lucky. I say “not really” because of an incident in Professor Lon Fuller’s contracts class in my first year. Professor Fuller was a wise and brilliant man, and I admired him enormously. He conducted his classes with the Socratic Method, but he was gentle. Faced with the not uncommon situation that Professor Kagan was faced with, he would call on a student on the other side of the room with a different question while the unprepared student furiously read the case. One day he called on me. I was prepared, but I couldn’t work out an answer to the question, and I began talking incoherently, hoping that I would stumble upon something. Professor Fuller was a little hard of hearing, and he put his hand to his ear and asked me to repeat what I had said. I said wistfully, “I haven’t said anything yet.” There was a huge burst of laughter. When I return for my reunions, classmates happily remind me of the moment.