The Paper Chase

by John Osborn

  THE PAPER CHASE

  JOHN JAY OSBORN, JR.

  PENINSULA ROAD PRESS 2011

  Copyright ©1971 by John Jay Osborn, Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this

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  ISBN 978-0-9836980-0-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-9836980-1-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  PREFACE TO THE FORTIETH EDITION

  When I was in law school, more than forty years ago, one of the members of my study group was a bright guy who had gone to Exeter, Stanford and had known since he was a child that he wanted to be a senior partner in a large law firm. He had always done well, expected to do well at Harvard Law School, and he did do well. Ultimately, he did become a senior partner at a national law firm. He’s a nice guy and still a friend.

  For him, Harvard Law School was a stepping stone along a defined path. Harvard Law School was not a big deal. It was just another chapter in his story, a story that was going to end exactly where he wanted it to.

  But to Hart, whose story we follow in The Paper Chase, Harvard Law School is an end in itself. Hart is a high school kid from the midwest, who studied at the University of Minnesota. Harvard Law School is like the Emerald City of Oz, or like a great European capital, like London or Paris. Hart wants to break out, to change, to explore. Hart wants a romantic transcendental experience, right now, as a first year law student.

  Hart is not interested in career goals. He’s focused on the immediate experience. He wants law school, the classroom experience, to be life changing. That’s a lot more than my study group friend wanted – in fact, he was such an orderly guy, it would have scared the hell out of him. It is also much more than I expected.

  My own story at Harvard Law School was different from both my study group friend and from Hart. Like Hart, I was an outsider. I grew up in California. But I had experienced the shock of studying at a legendary eastern educational institution when I went to Harvard College. Of course, I was immensely proud of myself for getting into Harvard Law School, but it wasn’t new. I merely walked a hundred yards through the stone gates of the Harvard College Yard, into the shadow of the law school’s Langdell Hall. As a jaded graduate of Harvard College, all I wanted was not to be browbeaten (and I was).

  Like my study group friend, and unlike Hart, I saw where Harvard Law School was taking me. Unless I did something to change direction, I was going to end up with a cushy job in a big law firm on Wall Street. By my third year in law school, I desperately wanted more options. I had worked on Wall Street, as a summer clerk and saw the work for what it was – boring and at times even mind numbing. I began writing The Paper Chase as a third year law student. It was an attempt to create more options for myself, a new story with a new ending. I was using the Harvard Law School experience so I could avoid the ending that the Harvard Law School was preparing for me.

  Eventually I became a law professor, and like Professor Kingsfield, I taught contract law. I have often had students like my study group friend, some like me, and some like Hart as well. The ones like Hart are the most fun, the most intense in the classroom. They teach an important lesson. Law school can be a transformative, transcendental experience, but the student has to make it so; the Professor can’t. Hart learns this lesson. That is his great achievement.

  In the first class when I teach contract law, I try to convince my students that the class is theirs, not mine, that they have the power to mold it as they wish. I step in front of the lectern, put my hands together as if I am praying, and look directly into a student’s eyes. I want the student to know that I am looking at her, not anyone else. I gather eyeballs, one student after another. I say nothing, just look into eyes.

  This is a critical first lesson. I am not going to call the class to order. They will have to do that task themselves. And now they do it. They always do. The students who are still talking are silenced by their neighbors.

  But there is still some residual noise in the room, so I continue to gather eyeballs and say nothing. The class is a bit confused and then they get it: nothing is going to happen until there is absolute silence. In the first class, it takes about three minutes to achieve absolute silence. Soon, when class begins it will take only ten or fifteen-seconds. You can hear a pin drop.

  I introduce myself. I remind them where my office is, when my office hours are. I explain that I’m not going to call on anyone. They will have to volunteer if they want to talk. Why am I not going to just call on students? I am not clairvoyant like their other professors. I have no idea which students have something to contribute to the discussion. Therefore I’m going to have to rely on them to tell me when they have something to say. (What I am really doing is giving them permission to take control of the class.)

  I see that everyone is leaning forward in their seat. Sometimes the first case to be discussed is Hawkins versus McGee. I ask: “Would anyone like to tell us the facts of Hawkins versus McGee?”

  Ten hands go up. Always. Without fail. Months later, when it’s winter and the cases are more difficult, it is possible that no hand will go up. If that happens, I wait. I might have to wait thirty-seconds, maybe a bit more. But someone always raises a hand to move the class along. Someone will do it, even someone who is not sure of the answer. Why? Because by this time, it will be clear we are in it together. They will understand that it is their class not mine.

  Ten students have their hands up. Some in the first row, some way in the back, and a few in the large middle of the class, where Hart used to sit. I look into the eyes of the few with raised hands in the middle of the class, trying to find someone with earnest, honest eyes, without a hidden agenda, without anything to prove. I try to pick someone who wants the class to be a transcendental experience, right now, this instant. I make a guess, look directly into her eyes, and nod. “So what happened in Hawkins versus McGee?” I say quietly, my voice filling every inch of the classroom.

  John Jay Osborn, Jr.

  Gouldsboro, Maine

  August 5, 2011

  To E. H. S. O.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters in this book do not have counterparts in real life. I have guarded against accidental consistencies between characters or events in this book and real characters or real events at the Harvard Law School. Nevertheless, important attitudes ascribed to characters in this book accurately reflect the author’s experience.

  1970

  Official Register of Harvard University

  Catalogue for the Law School:

  “… the predominant method of instruction in the Law School is the case method, first developed as a technique or law teaching by Dean Langdell in 1870, and since extensively employed in virtually all American law schools. The case method is a realistic method which uses the careful examination of judicial opinions as a focus for study and as a starting point for classroom discussion…. The case method also introduces the student to the analytical techniques which lawyers use to sort the relevant from the irrelevant, separate reasoning from rationalization, and distinguish solid principle from speculation. The case method is a flexible instrument….

  “… citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offenses for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable … It is not for me to say what offense the appellant has committed, but I am
satisfied that he has committed some offense, for which he has been most properly punished.”

  – – Fog, L. J.,Rex v. Haddock in the Court of Criminal Appeal (Haddock, Misl. Cas. C. Law 31. Herbert, Ed; 1927.)

  FALL

  In the few days between arrival at Harvard Law School and the first classes, there are rumors. And stories. About being singled out, made to show your stuff. Mostly, they’re about people who made some terrible mistake. Couldn’t answer a question right. One concerns a boy who did a particularly bad job. His professor called him down to the front of the class, up to the podium, gave the student a dime and said, loudly: “Go call your mother, and tell her you’ll never be a lawyer.”

  Sometimes the story ends here, but the way I heard it, the crushed student bowed his head and limped slowly back through the one hundred and fifty students in the class. When he got to the door, his anger exploded. He screamed- “You’re a son of a bitch, Kingsfield.”

  “That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said,” Kingsfield replied “Come back. Perhaps I’ve been too hasty. ”

  * * *

  1

  PROFESSOR KINGSFIELD, who should have been reviewing the cases he would offer his first class of the year, stared down from the window forming most of the far wall of his second story office in Langdell Hall and watched the students walking to class.

  He was panting. Professor Kingsfield had just done forty push-ups on his green carpet. His vest was pulled tight around his small stomach and it seemed, each time his heart heaved, the buttons would give way.

  A pyramid-shaped wooden box, built for keeping time during piano lessons, was ticking on his desk and he stopped its pendulum. Professor Kingsfield did his push-ups in four-four time.

  His secretary knocked on the door and reminded him that if he didn’t get moving he’d be late. She paused in the doorway, watching his heaving chest. Since Crane had broken his hip in a fall from the lecture platform, Professor Kingsfield was the oldest active member of the Harvard Law School faculty.

  He noticed her concern and smiled, picked up the casebook he had written thirty years before, threw his jacket over his shoulder and left the office.

  Hart tried to balance the three huge casebooks under one arm, and with the other hold up his little map. He really needed two hands to carry the casebooks-combined, they were more than fifteen inches thick, with smooth dust jackets that tended to make the middle book slide out-and he stumbled along, trying to find Langdell North and avoid bumping into another law student.

  Everything would have been easy if he had known which direction was North. He had figured out that the dotted lines didn’t represent paths, but instead tunnels, somewhere under his feet, connecting the classrooms, the library, the dorms and the eating hall in Harkness. He knew that the sharp red lines were the paths-little asphalt tracks winding along through the maze of granite buildings.

  Some of the buildings were old. Langdell was old: a three story dark stone building, built in neoclassical renaissance. It stretched out for a block in front of and behind him, with the library on the third floor. Hart had been circling it for ten minutes trying to find an entrance that would lead to his classroom.

  The other buildings he’d passed were more modern but in an attempt to compromise with Langdell had been given the library’s worst features. They were tall concrete rectangles, broken by large dark windows, woven around Langdell like pillboxes, guarding the perimeter of the monolith. It seemed that everything was interconnected, not only by the tunnels, but also by bridges which sprung out from the second and third floors of Langdell like spider legs, gripping the walls of the outposts.

  Hart took a reading on the sun, trying to remember from his Boy Scout days where it rose. He absolutely refused to ask anyone the way. He disliked being a first year student, disliked not knowing where things were. Most of all, he disliked feeling unorganized, and he was terribly unorganized on this first day of classes. He couldn’t read his map, he couldn’t carry his casebooks. His glasses had fallen down over his nose, and he didn’t have a free hand to lift them up.

  He had expected to have these troubles, and knew from experience that he wouldn’t want to ask directions. Thus, he had allowed a full twenty minutes to find the classroom. His books were slowly sliding forward from under his arm, and he wondered if he should reconsider his vow never to buy a briefcase.

  He moved into a flow of red books, tucked on top of other casebooks. Red. His contracts book was red. He followed the flow to one of the stone entrances to Langdell, up the granite steps. In the hallway, groups of students pushed against each other, as they tried to squeeze through the classroom door. Every now and then books hit the floor when students bumped. A contagious feeling of tension hung in the corridor. People were overly polite or overly rude. Hart pulled his books to his chest, let his map drop to the floor, and started pushing toward the red door of the classroom.

  ***

  Most of the first year students, in anticipation of their first class at the Harvard Law School, were already seated as Professor Kingsfield, at exactly five minutes past nine, walked purposefully through the little door behind the lecture platform. He put his books and notes down on the wooden lectern and pulled out the seating chart. One hundred and fifty names and numbers: the guide to the assigned classroom seats. He put the chart on the lectern, unbuttoned his coat, exposing the gold chain across his vest, and gripped the smooth sides of the stand, feeling for the indentations he had worn into the wood. He did not allow his eyes to meet those of any student-his face had a distant look similar to the ones in the thirty or so large gilt-framed portraits of judges and lawyers that hung around the room.

  Professor Kingsfield was at ease with the room’s high ceiling, thick beams, tall thin windows. Though he knew the room had mellowed to the verge of decay, he disliked the new red linoleum bench tops. They hid the mementos carved by generations of law students, and accented the fact that the wooden chairs were losing their backs, the ceiling peeling, and the institutional light brown paint on the walls turning the color of mud. He could have taught in one of the new classrooms with carpets and programmed acoustics designed to hold less than the full quota of a hundred and fifty students. But he had taught in this room for thirty years, and felt at home.

  At exactly ten past nine, Professor Kingsfield picked a name from the seating chart. The name came from the left side of the classroom. Professor Kingsfield looked off to the right, his eyes following one of the curving benches to where it ended by the window.

  Without turning, he said crisply, “Mr. Hart, will you recite the facts of Hawkins versus McGee?”

  When Hart, seat 259, heard his name, he froze. Caught unprepared, he simply stopped functioning. Then he felt his heart beat faster than he could ever remember its beating and his palms and arms break out in sweat.

  Professor Kingsfield rotated slowly until he was staring down at Hart. The rest of the class followed Kingsfield’s eyes.

  “I have got your name right?” Kingsfield asked. “You are Mr. Hart?” He spoke evenly, filling every inch of the hall.

  A barely audible voice floated back: “Yes, my name is Hart.”

  “Mr. Hart, you’re not speaking loud enough. Will you speak up?”

  Hart repeated the sentence, no louder than before. He tried to speak loudly, tried to force the air out of his lungs with a deep push, tried to make his words come out with conviction. He could feel his face whitening, his lower lip beat against his upper. He couldn’t speak louder.

  “Mr. Hart, will you stand?”

  After some difficulty, Hart found, to his amazement, he was on his feet.

  “Now, Mr. Hart, will you give us the case?”

  Hart had his book open to the case: he had been informed by the student next to him that a notice on the bulletin board listed Hawkins v. McGee as part of the first day’s assignment in contracts. But Hart had not known about the bulletin board. Like most of the students, he had assumed that the first
lecture would be an introduction.

  His voice floated across the classroom: “I … I haven’t read the case. I only found out about it just now.”

  Kingsfield walked to the edge of the platform.

  “Mr. Hart, I will myself give you the facts of the case. Hawkins versus McGee is a case in contract law, the subject of our study. A boy burned his hand by touching an electric wire. A doctor who wanted to experiment in skin grafting asked to operate on the hand, guaranteeing that he would restore the hand ‘one hundred percent.’ Unfortunately, the operation failed to produce a healthy hand. Instead, it produced a hairy hand. A hand not only burned, but covered with dense matted hair.

  “Now, Mr. Hart, what sort of damages do you think the doctor should pay?”

  Hart reached into his memory for any recollections of doctors. There were squeaks from the seats as members of the class adjusted their positions. Hart tried to remember the summation he had just heard, tried to think about it in a logical sequence. But all his mental energy had been expended in pushing back shock waves from the realization that, though Kingsfield had appeared to be staring at a boy on the other side of the room, he had in fact called out the name Hart. And there was the constant strain of trying to maintain his balance because the lecture hall sloped toward the podium at the center, making him afraid that if he fainted he would fall on the student in front of him.

  Hart said nothing.

  “As you remember, Mr. Hart, this was a case involving a doctor who promised to restore an injured hand.”

  That brought it back. Hart found that if he focused on Kingsfield’s face, he could imagine there was no one else in the room. A soft haze formed around the face. Hart’s eyes were watering, but he could speak.