One L (1977)

by Scott Turow

  I agreed.

  We had half an hour before our first meeting with Rudolph Perini in Contracts. Terry said he wanted to buy a book in the meantime and I volunteered to go with him. I had bought all mine the week before, but I wanted to get a look at the Law-book Thrift Shop, where he was heading--a store in the law school where used books are bought and sold.

  I'd had lunch with Terry on Thursday and had gotten to know him better. The route he'd taken to law school was a lot different than most everybody else's. He was near my agetwenty-five--but he'd finished college only the preceding June. After high school, by his own account, he'd been a "bum," hanging around the tracks, but at twenty he'd gotten married, borrowed the money to open a store selling stereos, and started college at night. He prospered. His wife gave birth to twin boys; he opened a second store and hired people to run both while he transferred to the college's day division, where he did phenomenally well. Last December, a large chain had offered him too much money for his stores for him to turn down.

  "We had enough," he told me, "to live good for three, four years. I figured we could do anything--go to Europe, move to California and lay on the beach. But hell, man, I like school; I get off on that stuff. I didn't see the odds in grad school. I mean, there're no jobs there and I wanted to be able to do something besides run a store when I finished. So I decided to go to law school. After I aced the LSAT, I said, Hey, try Harvard, you're as good as anybody else. And bingo! Donna's parents, mine man, they think there's something almost wrong, that they let me in."

  He laughed as he told the story. He was tough, proud, ferociously independent, bright with that incredible city quickness. I admired him.

  The Lawbook Thrift Shop was crowded when we arrived. It is run by the wife of one of the law students out of a small office in Austin Hall and it was full of 2Ls and 3Ls hunting course books on their first day back. I told Terry I'd wait outside.

  I should say a word or two about law books, since they are plainly the focus of so much of a law student's attention. There are three general categories. The first are the casebooks, the thousand-page volumes out of which class assignments are regularly made. The cases in the book are usually edited and have been selected for their importance in the development in given areas of the law. In the second category, a kind of academic purgatory, are the "hornbooks," brief treatises produced by well-known legal scholars which summarize leading cases and which provide general descriptions of the doctrines in the field. Professors discourage hornbook reading by beginning students. They fear that hornbook consultation will limit a 1L's ability to deduce the law himself from the cases and also that it will decrease a student's interest in class, since the hornbooks often analyze the daily material in much the same way that the professors do themselves. In the final category, the nether world well beneath academic respectability, are the myriad study aids, commercially prepared casebook and course and subject-matter outlines, and other kinds of digests. The best-known series is the Gilbert Law Summaries. Although law students have gotten by for generations with the aid of these and other prepared outlines, there are members of the faculty who claim to have never heard the word "Gilbert's" from a student's lips. Before I started, I myself was somewhat incredulous that students would buy a course guide rather than prepare it themselves. It seemed to border on plagiarism.

  Whatever category, two generalizations about law books usually hold true. They are quite large--I'd already had to invest in a big orange knapsack to haul all of them around. And they are expensive. The casebooks are especially dear, $16 to $25 when bought new, the prices probably inflated because the publishers recognize that casebooks are required reading and have to be purchased. Faculty agitation for lower prices would probably do little good and in any event is unlikely, since the professors are most often the editors or authors of the books they assign. In all but one of my first-year classes, the required casebook had been produced by either that professor or another member of the HLS faculty. Used-book exchanges like the Lawbook Thrift Shop are the only means students have to lessen costs.

  Terry emerged with a heavy green book which he showed me at once. "Got that yet?"

  I examined the title page. It was a Contracts hornbook, written, as was our casebook, by Gregory Baldridge and Rudolph Perini.

  "Two buddies of mine say that the dude's whole course is in there," Terry told me.

  "He wrote a hornbook, huh?" I asked, still fingering the cover.

  -Wrote a hornbook?' Hey, man this guy is Contracts--he is the authority. That is the hornbook."

  "I thought profs say don't read hornbooks for a while." "That's what they say, man--that's not what people do. At least, that's what I hear."

  I shrugged and handed him the book back. But I worried. How did I know what was right? I felt my faith should be in the professors, but I didn't want to fall behind my classmates, either.

  "I'll wait," I said.

  "Your choice," Terry answered.

  "I want to see how bad Perini really is, first."

  He nodded and we went off together toward the classroom in Austin where we would both find out.

  Most law-school classrooms are arranged in roughly the same way. Broken usually by two aisles, concentric semicircles of seats and desks issue back from the podium, resulting in a kind of amphitheater. In Pound, where we had met Mann, the newly constructed classrooms had been built with remarkable compactness. But in Austin the rooms were ancient and enormous. The seats and desks were in rows of yellowed oak, tiered steeply toward the rear. At its highest, the classroom was nearly forty feet, with long, heavy curtains on the windows and dark portraits of English judges, dressed in their wigs and robes, hanging in gilt frames high on the wall. It was an awesome setting, especially when its effect was combined with the stories we had all heard about Perini. There was a tone of tense humor in the conversations around me, most voices somewhat hushed. As I headed for my seat, I overheard a number of people say, "I don't want it to be me," referring to whom Perini would call on.

  I introduced myself to the men sitting on either side of me. One was a former marine from Ohio, the other a kid named Don, just out of the University of Texas. The three of us gossiped about Perini, exchanging what little information we knew. Don said that Perini was a Texan. He had graduated from the University of Texas Law School, but he had been a professor at HLS for twenty years. Only in the late '60s had he interrupted his teaching, when he had briefly been some kind of counsellor to Nixon.

  It was already a few minutes after ten, the hour when we were supposed to start. The class was assembled and almost everyone was in his seat. Don asked me what Perini looked like.

  "I don't know," I answered. "No idea."

  Greg, the ex-marine on the other side, said, "Just take a look."

  Perini moved slowly down the tiers toward the lectern. He held his head up and he was without expression. My first thought was that he looked softer than I'd expected. He was around six feet, but pudgy and a little awkward. Although the day was warm, he wore a black three-piece suit. He held the book and the seating chart under his arm.

  The room was totally silent by the time he reached the lectern. He slapped the book down on the desk beneath. He still had not smiled.

  "This is Contracts," he said, "Section Two, in case any of you are a little uncertain about where you are." He smiled then, stiffly. "I have a few introductory comments and then we'll be going on to the cases I asked you to look at for today. First, however, I want to lay out the ground rules on which this class will run, so that there will be no confusion in the future."

  He spoke with elaborate slowness, emphasis on each word. His accent was distinctly southern.

  Perini picked up the casebook in one hand.

  "The text for this class is Selected Cases in the Law of Contracts. The editors are Baldridge and"--Perini lifted a hand to weight the silence--"et cetera." He smiled again, without parting his lips. Around the room a few people snickered. Then he said, "Needless
to mention, I hope you bought it new," and got his first outright laugh.

  "We will proceed through the book case by case," Perini told us. "Now and then we may skip a case or two. In that event, I'll inform you in advance, or you will find a notice on the bulletin boards. You should stay three cases ahead, each day."

  Between the desk on which the lectern sat and the students in the front row, there was a narrow area, a kind of small proscenium. Perini began to pace there slowly, his hands behind his back. I watched him as he came toward our side of the room, staring up harshly at the faces around him. He looked past fifty, coarse-skinned and dark. He was half-bald, but his black hair was styled carefully. There was a grim set to his mouth and eyes.

  "This class will deal with the law of obligations, of bargains, commercial dealings, the law of promises," Perini said. "It is the hardest course you will take all year. Contracts has traditionally been the field of law of the most renowned intellectual complexity. Most of the greatest legal commentators of the past century have been Contracts scholars: Williston, Corbin, Fuller, Llewellyn, Baldridge--" He lifted his hand as he had done before. "Et cetera," he said again and smiled broadly for the first time. Most people laughed. One or two applauded. Perini waited before he began pacing again.

  "Some of your classmates may find the Property course in the spring the hardest course they take. But you will not feel that way, because you will be taking Contracts with me. I am not"--he looked up--"an easy person.

  "I expect you to be here every day. And I expect you to sit where the registrar has assigned you. On the so-called back benches, I should see only those persons who are visiting us seeking a momentary glimpse of something morbid." Laughter again from a few places.

  "I expect you to be very well prepared, every day. I want to be absolutely clear on that. I have never heard the word 'pass.' I do not know what 'unprepared' means. Now and then, of course, there are personal problems--we all have them at times--which make full preparation impossible. If that is the case, then I want a written note to be handed to my secretary at least two hours before class. You can find her on the second floor of the Faculty Office Building in room two eighty-one."

  I wrote it all down in my notebook: "No absence. No pass. No unprepared. Note to sec'ty 2 hrs. b-4 class, FOB 281."

  Holy Christ, I thought.

  As expected, Perini told us to read nothing aside from class assignments for the first few months--not even "a certain hornbook" we might have heard of. For the present, he assured us, we would have our hands full. Then he described the course in some detail. In that discussion too, Perini maintained that tone of barely veiled menace. We may have been Phi Beta Kappas and valedictorians, but this was Harvard Law School now--things would not be easy.

  There were moments when I was certain that Perini was only half serious. There was such obvious showmanship in all of this, the deliberateness of the gestures, the archness of his smile. It was almost a parody of the legendary tough professor, of the Perini of rumor. But if it was an act, it was one which he was determined would be compelling. He revealed no more than a trace of irony and there were often moments, as when he had looked up at us, that he seemed full of steel.

  As he went on describing the subjects with which we would soon be dealing--offer, acceptance, interpretation; the list was extensive--I began to think that, like Mann, he would let the hour slip away. No one would be called and we'd all be safe for one more day. But at six or seven minutes to twelve he returned to the lectern and looked down at the seating chart.

  "Let's see if we can cover a little ground today." Perini took a pencil from his pocket and pointed it at the chart. It might as well have been a pistol. Please, no, I thought.

  "Mr. Karlin!" Perini cried sharply.

  Nearby, I heard a tremendous thud. Five or six seats from me a man was scrambling to grab hold of the books that had been piled before him, two or three of which had now hit the floor. That, I was sure, was Karlin who had jolted when he heard his name called. He was a heavyset man, pale, with black eyeglasses. He was wearing a yarmulke. His eyes, as he struggled with his books, were quick with fright, and at once I felt terribly sorry for him and guilty at my own relief.

  "Mr. Karlin," Perini said, ambling toward my side of the room, "why don't you tell us about the case of Hurley v. Eddingfield?"

  Karlin already had his notebook open. His voice was quavering.

  "Plaintiff's intestate," he began. He got no further.

  "What does that mean?" Perini cried from across the room. He began marching fiercely up the aisle toward Karlin. "In-testate," he said, "in-tes-tate. What is that? Something to do with the stomach? Is this an anatomy class, Mr. Karlin?" Perini's voice had become shrill with a note of open mockery and at the last word people burst out laughing, louder than at anything Perini had said before.

  He was only five or six feet from Karlin now. Karlin stared up at him and blinked and finally said, "No."

  "No, I didn't think so," Perini said. "What if the word was `testate'? What would that be? Would we have moved from the stomach"--Perini waved a hand and there was more loud laughter when he leeringly asked his question "elsewhere?"

  "I think," Karlin said weakly, "that if the word was 'testate' it would mean he had a will."

  "And 'intestate' that he didn't have a will. I see." Perini wagged his head. "And who is this 'he,' Mr. Karlin?"

  Karlin was silent. He shifted in his seat as Perini stared at him. Hands had shot up across the room. Perini called rapidly on two or three people who gave various names--Hurley, Edding field, the plaintiff. Finally someone said that the case didn't say.

  "The case doesn't say!" Perini cried, marching down the aisle. "The case does not say. Read the case. Read the case! Carefully!" He bent with each word, pointing a finger at the class. He stared fiercely into the crowd of students in the center of the room, then looked back at Karlin. "Do we really care who `he' is, Mr. Karlin?"

  "Care?"

  "Does it make any difference to the outcome of the case?" "I don't think so."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he's dead."

  "He's dead!" Perini shouted. "Well, that's a load off of our minds. But there's one problem then, Mr. Karlin. If he's dead, how did he file a lawsuit?"

  Karlin's face was still tight with fear, but he seemed to be gathering himself.

  "I thought it was the administrator who brought the suit."

  "Ah!" said Perini, "the administrator. And what's an administrator? One of those types over in the Faculty Building?"

  It went on that way for a few more minutes, Perini striding through the room, shouting and pointing as he battered Karlin with questions, Karlin doing his best to provide answers. A little after noon Perini suddenly announced that we would continue tomorrow. Then he strode from the classroom with the seating chart beneath his arm. In his wake the class exploded into chatter.

  I sat stunned. Men and women crowded around Karlin to congratulate him. He had done well--better, it seemed, than even Perini had expected. At one point the professor had asked where Karlin was getting all the definitions he was methodically reciting. I knew Karlin had done far better than I could have, a realization which upset me, given all the work I had done preparing for the class. I hadn't asked myself who was suing. I knew what "intestate" meant, but not "testate," and was hardly confident I could have made the jump while under that kind of pressure. I didn't even want to think about the time it would be my turn to face Perini.

  And as much as all of that, I was bothered by the mood which had taken hold of the room. The exorbitance of Perini's manner had seemed to release a sort of twisted energy. Why had people laughed like that? I wondered. It wasn't all good-natured. It wasn't really laughter with Karlin. I had felt it too, a sort of giddiness, when Perini made his mocking inquiries. And why had people raised their hands so eagerly, stretching out of their seats as they sought to be called on? When Socratic instruction had been described for me, I had been somewhat incred
ulous that students would dash in so boldly to correct each other's errors. But if I hadn't been quite as scared I might have raised my hand myself. What the hell went on here? I was thoroughly confused, the more so because despite my reservations the truth was that I had been gripped, even thrilled, by the class. Perini, for all the melodrama and intimidation, had been magnificent, electric, in full possession of himself and the students. The points he'd made had had a wonderful clarity and directness. He was, as claimed, an exceptional teacher.

  As I headed out, Karlin, still surrounded by well-wishers, was also on his way from the classroom. I reached him to pat him on the back, but I had no chance to speak with him as he went off in the swirl of admiring classmates. A man, and a woman I'd met, a tall blonde who had gone to Radcliffe, Karen Sondergard, had stayed behind. I asked them about Karlin.

  "He's a rabbi," Karen said, "or else he trained for it. He was at Yeshiva in New York."

  "He did quite a job," I said.

  "He should have," the man told me. "He said he read Perini's hornbook over the summer."

  I stared for an instant, then told the guy that he was kidding.

  "That's what he said," the man insisted. "I heard him say so." Karen confirmed that.

  Nazzario came up then and I had the man tell Terry what he had said about Karlin.

  "Over the summer," I repeated.

  Terry glanced at me, probably suppressing "I told you so," then shook his head.

  "Folks around here sure don't fool around," he said.

  We all laughed and the four of us went off together for lunch. Afterward, I went back to the Lawbook Thrift Shop. I wasn't sure if it made me feel better or worse when I bought Perini's hornbook.

  Why did I bother? Why did I care? Why didn't I write Perini off as a bully or a showman? Why was I afraid?

  Imagine, is all that I can answer.

  You are twenty-six or twenty-two, it makes little difference. Either way you have a stake. You have given up a job, a career, to do this. Or you have wanted to be a lawyer all your life.