Truly Useful Law School Courses

As a faculty advisor, one of my jobs is to approve the courses my first-years plan to take next fall. Law students are fairly conservative and risk-averse in their choices, so usually I see the standard set of courses:  Evidence, Bus. Org., Crim Pro, Admin, and the like.  But the fabulous E. Noakes of McSweeney's has provided a list of *truly* useful courses that law schools should offer:

Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered As Warnings About The Profession

Cutting and Pasting Legal Lingo

Explaining Business Associations to the People Who Are Running Them

4 A.M. Word Processing and the Law

Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption

Forwarding E-mails: Theory and Practice: Seminar

Arbitrary-Deadline Negotiation Strategies

Crying Quietly: Clinic

Jeans-Friday Advocacy Workshop

Cutting and Pasting II: Plural to Singular

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I'd like to add a few of my own:

Document Production:  Theory and Practice

Windowless Document Warehouses--Practicum

and for the public-interest minded:

Finance and the Law:  When Salary Doesn't Even Cover Loan Repayment

Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg.

Comments

[Chris]

On the Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption: my law firm had a lunch seminar on advice for associates once, and the gaming-law partner spent a few minutes on the importance of dressing the part. "It's better to have one $1000 suit than two $500 ones," he said. Paul Kahn certainly never mentioned that to our small group!

[Laura]

Indeed not. Although he did have one of the funniest lines I've ever heard from a law professor (one I try to use at least once a term with my own students):

"Every time I read this case, I think I understand it a little less."

[Steven]

Another great Paul Kahn small-group comment: "The ideal number of students at Yale Law School is zero."

[Steven]

Another great Paul Kahn small-group comment: "The ideal number of students at Yale Law School is zero."

[David]

Let's not forget:

Student: If you don't like reading the exams, and we're all going to pass anyway... can the exam be optional?

Paul Kahn: [pause] I suppose the exam IS optional... in the sense that law school itself is optional.