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Lurk3r wrote:Helmholz is honestly the best professor I have ever had in my entire academic career. Not just law school. You should be honored to have him. It might be 50/50 on him, but the 50% who dislike him are those that honestly either a.) don't like property or b.) are fragile little flowers that can't handle a professor telling them they aren't a special snowflake and just gave an incoherent answer or asked a ridiculous question. The people who like him either a.) love property and find it fascinating or b.) love it when professors are slightly rude in that traditional law school way. He's a preeminent scholar in his field and he genuinely loves teaching. He also happens to be really good at it if you embrace his style. He only ever assigns 10 or so pages to read a day, if that so you're lucky if you have him. Just spend the same time you would on another class but actually internalize the material. Also, I noticed that the same people who like Levmore like Hemholz. Probably has to do with that slightly rude, snarky personality that I just can't get enough of.

Again, I disagree. (And I think that your classification of those who disagree with you is, at best, misleading.) I thought Helmholz was pretty bad and I love Levmore. Levmore was easily my favorite professor. However, being snarky does not make you a good professor. Helmholz's teaching style is, imo, lazy. He starts at the beginning of the text book and moves straight through, assigning the next 3 cases every single class. I honestly think he's the only professor I had in my 3 years at the school who didn't take the time to create a syllabus. There's absolutely no structure to his class and it causes his course to focus on inane intricacies of property law that no one will ever use when practicing. I have many more problems with him and his teaching style, as do the other 50% or so of students who dislike him, I'm just merely pointing out that not liking property or being sensitive has little to do with whether or not you'll be happy with Helmholz as a professor.

There is structure. He wrote the book. He knows exactly what order he wants to do the class, which is why he wrote the book and placed the cases in the order they are in. As for having no syllabus; it's ingenious. We know he assigns the next three. No more, no less. If we end up needing to spend all the time discussing only 2 cases, you only need to read 2 more for the next class. Meanwhile, the professors with syllabi would keep assigning heaps of reading, be unable to get through all of it, and then assign heaps more reading because that's just what the syllabus said. It sucked. I hated professors assigning more reading than we had time to go over, because it served the interests of no one. With Helmholz, that was never a problem.

I also hate to break this to everyone, but most of 1L is a bunch of inane intricacies that no one will ever use when practicing. That's not the point of the curriculum. It's about learning how to think in a different way, and Helmholz is a master at it.

We could debate the effectiveness of Helmholz's teaching style endlessly. But, I assure you, my dislike for him has nothing to do with me disliking property or being sensitive to criticism, as you originally asserted. In the end, I simply think it's fair for members of the class of 2018 to be concerned about drawing him for back to back quarters. This is particularly true since around 50% of everyone who ends up having Helmholz for property dislikes his teaching style. If it were me, I'd be crossing my fingers to end up in the other sections where almost no one complains about their professor.

You also can't change your section assignment/1L classes so it's not like anyone can switch out or in to a Helmholz class.

Lurk3r wrote:Helmholz is honestly the best professor I have ever had in my entire academic career. Not just law school. You should be honored to have him. It might be 50/50 on him, but the 50% who dislike him are those that honestly either a.) don't like property or b.) are fragile little flowers that can't handle a professor telling them they aren't a special snowflake and just gave an incoherent answer or asked a ridiculous question. The people who like him either a.) love property and find it fascinating or b.) love it when professors are slightly rude in that traditional law school way. He's a preeminent scholar in his field and he genuinely loves teaching. He also happens to be really good at it if you embrace his style. He only ever assigns 10 or so pages to read a day, if that so you're lucky if you have him. Just spend the same time you would on another class but actually internalize the material. Also, I noticed that the same people who like Levmore like Hemholz. Probably has to do with that slightly rude, snarky personality that I just can't get enough of.

Your "categories" are pretty dumb.

I crushed his class, enjoy property, and thought he was hilarious and entertaining. Regardless, I thought it was not a great class. Too much of a focus on inane details and archaic property law. I would have enjoyed (especially for the Bar) to learn something about leaseholds, mortgages, etc.

Edit: changed "it was not" to "I thought it was not." As someone else said, people should form their own opinions.

Wahrheit wrote:UChicago threads have gone (0) day(s) without a pointless argument.

Maybe give your personal opinion and let us form our own from there, Lurk3r? Lest we break out the Gunner Bingo cards.

*Ahem*

You need the picture!

It's naturally just my opinion. Just like everything else anyone posts on TLS. I just think it's ridiculous to tell all the 1Ls to worry about having Helmholz. I remember being terrified of having him because of what people posted on this site, and it's simply unfair. I felt compelled to give the opposite view. I had a great experience in his property class, as did many other people. His oil and gas class is also great.

Could I have done it without the categories? Yes. Should I have done it without the categories? Maybe. Life lesson? Never TLS when drunk. Or do. It's much more fun that way.

I'm sorry that my clearly ill-thought out, drunken ramblings in respect to a Professor I admire and respect touched a nerve.

Let's start again. Let's ignore everything else I said and start from here. I'll try and not be a dick. And yes, these are my opinions. Just to make that clear.

1.) "He doesn't use a syllabus." Correct. But he also only assigns three cases ahead in the book that he wrote and is willing to jump around to different sections depending on what he wants to teach in a given year. This allows you to actually learn those cases and the lessons he wants to impart really well, unlike when a professor assigns dozens of pages of useless reading that you end up being forced to skim and then isn't even discussed, so you never learn it anyway.

2.) "He covers some archaic topics and doesn't discuss things in property that are on the bar." The class, like all 1L classes, is meant to teach you how to think like a lawyer. He does an exceptional job in this regard. It is also interesting to learn the roots of the law that we use today; learning those roots from the preeminent medieval legal scholar and one of the preeminent property professors in the country is a pretty great opportunity. Especially when he only touches on the archaic aspects and doesn't actually devote the entire class to them. Property is such an in-depth and difficult subject, it's really hard to try and cram everything into one class. He does a good job picking the important things to learn. When you actually need to take the bar (which is more than two years after 1L property), you'll need to relearn the material anyway and that's what BarBri or other classes are for.

3.) "Instructor split preference." This one can go either way. I personally hated every instructor split I had and wish that I had the same professor for both semesters in each class. If you talk to the professors about this, they don't like instructor splits either and it's apparently something that developed by accident in order to accommodate a few professors; it wasn't done to actually improve the classroom experience. But again, this can go either way. I guess if you really hate one of the professors it allows you to experience someone else you might like more. I found that it tended to confuse the material, since each professor has a different focus and teaching style. Made exams more difficult. Also, I was generally disappointed by the splits since I liked the professors from my first quarter of a class more than my second quarter in every single instance.

4.) "No structure." Entirely disagree. The book is laid out by subject material and he does a very good job making sure you learn exactly what you need to from each case, with subsequent cases building upon the previous lessons. Then, he'll return to earlier cases to demonstrate lessons you learned from later cases. Really ties everything together full circle.

5.) "Funny, witty, hilarious, entertaining." Yep. That's Helmholz in a nutshell. Embrace it. Live it. Love it. The man has been teaching property longer than you've been alive. Guarantee you'll learn a thing or two, as well as change the way you think. You'll also appreciate the light reading load, especially if your other professors assign boatloads of reading in the quarters you have him in.

My only caveat is this: Helmholz really cares about the details. He only asks you to read and know 3 cases at a time, so he expects you to know it. Sometimes its hard to know exactly what he's looking for, so pay really close attention to what he's asking, and worst comes to worst just read from the book. Just don't re-read what someone else already answered, because that won't get you anywhere.

Good lord give it a rest.

Any idea when we learn our sections?

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Autumn 2015 exam schedule is up.. looks like 1Ls will be done at noon Dec. 14th!

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/file/ ... hedule.pdf

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Wahrheit wrote:Useful thing:

http://caap.uchicago.edu/sites/caap.uch ... Budget.pdf

This is godsend.

Hey everyone,

I just moved in and am interested in meeting y'all. If you'd like to get together and hang out before orientation/classes start, PM me and let's do it. Especially PM me if you like to play basketball and/or swim and we can go hit up Ratner or Crown.

Sic'emBears wrote:Hey everyone,

I just moved in and am interested in meeting y'all. If you'd like to get together and hang out before orientation/classes start, PM me and let's do it. Especially PM me if you like to play basketball and/or swim and we can go hit up Ratner or Crown.

Definitely join the Facebook page friend! We actually have already started having pretty frequent meet ups; if you PM Wahrheit, I'm sure he can tell you about the next meetup at his place if you don't get approved for the FB page on time

Looking forward to meeting too!

What tf is this persuasive speech bs? I thought UChi was a safe space for crippling social awkwardness