Law in a vacuum

Vacuum: a space empty of matter. (as defined by Wikipedia)

The Bar forces us to study the law within an enclosed space, a vacuum in which each area of law is separate from each other area of law. Either a question is about torts or criminal law, real property or constitutional law, evidence or conflicts of law.

Today we were lectured on Evidence, which relates to all areas of law in at least some remote way. Even when the issue deals with a contract, commercial paper (whatever that really is) or a separation agreement, the writings involved can invariably end up as evidence in at least a civil action so the documents must be written as such.

Evidence is useless on its own. The subject simply will never come up unless there is some other issue at stake, some question, some point to prove, but on the bar we are given a set of facts, and a few following questions, that specifically lay out the rest of the case in order to teach us evidence alone. I understand this method of education is effective in the first place, but how does isolating this variable really test our abilities to be attorneys?

Even within these main areas we are lectured to view each subsection, each individual issue, as separate from all other issues. For example we were given a hypothetical, similar to the one below, that applied to the best evidence rule, which requires an original writing to be submitted except under a few limited exceptions.

HYPO: Jack Bower claims that he worked 24 hours and spent $15 million in reimbursable expenses. There are time sheets and expense reports that say he only worked 20 hours and had only $10 million in reimbursable expenses. Boss wants to testify that Bower only worked 20 hours and spent only $10 million to be reimbursed, but his only knowledge about the issue comes from the time sheets and expense reports.  Under the best evidence rule can Boss testify to the number of hours and amount of expenses?

The answer is no, he can't because he only knows this information through the time sheets and expense reports and these reports are available to be submitted as evidence.

That makes sense and everything but it ignores what would really happen. To get the information admitted, Boss would be called on to authenticate the reports. Once the documents are authenticated they may be admitted as evidence. He would still be called to testify but only in relation to authentication, the extent that the documents were accurate and kept in the regular course of business. (We discussed authentication in another section. It was not mentioned in relation to this hypothetical in class.)

I know I may be just complaining, but you would be too if you had to study soulless blackletter law all day long. I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't seem the Bar is testing us on how to be attorneys, just on how well we can memorize the law and then apply it isolated situations.

Law is not a vacuum because life is not a vacuum. These issues do not come up all by themselves, they are intermingled, mixed, mashed, twisted, turned and ground together. A client comes in with a generic case and an attorney's job is to question, to counsel to pull out not only the important but the collateral facts, to find and work the angles in order to find the best way to represent his/her client.

Each criminal claim might be accompanied by a tort claim. A real property claim may give rise to some issue of Constitutional law.

A client will not walk into your office asking if he has a prescriptive or implied easement on his neighbor's property and that he may be sued for nuisance in addition to being arrested for this supposed nuisance, but that the nuisance is just his invocation of his First Amendment freedom of speech rights. He'll walk in, late, and say that he got this letter from his neighbor's lawyer telling him that he can't use the driveway that runs across his neighbor's property connecting him with the only road to town because his neighbor is angry that he and his band have been playing music that the the neighbor considers obscene and that the neighbor reported the matter to the police.

This hypothetical deals with several issues of law. On the bar though, these facts would never be presented together. The issues would never be presented together. I may be stretching the hypo a bit, but, I'm just trying to make a point.

If this test purports to determine who gets  a license and who doesn't should it not have something to do with the actual practice of law? Should the test that determines whether or not we are fit to be attorneys, to handle some of the most important facts and circumstances that occur in people's lives, not have some actual relation to those real lives?