Companion Notes for Lecture 1

Note 1: Below are the Companion Notes for lecture 1, which you are kindly expected to be familiar
with. Feel free to let me and my assistants (whose emails are below) know should you notice any
errors or inconsistencies.
Note 2: Please feel free to contact Furkan Bey (furkanusak@hotmail.com) should you have any
queries.
Note 3: The Dictionary of Law (pdf version available on Moodle) has been used for definition
of legal terms in English.

Contents of the lecture presentation:

The lecture presentation was divided into 2 parts as follows:
Part 1: Introduction to the course & administrative matters
Part 2: How is law perceived by others? Law and economics; The language of law: legal
terminology

Contents of Compendium Notes 1:

1) The legal mentality
2) Law as a subject compared with other disciplines at university
3) Legal language

1) The legal mentality

One always has to be cautious of making wide-sweeping generalizations. The same goes for
the subject of law and of lawyers. However, as I mentioned in the lecture, any subject to
which we may be exposed over a long period of time through our studies at university or to
working practices in our professional life will inevitably shape our way of thinking and
reasoning.

Students who are currently taking this course and who are at present in their first year in the
Departments of Economics, Political Science and International Relations, and Management
will not yet at this stage of their academic studies have acquired the particular perspective
and outlook on life that will be shaped by their specific chosen disciplines. Towards the end
of their studies, the readings that they will have done, the lectures and seminars they will
have attended and the essays that they will have written will have gradually shaped their way
of thinking and reasoning.

Christmas card and the Orange joke:

Both the Christmas greetings card and the orange joke that we saw in class reveal that
lawyers are usually extremely cautious. They try to think of every eventuality and attempt to
cover themselves against accusations or blame that may later be directed at them. They may
do this to protect themselves or the law firm for which they are working for as well the clients
(Instructor’s note: Legal term: somebody who is represented by a lawyer; example: The
solicitor paid the fine on behalf of his client) they may represent; in Turkish: Müvekkil).

Precision, accuracy and attention to the smallest detail are among important skills that a
lawyer must have. However, as explained by a former lawyer in the article below (of which an
excerpt is provided here) these habits might take a toll on a lawyer’s private life (Please read
this article carefully for which are responsible).

Lawyers and the Negativity Trap

(Source: https://www.lukemenziescoaching.com/blog/lawyers-and-the-negativity-
trap)
Negativity (as a mindset) has been shown to be bad for success in all careers except
for law.

That is to say, in the legal profession a negative mindset is correlated with success. I
don’t believe that a negative mindset is in fact necessary or helpful in a legal career,
but it nonetheless runs rampant in the legal profession and doesn’t seem to actually
prevent success in the legal sector.

But while negativity may not prevent success, it certainly has a lot of downsides –
harm to enterprise and personal relationships being just two of them.

How does this happen?

I think my own experience as a lawyer was very common – academically bright,

tenacious and willing to do a lot of hard study, I saw a legal career as offering status,
high earnings and security. I lapped up my legal training and loved the intellectual
rigour of it. I felt myself to be ‘very clever’ as I learned how to deconstruct everything,
seeing all the flaws, inconsistencies and weaknesses in things. Weaknesses were
particularly fun to find, since a lot of my training was to demolish other people’s ideas.

I can literally remember the realisation that I now saw the world very differently from
before my legal training. I was a logic machine. It felt powerful and exciting.

On a conscious level, I was now far more rational and meticulous. At a neurological
level, my brain had rewired certain key thinking pathways. I was now rewired.

And guess what? The negative mindset cannot be constrained to just your legal
studies or the hours of the day when you are practising the law. It tends to seep into
every aspect of how you see the world and how to you relate to other people, to
hobbies, current affairs, personal relationships and even how far you are able to enjoy
films and TV.

Into practice (instructor: practice in this context refers to the professional life; the
carrying on of a profession; example: “He has been in practice for twenty years”; in
Turkish: meslek)
The neural rewiring doesn’t just end at law school. There are other occupations that
also require mental training in logic, such as medicine, engineering and computer
science, but they don’t tend to lead those in those professions to have the same
strong preference for negative thinking throughout their working lives that we tend to
see in law.

What lawyers get on top of that powerful grounding in logic at law school is then an
extra-strong dose of negativity in our final stages of training and in our legal practice.
We are trained to focus on everything that could go wrong. Absolutely everything.
And then to be concerned with how to either guard against it or at least do our best
to protect our clients from the consequences of whatever may go wrong.

The contract example

Every contract and set of terms & conditions is an exercise in thinking of all the things
that could go wrong with a relationship and how to prevent it or deal with it, if it
happens.

My own legal field of employment law (instructor: employment law is the

field/branch/area of law that relates to the rights and responsibilities of employers
and employees; in Turkish: İş Hukuku / Çalışma Hukuku ) is a great example. When we
are creating an employment law contract or a staff policy for a client, all of our
attention is on our experience of how employment relationships go wrong and how
to tie the employee down to behaving themselves in all those circumstances. Or to
make it easy for them to be seen to have clearly broken the rules so that the employer
can discipline or dismiss them.

Employment contracts (instructor: in Turkish: iş sözleşmesi) and staff policies are not
really there for the vast majority of employees – certainly not the decent ones. (After
all, when did you last read your contract or staff handbook?) No, they are there
almost entirely for the small minority of cases where the employment relationship
goes south (instructor: in informal US English: to decline, deteriorate, fail ) and people
need pulling back in line, or worse.

The Trap
Some lawyers are able to avoid the negativity trap and I salute them. I’m not sure
how they do it, but it seems to often come from already having a clear and positive
view of the good that that there is in the world, and how they wish to live according
to that, before they start their legal training.

But for the majority of lawyers, I see the negativity trap having its malign effect
everywhere. The tendency to have a gloomy, cynical view of life, seeing all the flaws
 and risks around us, tends to throttle innovation and enterprise. Have you ever
wondered why the legal profession tends to be so old-fashioned and resistant to
change and new ideas?

It also produces poor leaders and people managers. It results in poor client
relationships. And it can often harm personal relationships. (Show me one person
who says that being married to a lawyer means a life of easy-going fun and relaxed
appreciation of the simple things in life, and I’ll show you 100 who feel the opposite!)
At its worst, it can result in poor mental health.

So what to do?
I am not suggesting that lawyers need to become frivolous, carefree or blindly
optimistic, because that wouldn’t work either (although a dash of this at the weekends
would be no bad thing).

Rather, my experience is that lawyers can become more successful, happier and more
fulfilled in all aspects of life if they learn to spot their negative thought patterns and
learn to be able to switch to a more positive mindset as their default setting.

Those who see the world – and their legal work - as a place of opportunity, fun,
innovation and enjoyment are going to have such a pleasanter life. They are also
likely to positively influence those around them, which the legal sector badly needs.

As you’ve guessed, helping lawyers to find and dial up their positivity and to
recognise how to avoid the negativity trap is a significant part of my coaching work in
the legal sector. If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to have a chat.”

2) Law as a subject compared with other disciplines at university

Below is an article which compares the way in which lawyers, scientists, and engineers may
think. The part on law, which includes a section on IRAC (which is a methodology for legal
analysis that is used in law faculties and law schools) is particularly informative – Please
read this article carefully for which are responsible (Source:
https://www.infoq.com/articles/think-lawyer-scientist-engineer/; Andrew Davis, Senior
Director of Research and Innovation, Copado; Dec 22, 2020, 15 min read):

“Do You Think Like a Lawyer, a Scientist, or an Engineer?

Do you think like a lawyer, a scientist, or an engineer? These professions all emphasize
logical reasoning, and all require deep study, practice, and understanding. Yet, they
take different approaches to building knowledge and implementing that knowledge
in their field.
There’s a lot we can take from all three disciplines. Being effective requires us to apply
the right mode of thinking in the right situation, and switch between them as needed.
Let’s look at each mode of thinking and how to choose between them.

Law: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion

In law, rules are the primary foundation for decision making. Years of study enable
lawyers to understand rules and how they should be applied. Much of law regards
analyzing an issue and concluding whether something complies or does not comply
with these rules. These conclusions can then drive behavior. Conclusions guide people
to act appropriately and legally, and guide the state in punishing those who violate
laws.

Training to be a lawyer requires repeatedly evaluating scenarios and coming to

correct conclusions. The Bar exam, the final qualification for becoming a lawyer ( My
comment: this applies in the USA and is not the case in each country ), includes
hundreds of such scenarios.

A classic legal decision-making framework is IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion.

The first step is precisely identifying the issue. Many aspiring lawyers fail their Bar
exam by failing to understand the real issue in a scenario. Correctly identifying the
issue can be challenging.

The second point is to understand which rules apply to this scenario. Skilled lawyers
remember thousands of points of law, but finding relevant laws can also require
extensive research. There is an interplay between determining the relevant rules and
identifying the issue. Different rules require attention to different aspects of a
situation, so the issue may appear very different depending on the rule.

For example, if someone injures themselves on an icy sidewalk in front of a building,

you need to know what rules apply so you can identify the issue. If the law states that
a property owner is responsible for clearing walkways, then the issue becomes
whether the owner was negligent. If the law states that the tenant of the property
must not put snow or ice on public walkways, then the issue becomes whether a
tenant piled up snow where they shouldn’t have. The issue and the rule are
interwoven.

Once you understand the relevant rules, you analyze to determine whether the rule
was violated. That analysis leads you to the conclusion.
Implicit in this way of thinking is that the rules are known, stable, and reliable. As we’ll
see, in science, the challenge is to learn what the rules (of nature) are. In engineering,
the challenge is to create the rules (or structures) that define a system.

While much of law is about following or interpreting existing rules, lawyers are also
involved in designing contracts, which creates rules. Government legislatures design
the overarching rules for that territory. This aspect of law is similar to engineering.
These laws are social constructs, unlike the law of gravity. Crafting rules guide
behaviors, ideally, to promote a stable and fair society.

As our organizations mature, processes crystalize, and we accumulate a wide range of

rules. How do we get budget approved for a project? How do we report issues with
the software we’re using? How do we systematically onboard new employees?

If we get an irate email from a customer, how do we respond? First we need to

determine what’s the issue. Are they facing a bug in the systems we produce? Are
they disappointed we’re lacking a feature? Do they have concerns about the services
we’re providing? Are they just having a bad day?

Customer support teams master this kind of triage, following the rules and processes
established for the team. Analyzing the issue against internal rules, they conclude with
an appropriate response. From there they tap into processes for reporting bugs,
adding feature requests, etc. You never knew customer support thought like lawyers,
did you?

Science: Building to Learn

Scientific thinking is an entirely different form of logical analysis. The challenge in
science is not to follow the rules or define the rules; the challenge is to discover them.
In any truly scientific investigation, we do not know the rules in advance. To discover
the rules, we use observation and inference. This contrasts strongly with the IRAC
method of logical analysis.

The scientific method emphasizes intellectual humility, treating knowledge as layers of

hypotheses. Accumulating new knowledge requires designing and running
experiments to test new hypotheses. A hypothesis is an idea about what rules may
govern a certain situation. Designing an experiment means imagining how a system
would behave if a certain rule holds true. Running an experiment means carrying out
a scenario to see if the results matched your expectations.
In the scientific method, you validate your mental model against observed results. If
results match your expectations, it gives confidence that the hidden rules match your
hypothesis.

The defining characteristic of the scientific method is building systems that enable us
to learn. Learning underlying rules (while holding our knowledge of them as tentative)
is the product of this exercise.

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen a dramatic increase in business and technology
striving to adopt scientific thinking. The idea of data-driven organizations is to ensure
that businesses are not driven by opinions, but that data is used to discover which
approaches are most effective.

This may come as a surprise to IT leaders, but the most scientific department in many
organizations is the marketing department.

In a world of billions of competing messages, marketing organizations are under

enormous pressure to be effective. Necessity being the mother of invention,
marketing teams adopt sophisticated measurement techniques, website analytics,
click through rates, conversion rates and more.

Many marketing teams never launch a campaign without employing A/B testing
(instructor’s comment: randomized experiment using statistical hypothesis ) to
measure message effectiveness. Applying such techniques to software projects is still
a novel concept for most teams.

Engineering: Learning to Build

The final approach to learning is through engineering. Unlike science, where you build
systems to help you learn, in engineering you learn underlying rules so you can build
new systems. Engineering is the practice of using science or technology to create new
systems. You learn basic rules of nature, software, etc, and on that basis build systems
that accomplish the results you want. Software engineering is a form of engineering
where you create your own rules (programs). You craft logic for manipulating
information to accomplish the output you desire. Software engineering has parallels
to legal systems. Legislation is a type of engineering whereby you design laws or rules
with a desired output on social behavior.

Laws define boundaries on acceptable human interactions, just as software defines

rules for processing information. Courts and lawyers help ensure that human behavior
follows those legal patterns, just as CPUs reference programming instructions to
guide the correct retrieval, processing, storage, and display of data. One key
 difference is that programming is mostly about defining the rules rather than
adjudicating them. Computers are more reliable than people in following rules if
they’re well defined.

Another thing that sets programming apart from the legal profession (and from many
other forms of engineering) is that software systems change frequently and fluidly.
These changes occur in response to the changing business needs, changes in adjacent
systems, and improvements to logic. It’s the role of programmers to constantly tune
and perfect the logic as business processes evolve. ( Instructor’s comment: change
takes place in law as well but at a much slower pace )

IT teams typically take great pride in the systems they build, seeing engineering as
their core activity. But our strengths can conceal blind spots. It’s empowering, if not
addictive, to feel that we have sole power to define the rules of a system. In a world
where we usually feel powerless, to have the power to create provides incredible
reassurance.

That opens engineers to the hubris (instructor’s comment: “kibir” in Turkish; excessive
pride or self-confidence). that users should simply use the systems they build. But
engineers can be so focused on creating that they neglect to explore how users
actually use their system. At the same time, we are usually oblivious to our own
assumptions about how a system should be used.

The User Experience (UX) movement seeks to remedy these blind spots by ensuring
that we couple the design process with the exploration of user experience, something
that requires a scientific mindset.

Different Situations Demand Different Approaches

Each of the three logical approaches applies in different situations. When trying to
discover the underlying rules of a system, we need scientific thinking, an open-
minded, iterative, and experimental approach to understand these hidden rules. Once
basic rules are understood, we can use engineering to build higher-level systems.
Once those systems are defined, legalistic thinking becomes most appropriate.”

3) Legal language
As mentioned during the lecture and as seen in particular in the ‘orange joke’, in order to
understand the legal concepts, it is necessary to first understand the meaning of the term or
expression itself. For instance, on slide 19 of the lecture presentation the specimen question
is as follows:
“If a student at Bogazici University has been found guilty of plagiarism and subjected to a
disciplinary penalty by the University Senate, the decision to penalize the student would be a
judicial decision”. Indicate whether true or false.
a) True
b) False”
The answer to the above question requires knowledge of the distinction between that of an
“administrative” decision and a “judicial” decision as well as the context and mechanisms
through which either of those decisions may be taken.

As I mentioned in class, you are not expected to memorize the dictionary meanings of legal terms
(which I believe is useless and a waste of time and energy). Examining the examples provided, which
may either be made up or quoted from various sources, is much more useful and beneficial. My aim
here, is to get you to ‘feel’ the concept from different angles and perspectives and in different contexts
so that you can both recognize them as well as use them with command and mastery according to your
intended purposes in your writing and speech.