You should never smile at a crocodile

The denizens of law school are characters. So is it any wonder that we students eventually fall into a sort of morbid fascination with our professors? We gchat about their habits during class ("Nearly Right") and we talk about their one-year-olds while we're at lunch. Don't get weirded out. I've already explained we don't have lives.

Myths abound about every professor and dean. Every 1L knows about the dreaded Prof. G., who I'm pretty sure is just out to make students cry. And there's another one who swings a baseball bat WAY too close to your head in order to make his point about demonstrative evidence. Our former head dean was a magician, and one of the Constitutional Law professors clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was Obama's student. And that's just the SURFACE of what we know.

That having been said, there are always two deans who seem to work in tandem. They gave us a lecture yesterday on "Life After First Year." One of them, Dean T. is a black woman with what might be the best skin I've EVER seen and a short buzz cut. Even with the buzz cut, she might be one of the more feminine women I've SEEN working in law. She has a voice that seems rather gentle, but easily reaches the back of the room. The other is Dean W. and she is intimidating as all hell. She might be 5'5", in her late 50s or early 60s and smiles. Not nice smiles, scary smiles. The smile that a crocodile makes RIGHT before it eats you alive.

They have the most amazing good cop/bad cop routine, where Dean T. tells you what you need to know and then Dean W. says "And don't come to me after you screw it up." It's like optimism and pessimism standing together. I'd love to see the two of them work a courtroom.

It was once explained to all of us that every litigator has to brand themselves. You have to find your courtroom personality. Do you grill the witness on cross-examination, making them feel like a bug under a microscope? Or do you let them feel secure, so that something slips out of them that shouldn't?

It doesn't really matter, but I know this for sure: I want to be Dean W. Smiling cynically until I bite your head off. That woman gives me faith in humanity.