Not enough explosions.

Prof: You can destroy feudalism with trusts if you want. The crusades and the plague did that pretty well too. But nobody makes movies about trusts. I don’t know why.

Not-so-sacred trusts

Prof: And this [part of trust law] has a whole different history completely apart from saving souls and dissing Benedictines.

Editor's note: Trust law is the Benedictines' fault! Really! Ask me about it sometime. Crazy monks...

Trial procedure explained.

Prof: There are two definitions for trusts, but I only had room for one on the board, and it’s the one I don’t like. It’s the one courts use when they want to mystify people, especially in jury instructions. The jury instruction is mostly a tool for mystification.

I never watch it.

Prof: I don’t know if you’d ever seen Dirty Sexy Money [TV show]. If you haven’t, don’t—it’s a waste of time… It’s on Wednesdays at 10, I think.

Is there a movie about you, too?

Prof: Sometimes I feel like Forrest Gump. ... One day I was [somewhere in NC] and George Steinbrenner was out there, and needed directions or something. And he said, 'I'm George Steinbrenner.' And I thought, 'Yes, but how is that going to help you find the [expletive] ballpark?'

New source of tax law?

Prof: What is a 'treasure trove' under Regulation 1.61-14?
Student: Is it kind of like Scrooge McDuck?
Prof: Well, yes, but you have to follow the cartoon closely.

It's true. Look it up.

[At professor's house]

Prof, to his young daughter, very seriously: Don't name your children Wayne. People named Wayne are more likely to go to jail.

Daughter: Why, Daddy?

Prof, earnestly: Science.

They said it more accurately represented our future jobs.

[regarding the new law school building being built]

Student 1: They said it's going to have showers!

Student 2: Wow. That's both awesome and depressing at the same time.

Expectations

"When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor."

From a poster on despair.com.

That explains a lot.

Prof (re: stumbling across an interesting program while channel surfing): It was about the cocaine trade in Washington, D.C. ... and one guy said, 'At the start it was attorneys and professional people using this stuff.' And I thought to myself, 'Yeah, and it showed up in Revenue Ruling 88-111!'

Puppy Love

This cuted me out. It's kinda the reverse of the dog/cat interaction at my house.

Free speech with a vengeance

From two friends in a class taught by a prof who has been featured here before:

"This might be an opportunity - with so many people gone - to talk about them. Share some gossip or something."

"We're not going to talk about those cases, but I wanted you to know they're out there, because they're really funny. . . None of them are actually about beets, but I just enjoy saying it."

I want to live in this town.

Prof: And how much was the house appraised for?

Student: I think it was $29,000, which seems low for Welsley.

Prof: Yeah! You can’t buy a manhole cover in Welsley for $29,000! Apparently this is a town in which mansions can be appraised completely independently from their value.

The economics of 8AM classes

Prof: And by the way, if you’re only going to pay attention for 40 seconds this class, in the interest of allocation of a scarce good, you should listen to this…

Mood lighting?

[Power goes off in classroom]

Prof: It's an austerity program on the part of the university to save money. ... Creates more ambiance having it this way, anyway.

That's how they pay attorneys?

Prof: Sometimes I do make more sense than attorneys, but that isn't saying a whole heck of a lot, since typically they don't want to make sense. Because if they do, they don't get paid.

All in a day's work....

From class today:

Prof (preparing to read part of a tax treatise aloud): This is sort of like Bible reading or something. ... It doesn't have quite the same morals or influence that the Bible has, but if you're in the partnership [tax] area it does have a . . . lot of influence.

Prof: There are several things you shouldn't do in life. Don't be the tax matters partner. It's right up there with signing payroll tax forms.

Prof: I've graded enough papers to know that--I hate to say it--I really could teach my cats better than I could teach some of these students.

Prof [brings up an especially difficult area of partnership tax]: I could assign that for the final project. I don't know if I have the courage to do that. I don't want to go home at night and find that my house is gone, my cats have disappeared....

Prof: I think, at least by my standards, I’m fairly good-natured, and I’m not vindictive, which is more than I can say for many of my colleagues. … It’s not just here, it’s [other schools]. They go around in capes and robes and stuff, and berets, and they seem to think this exempts them from having to behave well toward other human beings. … It’s a problem in the academic world. … You can quote me on it, not that anybody would care anyway.
[Prof went on to say that most of his fellow-profs are very nice people. I think these comments were directed more toward academia in general.]

Prof: When I was younger, there was a requirement, which I sort of didn’t mind, that you [as a faculty member] had to attend graduation. … And it’s [expletive] hot out there, and somebody drones on for like 20 minutes, and then they have to hand out the diplomas or whatever. … They made the business school march in last. … So we marched up to the podium, and there wasn’t any room for us, so we just marched up to the back of the podium, and out the back door, and disappeared. And I haven’t been back since.

Prof (realizing that class time is ebbing away): Gosh, I've gone on and on, almost like a Mark Twain monologue or something.

In fact, don't look like you're awake, either.

A professor of mine began class today with the following comic strip:




He followed it up with: "Here's a clue. If you do this in accounting class, don't smile. Nobody ever smiles when they're taking notes."

why all my legal docs have one-syllable words

Prof: I didn’t have room to write “testamentary” [on the board], and its spelling is often elusive anyway, so I just wrote “will.”

Tax planning?

Student: So if you got married in the middle of the year--
Prof: If you're married at the end of the year, you're treated as having been married the whole year.
Student: Oh, good. I'd been wondering about that.