University of St. Thomas Law Journal

 A Law Student’s Honest Review of The Paper Chase

 *Grace Sawatzke

Last year, I was paired with the Honorable Kevin Burke1 as my mentor through the St. Thomas Law School mentorship program.2 Upon first meeting Judge Burke, he recommended that I watch the 1973 film The Paper Chase3 to kick off my law school career. In this Oscar winning film, a naive first-year law student at Harvard, James Hart, faces the stress and pressures associated with law school including managing grades and relationships.4 Of course, like any 1L would say, I was “too consumed and busy with law school” to watch the film, so I made a mental note of it, and then never quite got around to watching it. Sound a bit familiar?

Come 2L fall semester, I am taking the course of Evidence, taught by the Honorable William Koch.5 Judge Koch has taken a special approach to sprucing up the course by incorporating related films and cinema into class lectures. And by that, I mean we may watch a short clip or two in class that incorporates the Federal Rules of Evidence.6 Additionally, Judge Koch has provided our class with a list of legal films that he finds noteworthy. The Paper Chase being one of these films. Now that I had not one, but two, reputable judges recommending the film, I had no excuse to put it off any longer—so I popped a bag of popcorn and got to watching. Here’s my honest review of The Paper Chase, and whether it is worth watching half a century later.    

Spoiler Alert: The following text will talk about specific scenes, themes, and quotes from The Paper Chase. It will not provide a detailed description of the entire film.

The beginning:

The film starts with the main character, Hart, being cold-called in his contracts class by Professor Kingsfield.7 He is asked to state the facts of Hawkins v. McGee.8 It is the first day of class and Hart is unprepared.  What follows next is what we all fear in being cold-called upon; Professor Kingsfield, for lack of a better word, rips Hart to shreds.9 Then, and not surprisingly, Hart immediately following the class races to the bathroom and proceeds to throw up.10

A few scenes later, Professor Kingsfield states his reasoning behind his use of the Socratic method:

The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you— unlike any schooling you have ever been through before. . . . Why don’t I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions, you learn to teach yourselves. . . . You’re on a treadmill. My little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. You’re on an operating table.  My little questions are the fingers probing your brain. We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer.11

There is no denying that Professor Kingsfield here is a bit harsh, with “a bit” being an understatement, and concurrently dramatic. Yet when he says, “[y]ou come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer,”not only did Hart smile, but so did I.12 This was my favorite quote from the film because we all want to leave law school thinking like a lawyer. In fact, the reason we are in law school is to think like a lawyer, and then become one. The quote exemplifies that by incorporating the Socratic method into the teachings of law school, it can change your way of thinking, thus putting you on the trajectory to becoming a lawyer.

The middle:

With law school, comes pressure. Not just one kind of pressure, but many. The Paper Chase does a great job of focusing on some of the substantial pressures faced by law students that are still substantial in the lives of law students today. Two main pressures focused on in The Paper Chase are grades and the juggling of relationships.13 The grades aspect is obvious; we as law students come to law school with the expectation of pressure on grades, and it certainly is not a surprise that grades make up a lot of what we as students use as a measuring tool of success—resulting in immense pressure. 

However, what law students may not expect is the pressure that comes with managing relationships. The Paper Chase incorporates an undeveloped relationship between Professor Kingsfield’s daughter and Hart.14 I found this part of the film to be lacking in development, and an unnecessary romantic aspect to bring in. Further, I would have preferred if the film did not muddy the waters by having the “romance” be with Professor Kingsfield’s daughter. Nonetheless, I appreciated the theme of the difficulties in managing relationships in law school. Hart’s relationship with Kingsfield’s daughter mainly struggles because of his intense focus on studies—with little time for much else—and his inability to look at anything less than a “rational” perspective; or in other words, from a legal lens.15 I have seen this struggle with relationships, for the same reasoning Hart did, not only in my own relationships with others, but also from other law students throughout my time in law school.

The end:

My favorite part of the film was the portrayal of finals week, when the madness of studying and preparing for finals ensued. Hart and another law student Ford, state the obvious “panic has descended”; they check into a hotel for three days, only order room service, remove the TV, and obliterate their room with paper, notes, and study materials.16 In one scene, a law student named Bell creates an 800-page property outline, and accidentally drops it out his dorm window. The papers are quite literally flying all about, truly capturing a visualization of the frenzy of finals week.17 This part of the film was the most comical for me, which is why I enjoyed it so much. The “frenzy” that the film portrays, albeit a little dramatic, shows the angst and anxiety that law students face throughout and leading up to finals.

I will not spoil the end scene of The Paper Chase, but it is one that can be interpreted in various ways. I personally really liked the ending, but I encourage you to watch it for yourself and interpret it in a way that fits with the way you see and find yourself as a law student.

Wrapping it all up, although more than half a century has passed since the debut of the film, a few of the themes and lessons are still relevant today. Yes, it may be true that we no longer xerox our outlines or carry them around in a briefcase under lock and key. But cold-calling, the pressure of grades, and the pressure of managing relationships were real then, and are real today. The movie poster quote says it best, “[e]very so often there’s a movie that people relate to in a special kind of way. The Paper Chase is such a movie.”18 That said, I highly recommend this film to my fellow law school classmates. A lot has changed since law school in 1973, but not everything. I am sure that each of us can find a glimpse of ourselves in The Paper Chase.

*Grace Sawatzke, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law Class of 2026 (Associate Editor).

  1. See JudgeBurke.com, https://judgeburke.com [https://perma.cc/2EM4-W849] (last visited Oct. 21, 2024) to learn more about Judge Burke. ↩︎
  2. Each year, the University of St. Thomas Mentor Externship Program pairs every student with a mentor in the legal field. Mentorship Externship Program, Univ. of St. Thomas Sch. of L., https://law.stthomas.edu/jd-program/training/mentor-externship [https://perma.cc/DH5D-WF7B] (last visited Oct. 21, 2024). ↩︎
  3. The Paper Chase (20th Century Fox 1973). ↩︎
  4. The Paper Chase, Amazon Prime Video, https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.eabb26e3-1e27-4aea-5465-61a055ed793a?tag=fomopop-20 [https://perma.cc/QE9W-XPJN] (last visited Oct. 21, 2024). ↩︎
  5. See Judge William H. Koch, Minn. Jud. Branch, https://www.mncourts.gov/About-The-Courts/Overview/JudicialDirectory/Bio.aspx?id=347 [https://perma.cc/YC5F-2W5D] (last visited Oct. 21, 2024) to learn more about Judge Koch. ↩︎
  6. No, we do not have class “movie days.” Additionally, The Paper Chase is not directly related to the Federal Rules of Evidence. ↩︎
  7. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  8. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. Hawkins v. McGee is a famous case about a skin-graft gone wrong, resulting in a “hairy-hand”, that law students often read in their first-year contracts class. 146 A. 641 (N.H. 1929). ↩︎
  9. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  10. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. To be honest, just watching this scene made my heart race… ↩︎
  11. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  12. See The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  13. The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  14. The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  15. The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  16. The Paper Chase, supra note 3. ↩︎
  17. The Paper Chase, supra note 3. If you do not have time to watch the entire film, but want a good laugh, this scene is at 1:41. ↩︎
  18. The Paper Chase (1973), Original Film Art: Vintage Movie Posters, https://www.originalfilmart.com/products/paper-chase-1973 [https://perma.cc/6VHQ-XPCZ] (last visited Oct. 28, 2024). ↩︎

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