Learning to think like a lawyer means learning to use logic under pressure. So what I mean by that, that you have to know how to use logic under pressure, is you have to understand what your job as a lawyer will be. As a lawyer, you're going to hear lots of people who are telling you problems. Problems that really bother them a lot. They're coming to you to help you solve them, right? Maybe this is a transaction involving hundreds of millions of dollars that went wrong. And they're coming to you and asking, well, what can I do about this? Or maybe it's a much smaller matter. Maybe somebody did a home improvement project that didn't work out the way he or she hoped. Or maybe there is an employment dispute or something like that. Or maybe somebody got a bicycle and doesn't like it and wants to return it. But no matter how much money is involved, all of these are vitally important to the clients who are coming to you for advice. And what they expect you to do is they expect you to use reason, not get flustered, not get emotional, not get upset. Use reason and tell them whether and how the legal system will give them redress for their problem. And to do that, you've got to think clearly and you've got to use logic. You've got to use logic in a situation where people are very upset and are tempted not to use it at all. That's why the client is going to be paying you as a lawyer and that's what we try to train you in doing in the first year. Now, legal logic is not the same as formal logic, and this is something I tell the students about Samuel Williston, who was a great contract scholar, a great formalist contract scholar about a hundred years ago in America. And Williston used to say, when we talk about logic in law, we're talking about legal logic. And legal logic is presumptive in nature. Legal logic tells us the result that's likely to obtain most of the time. It tells us the way legal rules are likely to be applied to resolve problems most of the time, but it always leaves room for exceptions. Exceptions in the interests of substantive fairness or economic efficiency or something like that. And so when we talk about lawyers using logic under pressure, it is using legal logic, understanding what's the result that's likely to obtain but may not obtain, and understanding how to craft arguments with that as the background. I would say thinking like a lawyer, using legal logic is a matter of pattern recognition. We're trying to train students to recognize patterns just the way doctors recognize patterns. If you go to a doctor, the doctor will kind of check you out and then she'll say, okay, here are your symptoms, and this is what I think you have. Right? This is the problem I think you have. So lawyers are also trained in pattern recognition. They listen to the story the client tells them and they think, Okay, I know how the law resolves this problem because I'm trained in it. And I can tell you, this is a situation where the rule is going to apply strictly. Or this is a situation where the rule isn't going to apply strictly. Here are the arguments we can make for your position. Here are the arguments the other side will make. And here's my best judgment on how we can resolve this, in your interest. That's what lawyers do, and that's what we try to train them, and contracts is a very important place to get started, because contract law affects so many other areas of law in our legal system.