Does the 1L Curriculum Matter? This Professor Combined Law, Economics and Human Behavior to Find Out

A few years ago, Joshua Teitelbaum, the David Belding Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, learned an interesting fact about the 1L students enrolled in Georgetown Law's "Curriculum B," an interdisciplinary, theory-focused alternative to the traditional first-year curriculum offered by nearly every law school for more than a century. In most years, more incoming students request to be in Curriculum B than can be accommodated in the section, so the 115 spots are determined by lottery. This means there are students who would have taken Curriculum B if they could have, but who ended up instead in one of the five sections that teach the traditional introductory curriculum of Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal and Constitutional Law.

"Whenever you see random assignment as a social scientist, a light bulb goes on! This was just gold," said Teitelbaum, who holds a Ph.D. in Economics as well as a J.D.

Teitelbaum partnered with his Georgetown Law colleague David Hyman and with Jing Liu of East China University of Political Science and Law to take advantage of this naturally occurring experiment and analyze whether the 1L curriculum a student ends up in has any effect on grade point averages, job prospects, alumni engagement and other factors.

The answer? Mostly no. Teitelbaum and his colleagues found that the two cohorts are comparable in bar exam passage rates and finding employment within their first year after graduation. But the Curriculum B graduates in their sample were more likely to work in the public sector.

"Something is going on that steers them into public interest jobs. I think that's very interesting," said Teitelbaum, who detailed his research in the article "Does the 1L Curriculum Make a Difference?," published in the June 2024 issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

The project, while a bit different from his usual research topics, is still typical of the way Teitelbaum approaches his scholarship: using the tools of behavioral economics - not only standard economics, but also dashes of psychology and sociology - to analyze law.

"When I was a first-year law student, I felt that the law is chaotic, and there are very few clear answers. Economics helped me impose order and structure on this field and make sense of it," he said.

As an undergraduate at Williams College, Teitelbaum recalled, he was torn about whether to go to law school or to pursue a doctorate in economics. Law won the day, but while at Harvard Law School, he realized there was a burgeoning area within legal academia that incorporated economic theory.

So after a clerkship and a few years at a law firm, he headed off to Cornell, where he both earned a Ph.D. and began teaching at the law school. He came to Georgetown Law 15 years ago and has been here ever since.

Much of his research has focused on taking what in economics is called decision theory, and applying it to tort law and related fields.

"From an economist's standpoint, the deep question for tort law is: how does the law incentivize you to take the right precautions when you engage in risky activity?" said Teitelbaum.

"The standard model assumes that you perfectly understand the risk environment. That's nonsense. None of us really have such a crystal-clear picture of the risks," he continued.

Additionally, most of us are constantly taking in new information, which changes the way we make decisions, both as individuals and as societies.

"Standard economic models don't allow for discovery of new possibilities you previously weren't aware of," said Teitelbaum. "But I study tort law in a world where there is unawareness and growing awareness through discovery. What are the right liability regimes in a world like that?"

Teitelbaum usually has multiple papers in progress, with co-authors in law and economics, at Georgetown and elsewhere. One highlight of his career was receiving a 2010 grant from the National Science Foundation to support his study, "An Empirical Investigation into the Nature of Risk Preferences."

"I approach people with ideas all the time. I firmly believe that collaborative efforts produce something that really couldn't be produced otherwise. And with the right collaborators, it also can be fun," he said.

Teitelbaum has a few book projects in mind. One might focus on his ongoing work in tort law and the "negligence versus strict liability debate - not for the economist's model of the world, but for a more realistic world," he said. Another would be a textbook based on a course he regularly teaches, "Analytical Methods for Lawyers." "It's hard to imagine an area of law where a little bit of knowledge of probability and statistics isn't helpful," he explained.

The only thing in the way of taking on a book project? All the ideas he has about other research papers he might write.

"Hundreds, I have hundreds," said Teitelbaum. "I don't have enough time in my career to tackle all the questions that I have."

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