Tatte Bakery & Cafe is a Boston staple– with a location less than one mile from the Law School, it’s one of my favorite places to catch up with friends, splurge on a fancy coffee, treat myself to a baked pick-me-up, or do a little bit of reading with a change of scenery.
To give prospective law students an idea of what classes are like and current law students a sweet reprieve from their post-Spring Break deluge of work, I have assigned each legal core class a Tatte pastry that I feel most represents it. If your favorite class didn’t make the list, feel free to add it in the comments!
Torts
Torts is a fairly straightforward class: there’s a duty, breach, injury, and causation. Before you learn what each of these elements means, it can feel a bit convoluted, but it comes together in the end for everyone.
Torts is a Palmier. Like torts, before you dig in a palmier looks complex with its many flaky layers of pastry. Once you dig in, you realize it’s simple, made with only pastry dough, sugar, and salt.
Civil Procedure
Civil Procedure can get crazy complicated, relatively quickly. It’s a little bit obscure, pretty technical, and it can be difficult to see the bigger picture. In my personal experience, it took a few different explanations before it made sense. Even when it feels like there are too many moving parts, stick with it. By the end with some hard work, you’ll be able to figure out the forest instead of getting lost in the trees
Civ Pro is a Halva Bomb (GF). There are a lot of elements in this dessert, detailed by Tatte’s website as “whipped milk chocolate ganache surrounds a vanilla halva center on top of a crisp chocolate base, glazed in a dark chocolate ganache.” In your first bite you experience all of the flavors though aren’t exactly sure what’s going on. In your second bite, you pick out the individual elements, and in the third bite, you figure out how they all work together.
Contracts
I really don’t remember this class and could not define consideration if my life depended on it– I’m heavily relying on BC’s Bar review class.
Contracts is an Orange Upside Down Cake. It’s familiar, and it makes sense, but at the same time, there’s an element that’s throwing me off into the unknown.
Law Practice
This class is foundational to the work you’ll do as an attorney… unless you go the transactional route. Some people love it and use it to springboard into a federal clerkship, for others this is when they decide they want to be strictly corporate attorneys.
Law Practice is a Gingerbread Loaf Cake. It’s a classic, timeless dessert– but it’s not for everyone. It’s nearly impossible to enter the pastry and dessert world without trying something like this. Some people will love it and others will look for something more tailored to their tastes.
Constitutional Law
Constitutional Law is a heavy reading class, where if the number of pages isn’t overwhelming, some of the convoluted Supreme Court opinions will be. This class challenges your innate moral sense of a case outcome and pits it against your developing legal instinct. This combination can cause internal controversy as well as spirited debates.
Con Law is a Mixed Seasonal Fruit Box. Like Con Law, the fruit tart can be a polarizing dessert. It’s full of fresh fruit though fruity dessert naysayers and those who prefer their desserts fully cooked will likely revolt. Others find it refreshing and light, a nice change of pace from typical bakery desserts. Like Con Law, it does a great job of splitting people into two camps.
Criminal Law
Criminal Law is a foundational course that at least for me, felt like I had some baseline knowledge to ground myself in. It was from my love of true crime podcasts, but it was better than nothing. In some ways, crim felt familiar and welcoming though at times it could be heavy as a result of the subject matter.
Crim Law is a Plain Brownie (GF). First, this is the best brownie I have ever eaten, with or without gluten. The Plain Brownie is familiar, it’s what you think of when you think of desserts, and you know almost exactly what you’re getting when you order it. Because of its rich chocolate, it can require some breaks.
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Procedure is Crim Law but elevated. Instead of learning the elements of offenses or theories of punishment, you focus on what actually happens, and this is where the really interesting conversations around policy and social justice occur. The rules are paradoxically both concrete and very fluid and it’s all about analyzing a specific set of facts.
Crim Pro is an Espresso Mocha Mousse (GF). We are moving up in the chocolate dessert world from the humble brownie to the chocolate mousse– but mixing in an element that feels more grounded in daily life with the espresso accenting the deep chocolate flavor. It’s more complex and demands more attention than other desserts to appreciate the complimentary flavors.
Evidence
Evidence is an objectively difficult class, but it’s also very interesting and requires precision and execution like no other law school class I’ve taken. I thought it was fun and the issue spotters felt like a giant puzzle to be solved. In the end, learning to think in a new and different way has paid off– I can use what I learned to represent clients in clinics.
Evidence is a Pistachio Croissant. It’s unique, it’s not what you would expect, and it is deliciously close to perfection. Like Evidence, once you get it, it just makes sense.
My sources for information on Tatte and their photographs are the Tatte Website and their online ordering page. Only the Espresso Mocha Mousse photo is my own.
Reilly Doak is a second-year student at BC Law. Contact her at doaka@bc.edu.
BC Law: Impact 