Brian Lieter raises some criticism of the Socratic Method, with which I agree, here (he resurrected this post from here).
Ethan Leib, of PrawfsBlawg, responds here, with:
[P]ure lecturing would be a disservice to students. . .We are, in short, trying to develop a panoply of skills for the profession that the Socratic Method (modified from its pure form) seems well-poised to accomplish. Students are forced to listen to their peers respectfully; they are forced to think on their feet; they are forced to respectfully deal with a "superior" who thinks s/he knows it all; they are forced to revisit their understanding of why cases are decided the way they are; they have to negotiate the fear of being publicly shown to have less than fully thought out ideas; they have to learn to speak articulately and loudly; they are forced to work out problems out-loud and refine their views so other students can see the process of problem-solving in an interactive way.
PrawfsBlawg has opened up their comments section for this thread.
I agree most with a comment Professor Lieter features, which said:
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the socratic method, largely for the same reason why I'm not much of a fan of the socratic dialogues- it just takes forever to get to the point, wastes a lot of time on poorly thought out responses, and so on. I don't mind being called on at all, it's just the tediousness of the process that annoys me. A surprising number of law students are unable to form a coherent argument.
My experience has been he same, Socratic dialogues included. I was rather disappointed in the method as a first year law student. Very few of my classmates seemed to be able to form a coherent argument, let alone a cogent one. The Socratic Method seemed to just exasperate the rest of the class for it didn't seem direct enough. Also, I am sure some of the Method's success depends on who employs it, or in what subject it's employed. A course such as Jurisprudence, which is philosophy and not black letter law, would suffer completely from employing the method. Luckily my professor has resisted this incorporation.