coming together: thinking like a lawyer

In doing my contract reading tonight, we are looking at third party beneficiaries and I used the term life estate (meaning one who is given possession for their life of a property) in describing the trustee in a trust relationship, and it struck me that the concepts from one class were merging with the ideas of another. It also so happens that this week in civil procedure we are covering third party claims (not as related as the contract and property class, but having to do with multiple parties). As this connection occurred I realized that I am beginning to think like a lawyer, that oft stated goal of law professors as they try to describe what they are doing (besides torturing us with the Socratic method--which they also claim is helping us think like lawyers) Thinking like a lawyer is not thinking about property, then thinking about contracts, then thinking about civil procedure, but rather it is one system with lots of buckets the pour in and out of each other filling and emptying and refilling in differing combinations. Each of the classes now aid in gaining a picture of the organic whole and cannot be studied on their own, but like lights in theatrical lighting, you create white light by combining a pink, a blue, and possibly a yellow from above shining from different sources but ultimately illuminating the same stage.
A will to convey property is a contract, but in the issue we are looking at today, a piece of the property not conveyed in the will is passed orally to the husband from dying wife as life estate, the worth of which is to be paid to the niece. Because this is not in the will, we have to ask ourselves questions that come from both property and contracts. What rights does the niece have if there was not will? Any? Or from contracts, does she have a claim under Promissory estoppel, or maybe unjust enrichment of the husband at her expense (she couldn't use that money as she might have been able to had he fulfilled promise where he had the assets to his advantage.
I cannot say that these concepts have become clear in my mind, and if there are any lawyers out there who come across this blog they will agree, but the fact that I am beginning to see how they connect and sythasize as a whole way of thinking is exciting to me and the point of this entry.

I will leave the exact clarification of the ideas to my briefs