This paper explores the dynamics of clerical-lay relationship within the daily rhythm of a particular universe: a Lebanese Shi‘a Islamic legal school — a “hawza” — where a pious student body learns to engage Islamic law by questioning, debating and creating its constitutive norms. A hawza is an intellectual device through which the tradition of Shi‘a Islam is passed down from one generation to another. It is a school whose goal is to provide the students with the necessary tools to apply, but also to produce, Shi‘a Islamic law. It is a space where Shi‘a thought is transmitted and transformed; where muqallidum become mujtahidun. I concentrate on the hawza established by the late Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, currently located in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. For a period of 10 months, I conducted ethnographic research by attending classes on a daily basis. Drawing on participant observation and interviews conducted on-site, I first describe the students’ pedagogical experience, their interactions with clerics as well as the pious atmosphere that encompasses their daily efforts. I argue that this hawza constitutes, for the students enrolled in it, both a space of religious education and a site of ethical remaking. Second, and more importantly, I show that the slow and strenuous process by which one becomes a mujtahid (i.e. one capable of exercising independent legal reasoning) requires from the students that they simultaneously memorize and challenge the established Islamic norms. Hawza students begin their journey by studying a stable statement of the norms defining the correct performance of a variety of practices (e.g. prayer, pilgrimage, marriage, purchase, etc.). But they are soon confronted with difficult conflicts and alternatives as they navigate the vast ocean of Shi‘a jurisprudence. While studying the classical treatises of the ulema, they are asked to challenge them so as to develop their own legal thinking. This is how, they say, one becomes a mujtahid.