January 31, 1985

Guido Calabresi's ''Tragic Choices'' class at the Yale Law School deals with such vexing issues as organ transplants, population control and war. But in his first lecture of the semester today, Mr. Calabresi, who was about to be named the school's new dean, talked to the overflow crowd about other things. He gave them his office hours: whenever they feel like talking to him, any time the light in Room 233 is on. He gave them his home phone number, recalling how a distraught student once called at 3 in the morning to report he had left his torts notes on the New Haven Railroad. And he gave them a bit of advice.

Because of a mechanical error in some editions yesterday, an article about the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith - and a list it circulated, protested by the Middle East Studies Association - omitted a paragraph.

The excess of American imports over exports shrank a little in December, but for all of 1984 the nation's trade deficit grew to a record $123.3 billion, the Commerce Department reported today. That dwarfed the prior record, set in 1983, when imports topped exports by $69.4 billion. In an uncommonly somber assessment of the merchandise trade figures, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige predicted still another record trade deficit for this year. Speaking of December's results, he said, ''Some of the improvement may have been temporary.''

Amid the nation's economic anxiety about becoming uncompetitive in world markets - a fear intensified by the $123 billion trade deficit reported yesterday for 1984 - the good news is that American exports are rising again after a two-year pause. Especially in high technology, American companies showed that they could overcome the adverse price effects of a rising dollar, and still sell more products abroad. Exports rose 8.7 percent last year, although imports outstripped them by jumping 26.4 percent and producing the record trade gap. Troubled exporters, such as the Caterpillar Tractor Company of Peoria, Ill., which have had to slash employment because of faltering sales and mounting losses, get most of the attention. But other sectors are booming: computer exports, for example, rose about 28 percent last year and broadcasting apparatus soared 20 percent.

''In private life - perhaps even more than in public life - I can speak out clearly on behalf of such shared foreign policy objectives as restoring and preserving American strength, supporting democracy and independence in the Hemisphere, defending our friends, our principles and our interests in the Middle East and elsewhere.'' - Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. (A6:4.)