Lisa A. Mazzie – Page 38 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Professor Greipp Receives AWL Community Involvement Award

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:September 11, 2013
Post category:Legal Practice Marquette Law School Public

Professor Melissa Greipp received the Community Involvement Award from the Milwaukee chapter of the Association for Women Lawyers (AWL) at its annual luncheon on September 10. Professor Greipp received the award for her work with the Summer Youth Institute, which was held at Marquette University Law School this past July. (Professor Greipp blogged about the program here.)

Presenting the award was the Honorable Nancy Joseph. Judge Joseph praised Professor Greipp’s ability to take 23 diverse students between the ages of 13 and 16 and teach them, in five short days, about hierarchies of authority, reading and analyzing cases, professionalism, and becoming a lawyer. In addition, Professor Greipp gave students a legal problem and worked with them to prepare an appellate oral argument on that problem. Then, at the conclusion of the Institute, students participated in oral argument before actual lawyers and judges. Professor Greipp did all this, said Judge Joseph, “with grace, love, and passion for the law.”

Congratulations to Professor Greipp.

Do Like a Lawyer

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:September 5, 2013
Post category:Legal Education Legal Ethics Legal Practice Legal Writing Marquette Law School Pro Bono Public

The start of the new academic year means a new group of first-year law students, ready for the three-year adventure that is law school. And each fall, those same students hear much about what they’re going to learn in law school. Usually the main thing they hear is that they will learn to “think like a lawyer.”

It’s certainly true that law school will teach students a particular way of thinking critically that will infuse all of their thinking from here forward. It’s also true that lawyers ought to be thinking critically. (So should everyone, in my view.) But law school should do more than teach students how to “think like a lawyer.” It should teach students how to “be” lawyers.

It is on this thought that I am reminded of Steven M. Radke, L’02. The Law School invited Radke, vice president of government relations at Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co., to speak at its orientation event in fall 2006. Radke gave an entertaining and informative speech to that year’s entering class, the text of which can be found here. At one point, Radke discussed the often-stated law school goal of learning to “think like a lawyer,” a goal, he said, that is a bit troubling, particularly if it suggests that there is a single way lawyers think. He continued,

[I]f, God forbid, I someday find myself being wheeled into an emergency room, I hope the person preparing to operate on me doesn’t just think like a doctor. I want him or her to be a doctor.

Radke’s point is spot on. Law school should not only teach students how to “think like a lawyer,” but it should also teach students how to be a lawyer.

Still Dreaming: The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:August 28, 2013
Post category:Civil Rights Human Rights Legal History Public Race & Law

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the March for Jobs and Freedom, more commonly known as the March on Washington. Today, in 1963, an estimated 250,000 people—of all ages, races, and creeds—descended on the Lincoln Memorial in a peaceful show of solidarity for full civil rights for African Americans. It was also the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.”

There have been a number of interesting pieces presenting the story behind the march, behind the people who organized it, and the people who participated. You can find some of those pieces here, here, here, here, and here (linking to writer and broadcaster Jean Shepherd’s incredibly interesting radio broadcasts about his participation in the march; the popular movie “A Christmas Story” is based on Shepherd’s autobiographical stories). Or just click on today’s Google doodle to find a host of links.

While reading a good number of pieces on the march, I realized that I cannot recall once in my entire 19 years of public schooling (elementary and secondary schools, plus public college and law school) that I ever read or heard about that event and never, not once, did I ever read or hear King’s speech.