Lawyers & Life: A Law School Course that Looks to the Future

I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed up for the class “Lawyers & Life.” I knew that in the course description, potential enrollees were warned that, if we were not up for a challenging semester, we should beware as this would not be a free ride. For the first day of class, each of the ten of us were required to prepare a short presentation answering each of the following questions:

• What is your personal conception, your vision, of professional success and satisfaction for you as a lawyer?

• How have you arrived at this conception, this vision, of what success and satisfaction mean for you and your career?

• How will you know when (or whether) you achieve your conception, your vision, of success and satisfaction?

• What particular skill or trait do you deem most indispensable for you to have in your arsenal in order to maximize the prospects that you achieve the success and satisfaction to which you aspire? How well is such a skill or trait already developed in you? What plans do you have to more fully develop and refine that skill or trait?

Though it seemed a bit daunting (and I put off the assignment for a while for that reason), I was pleasantly surprised when I began crafting my presentation.  I was really enjoying myself. For the first time since I began my law school endeavor, I felt that a professor was asking questions about me and about my greater career goals.

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A Jewel in Our Midst

Throughout the history of legal education, there has been a consistent call for greater levels of experiential learning and especially clinical education in the law school curriculum. This call has received renewed strength in the Carnegie Report released in 2007. It reminds us again of the importance of building skills for lawyering, for serving as counselors to those who seek our assistance.

Marquette University Law School, for over thirteen years, has been polishing a gem that provides our students with a rich opportunity to some of the very skills required to be an effective lawyer (you might remember the list from the first blog…communication, listening, writing, negotiation and time management, to list only the top five survey responses). This gem is the Small Claims Mediation Clinic.

The Small Claims Mediation Clinic is housed in the Milwaukee County Courthouse and provides pro se litigants an opportunity to access student-led mediation services in an effort to resolve the disputes themselves. This program was the brainchild of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske and I have had the honor and privilege to work with Janine at the Clinic for several years and have served as the faculty member for a number of semesters.

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Restorative Justice Skyping From Milwaukee to Austin

As a law school educator, I am not particularly known for my use of high-tech electronic equipment. I much prefer teaching through direct storytelling and student participation. I simply like to make direct eye contact with people with whom I am talking. However last Saturday I had the wonderful experience of combining my storytellling/interactive teaching and Skype with a restorative justice class at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Marilyn Armour, a restorative justice scholar who teaches a course which is offered to both law students and social work students, asked me to talk to her weekend class.

Most people who know me will tell you that if you ask me to speak about our MULS restorative justice work, I have a hard time saying no. That being said, I still wondered how it was going to go, trying to teach a class long distance through a computer. Having traveled internationally, I have used Skype before . . . but I have never used it to teach a class. I was amazed how well it worked. Some of the law students asked really great questions about how to incorporate restorative justice into the criminal justice system and the corporate world. A social work student asked about ways she could utilize these processes in her future work. I could see the entire class. Although it was 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, I am happy to report that they all appeared to stay awake and fully engaged in the discussion. And I had the ease of teaching the class from my bedroom (I did dress up since they could see me as well.)

I am still not convinced that “long-distance learning” can replace the value of students and teacher being in the same room with each other; there is something about that personal interaction including the casual talk that occurs before and after class that leads to important learning and interactions. But this experience has convinced me that electronic communications can enhance and supplement our traditional teaching in exciting (and inexpensive) ways.

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