{"id":3796,"date":"2009-02-16T10:23:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T15:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3796"},"modified":"2009-02-16T12:08:02","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T17:08:02","slug":"reflections-of-a-3l-installment-two-fieldwork-and-clinics-are-indisputably-indispensable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/02\/reflections-of-a-3l-installment-two-fieldwork-and-clinics-are-indisputably-indispensable\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections of a 3L, Installment Two: Fieldwork and Clinics are Indisputably Indispensable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Casebook reading got you down?\u00a0 Tired of briefing pretend issues for pretend clients?\u00a0 Wish you’d never heard of Socrates or his dubious method? <\/em><\/p>\n

Have I got news for you!\u00a0 Now for the low, low (HA!) price of your already-paid tuition, you can learn about the law through real life experience. <\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t mean to denigrate the value of our classroom legal education.\u00a0 It is, of course, of vital importance to our growing legal knowledge and our ability to think about the law.\u00a0 However, I am of the opinion that no legal education is complete without a foray into the wide world of the real-life practice of law.\u00a0 For me, Marquette’s well-developed clinic and fieldwork selections were a large part of why I chose to come here.\u00a0 I remember talking to Professor Hammer on the phone while making my where-to-go decision, just to check that all the clinic experiences listed on the website were real.\u00a0 He assured me that, not only are they real, but that students who participate in them do real legal work for real clients.<\/p>\n

In spite of my pre-law school enthusiasm about fieldwork, after my first two semesters, I became fearful if I left the confines of Sensenbrenner Hall, some sort of apocalypse would ensue.\u00a0 At the end of my 1L year, I asked a 2L friend about the advisability of taking a clinic in my second year.\u00a0 I was worried that taking on another responsibility would take away from my classroom performance and keep me from getting as much as I could from my classroom learning.\u00a0 She told me that without her clinic experiences, her classroom experiences would have been less meaningful.\u00a0 She couldn’t have been more right.<\/p>\n

My clinic experiences have taken my theoretical learning and given it life.<\/p>\n

They helped me to think in a pragmatic way about what kind of issues I want to deal with on a daily basis.\u00a0 Our practice is not just the bodies of law we deal with.\u00a0 Our work involves some of the most personal areas of our clients’ lives.\u00a0 Knowing this and actually talking to the people we may serve — be it a crime victim, a divorce petitioner, a parent involved in a custody battle, or a senior whose Medicaid is being cut off (to name some examples from my own fieldwork experiences) — are two completely different things.\u00a0 Thus, my clinic experiences revitalized my classroom learning and helped me to direct my studies to areas where my interest continued to grow.<\/p>\n

My experiences also helped me meet practitioners.\u00a0 Some days at the courthouse I feel like I know 99 percent of the people in the hallways.\u00a0 This leads me to realize that there is a reason why Marquette grads are sometimes called the “Marquette mafia” — we are connected.\u00a0 (Not in a gun-in-a-violin-case, speak-easy kind of way, but in a “hey-good-to-see-you-remember-that-crazy-case-we-worked-on” kind of way.)\u00a0 Or at least we have the opportunity to get connected.\u00a0 Not only does meeting people in the field help you stick your feelers out for practice areas where you might work (always important), it helped me to put a face on the Milwaukee legal community and thus was my first step to finding my place in it.<\/p>\n

So, February’s second piece of unsolicited life-in-law-school advice from yours truly: find a clinic or fieldwork position that interests you and apply.\u00a0 You’re cheating yourself if you don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Casebook reading got you down?\u00a0 Tired of briefing pretend issues for pretend clients?\u00a0 Wish you’d never heard of Socrates or his dubious method? Have I got news for you!\u00a0 Now for the low, low (HA!) price of your already-paid tuition, you can learn about the law through real life experience. I don’t mean to denigrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-education","category-marquette-law-school","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}