Law Commons^™

Educating New Lawyers, Tara L. Casey

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, the author discusses how law schools have been challenged recently to place greater emphasis on preparing students for the realities of legal practice through skills training and community-based learning.

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Law School Clinics, Margaret Martin Barry, A. Rachel Camp, Margaret E. Johnson, Catherine F. Klein, Lisa V. Martin

All Faculty Scholarship

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering. The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …

Losing My Religion: The Place Of Social Justice In Clinical Legal Education, Praveen Kosuri

All Faculty Scholarship

Many law school clinics presume a “social justice” mission—that is, representation of the indigent and under-represented about poverty law issues—as the only legitimate goal for clinic clients and matters. This article contends that social justice should not be presumed, but rather should be considered an option—among many—to include in a clinic’s pedagogy. If increased experiential learning opportunities for students are a real objective, and clinics are the pinnacle of those opportunities, then broadening the portfolio of clinical offerings to include those that are not focused on social justice should be a valid proposition. The modern clinical legal education movement that …

Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Some important stages might include: (1) initial client interview, (2) negotiation of a retainer agreement, (3) developing good working relationships with counterpart lawyers, (4) conducting factual investigation and/or legal research, (5) working with counterparts to plan the negotiation process, (6) resolving discovery disputes, (7) preparing client for negotiations, (8) conducting an ultimate negotiation, (9) engaging a mediator and mediating the matter, and (10) drafting a settlement agreement. This essay suggests that by using both single-stage and multi-stage simulations, instructors can better prepare students for negotiations that they will actually conduct in practice. These suggestions grow out my book, Lawyering with …

Lawyering In Place: Topographies Of Practice And Pleadings In Pittsburgh, 1775-1895, Bernard J. Hibbitts

Articles

Even in the digital age, lawyering is always located. Lawyers live and work in physical space, and they deal with other lawyers and with clients who also have at least some measure of physicalized existence. Distracted and ofttimes overwhelmed by written records, legal historians have traditionally paid little attention to the physical environment of lawyering, but under the influence of contemporary cultural factors this is beginning to change. Indeed, in light of recent works on American, English and even ancient law it may be time to recognize the birth pangs of a new interdisciplinary field that we might label “legal …

Executive Branch Legalisms, David Fontana

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and White House Counsel’s Office (WHC) have both been the subject of much recent attention in legal scholarship, and both offices are at the center of the debate between Bruce Ackerman and Trevor Morrison that this paper addresses. However, these offices remain less representative of and less important to executive branch legalism than the substantial amount of attention these offices are receiving suggests. These offices matter, and matter more than any other individual legal office in the executive branch. However, there are limitations in using these two offices as a means of understanding the …

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Law School Clinics, Margaret Martin Barry, A. Rachel Karn, Margaret E. Johnson, Catherine F. Klein, Lisa Vollendorf Martin

Scholarly Articles

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering.

The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …