(Busting) Out of our Silos: Lessons Learned by Clinicians and Legal Writing Faculty from Cross-Curricular Collaborations

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Wabash Room

Floor: Third Floor

How can we build an integrated legal skills curriculum that helps our students transfer the foundational skills they learn in 1L to advanced capabilities in their clinics and externships to practice after graduation? At Seattle University, collaborations between clinicians and legal writing faculty led to a revised first-year legal writing course that now includes explicit teaching of core values (professionalism/professional identity development, cultural competence, and reflection) and skills (client interviewing, client counseling, fact development, and negotiation) as well as traditional 1L legal writing content. This new course was developed by clinicians and legal writing faculty working together to identify how these values and skills could be taught throughout the curriculum, using the 1L legal writing course to create a foundation that clinicians can build upon with the students to help transfer those beginning skills to real client work. UCI and South Carolina have also done a variety of collaborations including developing real case-based or community project-based writing assignments for 1L students; guest teaching in legal writing and doctrinal classes; bringing clinic-based practice examples into doctrinal courses taught by clinic faculty; incorporating consideration of professional values, culture, and access to justice into skills courses taught by clinic faculty; and supervising summative “Third-year Intensives” or writing projects that are responsive to community needs.
In this session, we will examine how our various collaborations can be transferable in whole or part to your teaching and institutions. Clinicians and Legal Writing faculty will show how to get these collaborations going, why they are so good for student learning, and why they are so much fun!