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THE RATIONALE
FOR STREET LAW PROGRAMS IN LAW SCHOOLS
Benefits for Law Students
The primary reason to teach Street Law is to provide law students
with a unique and powerful professional development opportunity.
By teaching about the law and interacting with the community,
law students learn:
- Substantive law: Law students learn the practical applications
of legal concepts. In order to teach a topic, a teacher
must have a mastery of the materials. In order to respond to
high school student questions and prepare detailed lesson plans,
law student instructors need to understand the law and be able
to explain the essence of legal concepts. Additionally, law
students delve into the statutory and decisional law of
their local jurisdiction which typically would not happen
in regular law school classes.
- Lawyering skills: By being Street Law teachers, law
students improve their:
- First-hand knowledge of legal procedures: Successful
Street Law classes use interactive teaching strategies, including
mock trials, legislative hearings, role-plays, moot courts,
and simulated negotiations. By having these procedures come
alive in the classroom, law students gain insights and skills
not readily provided by reading about these procedures in
a textbook.
- Ability to communicate: Law student instructors enhance
their ability to explain legal concepts in terms understandable
to the lay public and communicate effectively before large
groups. Teaching requires law students to organize their thoughts,
think quickly on their feet, and develop invaluable public
speaking skills.
- Analytical ability: Teaching provides many opportunities
to hone analytical skills. Law student instructors must grapple
with deciding what to teach; what teaching methods to employ;
how to teach a complicated topic in the span of a few weeks;
and how to be flexible to meet student needs yet accomplish
class outcomes.
- Time management and organization skills: Law student
instructors learn how to budget their time. In teaching and
preparing for several classes a week, law students must budget
their time, meet deadlines, and handle a multitude of tasks.
- Ability to enter into an attorney-client relationship:
The relationship between the law student instructor and his
or her students, in many fundamental ways, resembles the relationship
between the attorney and client. For example, the relationships
are parallel in the need to establish trust; explain complicated
laws to a non-lawyer; and set appropriate limits.
- Exposure to other professionals: Law students gain
experience working with other professionals like teachers.
They gain an understanding of the demands of the teaching
profession and educational trends like standards and high
stakes testing. Often, law students integrate community resource
people like lawyers, police officers, domestic violence professionals,
and politicians into their classroom presentations.
- Knowledge about community resources: Law students
must become familiar with local community resources in order
to better serve the needs of their students. Street Law classes
do not stop at the classroom. Instead law students are encouraged
to help their students make a difference in the community
by reporting instances of police misconduct, writing local
legislators, researching community issues, and seeking legal
help when necessary.
- Knowledge about human rights and democratic values:
Law students teach not only law but also the human rights and
democratic values upon which a legal system should be based.
They also ask students to examine whether the laws and legal
system should be changed to better reflect these values.
- The impact of laws on the community: Street Law injects
the human element into a law school education. Law students
learn from their students about how laws impact people and the
strengths and weaknesses of the legal system. This insight sensitizes
the law students to crucial public policy issues and concerns,
at times encouraging law students to pursue a career path aimed
at combating social injustices.
- A Range of Career Opportunities: By participating in
Street Law programs, law students are exposed to a wide-range
of career opportunities, often not adequately represented at
law schools.
Benefits for the Law School and Overall Community
Street Law programs win community support for law schools. Communities
recognize the value of Street Law programs and come to perceive
the law school in a more positive light.
Additionally, Street Law classes are an excellent vehicle for
pro bono or public service requirements of many law schools in
the U.S. By having students teach at local schools, community
organizations, and/or correctional facilities, law students develop
new connections. As a result, law schools develop new links to
private foundations and to the bar and bench through mock trial
competitions. Law students who have a good experience with Street
Law are apt to become better lawyers and loyal alumni.
Street Law provides the community an opportunity to understand
the law and to learn how to navigate through our law-saturated
society. Street Law courses provide the public with essential
legal information. The public sees lawyers in a positive role,
thereby creating more trust toward the legal community and respect
for the law. Many high school students who participate in Street
Law classes bond with the law students, who serve as positive
role models. Some of the high school students later cite their
Street Law experience as motivation to become attorneys.
Research shows that Street Law classes, when properly taught,
can reduce the incidence of delinquency among participating students.
For more information on the rationale for Street Law programs
in law schools, please click on the following:
Pilot study examining the impact of the Georgetown University
Law Center's Street Law program on lawyers 3-15 years later
Law Review Articles on
Street Law
A UCLA student piece on the lawyering skills developed as a result
of Street Law
Professor Paul
Bergman of the UCLA Street Law program's piece on "Teaching
like a lawyer." (September, 2001).
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