To help students compete in a challenging legal market, law schools look for ways to make future graduates more “practice ready.”
Long before the crisis in legal education, Rutgers-Camden Clinical Professor Sarah Ricks took a practical approach to teaching law by integrating practical skills into her constitutional litigation course.
The class, Current Issues in Civil Rights Litigation, casts students as lawyers handling simulated legal problems. Structured around 10 law practice simulations, the course allows students to creatively explore how attorneys shape and apply doctrine. Simulations include a jury charge conference; a meeting with a client to decide next steps in the litigation; a settlement conference before an appellate mediator; and testimony before a legislative body. In class, students often collaborate on short practical exercises based on how lawyers use doctrine in practice, such as drafting client interview questions or discovery requests.
More voices than just the Supreme Court also enter Ricks’ classroom. Lawyers’ oral arguments, appellate briefs, government policies, expert reports, jury instructions, and interviews with civil rights lawyers and clients are all part of class discussion. How lawyers use doctrine to litigate the most common current constitutional claims, those arising under the 4th, 8th, and 14th Amendments, is also paramount. To appreciate the difficult choices faced by those on the front lines of constitutional decision making, students discuss factual background about the work of prison guards, police, and social workers.
Ricks published the materials she developed for the class as Current Issues in Constitutional Litigation. The book is part of the Context and Practice Casebook series designed to help law teachers implement educational reforms recommended by the Carnegie Foundation.
The practical approach of the course “is ahead of the curve when it comes to addressing the crisis in legal academia because these materials expose students to the practice of law prior to their entrance into a tight legal market,” notes Sahar Aziz, associate professor of law at Texas-Wesleyan.
“My students raved about the class. When I asked them whether I should use the book again, the answer was a resounding yes.”
Toledo Law School Professor Rebecca Zietlow said the practical approach was “refreshing”: “The students found the simulations interesting and challenging. They were incredibly engaged throughout the semester.”
To further bring real life into the classroom, a companion website features YouTube videos, links to websites (such as testimony by prison rape survivors) and guest talks to the class by civil rights lawyers representing plaintiffs and defendants. http://constitutionallitigation.rutgers.edu/
Rutgers Law–Camden students contributed significantly to the course design and first edition of the book, interviewing civil rights attorneys, locating current news stories implicating constitutional issues, and creating charts to illustrate doctrine. Rutgers students will also help shape the second edition, due in 2014.
This past academic year, Ricks taught the course shaped by Rutgers Law–Camden students to aspiring attorneys at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Penn students were receptive to Ricks’ practical approach.
In anonymous evaluations that Penn permitted for use in this story, students praised Ricks’ Civil Rights Litigation course as: “Superlative. Prof. Ricks exudes passion for this area of law. The entire design of the course is based around engaging students beyond the traditional realm of learning doctrine. She brought in guest speakers, provided examples about doctrine and practice from her own career, and wove in many lessons on practical aspects of being a litigator. She also encouraged debate and discussion that solicited conflicting opinions on many topics.”
“I teach in this practical way to help prepare students for events I encountered in my 11 years of law practice,” offers Ricks. The Rutgers Law–Camden professor clerked for a federal district court, worked as a litigation associate at Pepper Hamilton and, for seven years, was an appellate and legislative attorney for the City of Philadelphia Law Department.
Ricks graduated from Yale Law School and from Columbia University’s Barnard College. A resident of West Mt. Airy in Philadelphia, Ricks was appointed by Philadelphia Mayor Nutter to the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. She will teach Current Issues in Civil Rights Litigation at Rutgers Law–Camden in Spring 2014.