News Scrapbook 1980

at~~t~r:,.. Y,~~~o~;:~ law schools - USD and Cal!forma Western 1 c f 0 d Law. Between them, the two schools have one b ac an

Minority Stud nts Call Law S~h~~.!~11,c~~;~!!~~re~a;,~f of middle- and upper-middle-class white. cultural values.

By MICHAEL SCOTT-BLAIR stottwriter,Thesono;egouruon

Legal and law school leaders are shocked at the

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two Asian law professors._

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accusation.

"When I enter the law school classroom, I leave my Chicano heritage outside the door and pick it up on the way out Tnside, I become white - I must if I want to survive" - Lillia Garcia, second-year Jaw student at the University of San Diego.

They point with pride to almost 20 years of effort in Elliott Guttmann, a Chicano th1rd-year student at Cal getting minorities into law schools and special programs Western, acjmowledge~ that law schools befd ove:i t h I them succeed ' backwards to admit mmont1es and give them mane, 0 T~lre are about so· minority students among the 1,400 and academic help, but complains, "I don't care what

color you are when you enter law school by the time you come out, you win have an upper-middle-class white mind. You will fit the mold or you won't make it through law school." Vincent Ruiz is studying hard at Cal Western. His parents came from the fields, but filled him with an awareness of education's value and a pride in his Chicano background. "But once you are in law school, you will pay any price just to get through and out the other end . Yo~'ll pay any price - cultural anonymity or adjustment - anything,'' he says. Keith Burt, a black attorney with the district attorney's office and vice president of the local Association of Black Attorneys, says that with law school's "venomous competition" and its "almost absolute control _in a near-arbitrary fashion ... there is barely time to think about cultural awareness. Almost without knowing it, you are being molded to ~ear t~e company face which is fashioned m (Continued OD B-18, Col. 1)

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B-18 . =...;:.:..._.:.;.:.:..=:.::.:~.::..::..;;;._;;.;.;.:.::.:.:.._______________._____,_.........__ anything else as we aim each· student 1 Minority Students CriticaI . to~!~~\tha~\f~~~·~roblem," said Troy B. Smith, a USD third-year. black law student THE SAN DIEGO UNION Sunday, May 4, 1980

gomg to make them."

Judge Jones, after hearing of the feel- ings of Smith and other minority law students, got up slowly from behmd his large desk in court chambers and said quietly, "I never thought about ii quite that way. I haven't changed my opinion, but they have an interesting point, let me think about that."

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· Of aw Choo S ' Values

who has served as student body president. "There ARE cultural differences. But the law professors and law school don't even have to think about it. They don't want to; they don 't have to, and nobody is

(Continued from B-1)

they would not get a job and we would USD Law School Dean Donald T. Weck- stein said that just getting students have cheated them."

white cultural values formed decades But there are successful minority law- "Neither the Jaw nor the law schools ago." yers who disagree.

through the law work "is an extremely draw cultural distinctions," says Judge difficult job and I am not sure that we can Napoleon Jones, a black whose quiet, or even should be culturally aware, what- authoritative manner has made him a ever that is defined as being. respected Municipal Cot1rt judge. "I agree we don't have any programs for "Law schools teach the law," he says our faculty to become more sensitive to "Rape is rape and murder is murder. All minority students either. We encourage it cultures agree on that. It is the law informally, but that is all. school's job to feach its students how to "The practice of law is a highly intellec- dissect a case and reach a correct conclu- tual thmg, and by the time students come sion under the Jaw. here, they should have left those cultural "That has nothing to do with cultural ·and ethnic problems behind in grade diversity. I really don't think the law school and college. schools have to chan~e. And I deny that "What we teach is relevant to what they can take my cultural background lawyers do, and to start changing that for away from me or make me into anything I minority students could possibly doom do not wish to be " them to failure in the professional world. I But that is only part of the truth, accord- don't think we need to apologize for the ing to John L. Law Jr., a first-year black high intellectual standards of law." law student at USD. But after a strong and spirited defense of "Consider learning about property law," law schools, he looked out of his office he says. "White students are culturally window and said, · .. r never really quite accustomed to the idea of property owner- thought of it in the way the students ship. I don't care if they are dirt poor and describe it Mavbe we could do more. I never owned a thing, culturally they can really don't see how we could do it·or what accept the idea of property ownership. it would be, but it is an interesting idea." "I am not. It is a relatively new cultural "Nonsense," snapped one legal thing for blacks to have free access to authority. "It's a cheap cop-out for high property ownership, and it is still a failure rates among minorities." strange concept to me personally "Blacks screw people over property• "When a professor lectures on property ownership with the. same cultural finesse ownership, he lectures from the white as whites," said another. cultural perspective in which it is natural Ramon Castro, a successful and highly to own property. I must first filter what he respected San Diego lawyer who could says through my cultural background, speak no English when he came to the city, 1 translate that to his background, and then does not blame law schools for most· start to try and understand the law he is minority student p"roblems. · trying to teach me. "I am not saying that the minority "I don't ask that the law be changed. I students don't have a problem," he said. simply ask that he at least try to under- "I am saying they should not have a, stand that I have that two-sta_ge intel!ectu- problerr. All those_p.rohlems.,5hmlJ.g_~~ a) process to go through lo understand been resolved before they reach law I what he is saying, and that makes the school. The law schools just cannot do that work harder ,. kind of work, whether it be cultural sensi- "He has hit the problem right on the tivity or correcting academic shortcom- head," Superior Court Judge Earl B. Gilli- ings. am says of Law's point. "The law schools have made enormous ''The problem of cultural sensitivity strides in helping minorities in the past 20 once they are in the law school has hardly years," he said. "The real problem is been touched. when the graduates hit the labor market. "We have had programs to sensitize The working legal world is still filled with minority st11dents to what they will find prejupice that has not diminished appreci- when they get to law school, but I don't ably in 25 years." know of any programs to sensitize the Burt of the black attorneys group faculty to minority students," says the agrees, saying that often students, law black judge who Jong has worked for more schools and many young attorneys are rhinority law students and who has taught caught up in what society expects the law l;i.w for 12 yrars. to look like. ' Wt> cton t have any such faculty "There are many white attorneys who programs," said Richard D. O'Keefe, vice dislike wearing the company face just as dean at Cal!fornia Western School of Law. much as minorities," he said. "But busi- "In fact, to be frank, I have never thought nesses and the public expect that air of about 1t mquite that way, and I don't know quiet, reserved, conservative respectabili- anyone who has. However, it is an interest- ty. and if we are going to get anywhere, we mg perspective and maybe we should must reflect that." think about it some more. Said-Weckstein, "A minority client need- "But first, our duty to the law students is mg legal help looks first for a lawyer who to make them into lawvers, skilled legal can win his case, regardless of his cultural terhnicians who can make a living in the sensitivity. !~_gal world. We could turn out the most "We still must remember that our first <:ulturally sensitive lawyers in the world, responsibility is to turn out competent but if they were not technically competent, lawyers. We don't look at their color or

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SAN DIEGO DAILY TRANSCRIPT THURSDAY. MAY1, 1980 Teaching of Law Changes Slowly . • •

Just Like the Law Itself

Courses Sound Like 1880; Only the Content Has Changed

By DONALD T. WECKSTEIN Dean,SchoolofLaw University of San Diego The courses offered in the first year at Harvard Law School in 1880: torts. property, contracts. crimes, appear remarkably similar to those offered by Harvard and most other law schools in 1980. Only the con- tent has changed. This observation illustrates several typical characteristics about American legal education. Follov.mg the lead of the law in gene.al, change comes slowly. It is more hke- ly to be evolutionary than revolu- tionary. and adherence to precedent - at least in form - is important. Many basic issues of the law endure for generations. Or, as the law professor explpin- ed in defense of repeating questions from an old examination, the ques- tions are the same, only the answers change. Law schools are hesitant to innovate. Harvard and other na- tional law schools have enormous influence on the programs of every other law school, regardless of the differing abilities and job expecta- tions of each school's students. If the past is prologue, we can expect the law school of 1990 to look quite similar to the law school of 1980. But appearances can be deceiving. Beneath the surface are likely to be a number of changes in emphasis, content and direction. Despite vehement defenses by legal educators and other lawyers to Chief Justice Burger's charge that an inordinate number of trial lawyers are incompetent, the profession and the law schools are now paying greater attention to the training of trial practitioners. Influenced by the Devitt Com- mittee Report, recommending educational, experience, and ex- amination prerequisites for practice in the Federal courts, and by the Crampton Report recommending greater emphasis on skills training and relationships with the practicing profession. many law schools are considering upgrading their often token efforts in these areas. While acknowledging a need to improve tramirg in trial advocc1cy there is also concern that law sGhoo s have done little to prepare their students for 'office lawyering." Despite popular stereotypes of

lawyers a~ dramatic courtroom per- formers. most attorneys spend most of their time on non-litigative ac- tivities such as interviewing. counsel- ing, negotiating, and fact-gathering. While law schools have done a commendable job in teaching the essential skills of legal analysis and research, in the 1980s, they will devote more time and resources to teaching students skills of trial and office practice. These efforts are already under- way in some law schools. The University of San Diego, for exam- ple. has just won the Emil Gumpert Award of the American College of Trial Lawyers for teaching ex- cellence in Trial Advocacy. The award-winning program in- cludes an introductory course in trial techniques involving lectures, demonstrations, and workshops, supervised by experienced trial lawyers and judges; an advanced trial advocacy course providing fre- quent simulation exercises and video-taped feedback to students, and clinical placements affording op- portunities to actually try cases under faculty supervision. In addition , USD offers courses in interviewing, counseling and negotiation jointly taught by a lawyer and a psychologist, and an extensive clinical education program that in- tegrates classroom learning with representation of real clients. While programs like these will find greater acceptance in more law schools in the 1980s, they will en- counter significant obstacles. Money will be one. Clinical programs re- quire more faculty per student than typical large classroom instruction. In addition, traditional faculty at- titudes have eschewed "practical skills" training in favor of providing a fundamental theoretical framework for the practice, development and reform of the law. Law schools train- ed students to "think like lawyers" while the less intellectual skills of how to "act like lawyers" were ex- pected to be learned on the job. For Harvard graduates who generally began their legal careers • with large firms and government agencies, this division of function may have been adequate. But for the vast majority of graduates of the vast majority of law schools, they went ill-equipped to represent un-

suspecting clients as solo- practi- tioners or with small firms whose members provided little guidance and often bad examples. To some extent, the law school faculty member who has had little practice experience or has retreated to the ivory tower from the real rigors of law practice, properly av '

to confront their image on tape and see themselves as others have. Resistance to micro-film readers will have to be overcome as libraries challenge the problems of decreas- ing shelf space and increasing book costs. State governments, through consumer-oriented legislatures and increasingly concerned courts. will assert influence and sometimes direct regulation of law school cur- ricula and admissions and gradua lion criteria. Federal as well as state funds will be sought to help the law schools confront the challenges of inflation, prohibitive tuition levels, and more costly methods of clinical, com- puterized. audio-visual and in- dividualized legal education With such funds. while probably limited in amount. will come additional governmental surveillance, repor- ting requirements and direction. As noted by Association of American Law Schools President Jerre S. Williams, "the law schools are created to serve the legal profes- sion and, ultimately, the society in which we live." If the law schools do not volun- tarily effect this mission, the organiz- ed profession and governmental agencies will administer the necessary stimulus. California now has more lawyers than any other state and with 24,000 law studen_ts, or one of every five students enrolled in the law schools of the country, we will have about - 100,000 lawyers by 1984. Have we reached the saturation point? Will students . begin avoiding the law schools and again flock to the engineering and business schools where current job opportunities are more plentiful? To some extent this transformation has already begun Applications to law schools are

down and fewer new law schools are being created. Nevertheless, the na- tionally accredited law schools should be able to maintain their operations although in some cases with fewer, or not as well qualified, students and with reduction of the number of traditional lull-time facul- ty members. This will be achieved by con- solidation of curricula offerings to provide a larger core and less diver- sity, increasing teaching loads. and greater reliance on part-time and

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Law Schools Change Content. (Continued on Page 14D) practice-oriented instructors. • Those law schools and students

. Slowly after a period of supervised law practice. This development combin- ed With the upgrading of para-legal training (even now limited to selected college graduates at USD's program) may lead to the reemergence of the two-year law degree (an LLB. for "Little Lawyers in Being"). Such graduates would only work under the supervision of other lawyers and perform the more routine practice functions. Others, who after a period of experience as LL.B.s, returned for an additional year of legal education _would become specialists, partners m law firms, and have more extensive rights of appearance in court. While this speculation seems more radical than the gradualism traditional in legal education. the seeds for it have already been sown, and we can find precedent for similar forms in the early stag_~ of American legal education But, alas, Harvard may not buy it, and it might have to await the founding of the Orwellean Law School in 1984 or beyond.

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who persevere, however, should be rewarded by the end of the decade with ample opportunities for employment as the population con- tinues to grow, especially in Califor- nia, and the society and its govern- ing laws become more complex, · necessitating greater access to lawyers by all persons, regardless of their income. For many years, law students have claimed that in the first year they were scared to death, in these- cond year, they were worked to death and in the third year, they were bored to death. It would not be surprising to see the 1980s bring about a realignment of legal educa- tion whereby the third year resembles a supervised internship with ample simulation and clinical training in trial and office practice and with improved opportunities for learning professional responsibility by experiencing it. It may be that the third year could become optional or enrolled in

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