Employment Law Workshop: Advocacy Skills
Fall term, Block M
W 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Mr. Steve Churchill
2 classroom credits LAW-35315A
2, 3, or 4 required clinical credits LAW-35315C
This course will develop lawyering skills in the context of employment law. After a brief overview of relevant doctrine and procedure, the course will address -- through readings, lectures, and exercises -- skills related to legal writing, oral advocacy, case development and discovery, depositions, negotiations, counseling, and ethics. The course will follow the progress of a typical civil rights lawsuit involving a terminated employee. For example, one class session will require students to engage in a mock deposition of an opposing witness in a hypothetical sex discrimination case, and the next class will require students to engage in a negotiation in the same case. A more general goal of the course is to develop the ability (1) to identify what skills make a lawyer effective and (2) to implement strategies for independently identifying and improving those critical skills.
Because this goal is advanced by exposure to actual lawyering, all students will have a clinical placement, either at the Employment Civil Rights Clinic of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center or at externships with private firms, advocacy groups (such as the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law or Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), or government agencies (such as the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). The workshop will require completion of an individual or group project that will connect clinical placements with course topics.
A clinical practice component is required of all students. Enrollment will occur during clinical registration. Please refer to the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs (http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/clinical) for clinical registration dates and early add/drop deadlines.