MOMENTUM
“ Fact-gathering and interviewing are two of the most fundamental skills any legal professional needs. Introduction to the Lawyer-Client Relationship puts UCLA Law ahead of the curve and provides students with invaluable real-world experience that serves as a counterpoint to the case law-heavy diet of the first year.” — EILEEN SCALLEN
many great law careers that may otherwise have never happened.” The new course embraces this philosophy, empowering students to hit the ground running and ask the right questions from day one. As part of its curricular reform agenda, this year the school is also launching a new pilot course for approximately 80 1Ls, with full implementation planned for fall 2015. Introduction to the Lawyer-Client Relationship helps students hone critical interviewing skills; introduces them to professional and ethical obligations such as the duty of loyalty and attorney-client privilege; and includes a live-client field placement through five public interest organizations: Bet Tzedek Legal Services; Frank D. Lanterman Regional Center; Inner City Law Center; Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project; and Public Counsel Law Center. The course, notes Eileen Scallen, associate dean for curriculum and academic affairs, makes UCLA Law one of only a handful of law schools to offer firstyear students practical training in live-client settings. “Fact-gathering and interviewing are two of the most fundamental skills any legal professional needs,” she says. “Introduction to the Lawyer-Client Relationship puts UCLA Law ahead of the curve and provides students with invaluable real-world experience that serves as a counterpoint to the case law-heavy diet of the first year.” Jennifer Mnookin, David G. Price and Dallas
Associate Dean for Curriculum and Academic Affairs Eileen Scallen
P. Price professor of law and a member of the curricular reform task force, concurs. “With this new offering, students will get to engage in the ‘doing’ of lawyering, rather than just the learning ‘about’ lawyering, in their very first semester, with the opportunity for appropriate training and critical reflection,” she says. Mnookin points out that UCLA is uniquely suited to pulling off this type of far-reaching curricular innovation. “The course leverages significant strengths here at UCLA that have their foundation in the school’s rich clinical tradition,” she says. Bolstering this legacy was a central factor driving the curricular reform process—and, says Professor David Babbe ’81, who recently completed a twoyear term as the school’s interim director for clinical
“ We were focused on a holistic reimagining of how our curriculum could introduce ideas and foster skills that would build on one another over the entire course of a student’s law school career.” — DAVID BABBE
UCLA LAW MAGAZINE
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