New program helps students learn legal communication skills new lawyers need for the practice
When Dr. Kirsten Davis, director of Stetson’s Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication, designed and implemented a new program two years ago, she knew she wanted to provide students with more opportunities to improve their communication skills and make them better lawyers. Stetson’s legal writing program, under Davis’s direction, is consistently ranked among the nation’s best law school programs. Davis created a new extracurricular enrichment program to ready law students to be effective communicators in the legal practice.
Dr. Davis teaching at Stetson law school.
Students who complete the year-long Advanced Legal Writing and Communication Skills Development Program learn what communication skills are expected in the legal practice environment, the communication issues common to legal practice, and strategies for effective communication in practice. Students completing the program in the last two years include Brooke Charlan, Cherish Fuller, Giselle Girones, Timothy Jones, Ivan Lys-Dobradins, C. Brandy Perez, Lauren Rice, Alexander Stewart, Paul Thompson and Jami Worley.
“Lawyers engage many different audiences in many different contexts, so having a solid set of communication strategies to draw upon is important for the new lawyer,” said Davis. “This program familiarizes students with some of those strategies and gives them the opportunity to practice the skills and get feedback.”
“The assessments were practical,” student Giselle Girones said after completing the program, “and they helped me learn how to best prepare documents for real world practice.”
To complete the program, students attended at least eight legal communication workshops that addressed listening and non-verbal communication strategies; business, influential, and cross-cultural communication; contract and complaint drafting; and professional communication in litigation.
“I wanted to gain more experience drafting documents, while also having the opportunity to have my work product reviewed by the legal writing faculty of Stetson, whom I consider the best legal writing professors in the U.S.,” said Lys-Dobradin. “This program is a nice break from learning substantive material because it makes you take a step back and analyze the legal profession from outside of the box.”
Davis and her Institute colleagues, Catherine Cameron, Jason Palmer and Lance Long, taught the program, along with guest faculty speakers. After attending workshops, students completed and received faculty feedback on at least six written and oral communication assignments ranging from a witness interview, a self-reflection on nonverbal and cross-cultural communication, a complaint, a motion in limine, a motion for sanctions, a contract, a business meeting agenda, a client letter and a business development email.
Students also built an electronic portfolio to store and showcase their work to prospective employers and completed a legal grammar and citation self-study course. To wrap up the program, the students applied what they learned to assess others’ legal communication skills in a legal practice setting.
“You can always learn new skills and reinforce old ones,” said Jones. “We built a portfolio of legal documents to share with prospective employers, and the portfolio is an e-portfolio so we can easily share the portfolio with a web address.”
“I found the program worth my time,” said Rice. “I became more aware of my communication style and learned how to communicate effectively and confidently. The feedback I received on the assignments was extremely beneficial because it was so specific and individualized.”
The program is sponsored by Stetson’s Institute for the Advancement of Legal Communication. The Institute is a new initiative that is a home for the study of the legal communication issues that face lawyers, judges, other professionals, and the public.
To learn more about the program, visit https://www.stetson.edu/law/announcements/apply-for-the-advanced-legal-writing-and-communication-skills-development-program-3/.
Post date: May 19, 2016
Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
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