Academic Activity

Pedagogic Innovation: Legal Skills

Shoschana Zusman has designed a Legal Skills course, which is based on Donald Schön’s methodology. The purpose of this course is to develop certain skills intended to enable students to handle actual problems, starting from the legal formulation of the problem to the cost-benefit analysis and going through the ethical dilemmas that arise out on the way. Specifically, the course comprises legal reasoning, writing, communication, cost-benefit analysis, handling unexpected or difficult situations, team work, psychology of the opponent, managerial and project management skills, time management and other necessary skills required for the practice of the profession. The course is taught through role playing, writing exercises and oral communication exercises, in which each student, without exception, is directly evaluated by the professor and receives and gives criticism. In addition to reading texts, the course material includes two videos “Attorneys and their Clients” and “Attorneys Talking about Attorneys”. In the first case, clients crudely explain their vision of an attorney and, in the second, famous attorneys address the problems and possibilities of the profession. This course is part of the career method established both in American and British Law Schools several years ago.