Table of Contents

Introduction Components of the curriculum

About the Author Professor Chai R. Feldblum is the Director of the Federal Legislation Clinic.

Introduction

     The art of legislative lawyering lies in combining a thorough knowledge of law, with a sophisticated understanding of politics, in order to devise creative and effective legislative solutions. The art of teaching legislative lawyering lies in providing students access to the real-life challenges of legislative lawyering, yet artificially slowing the process down sufficiently so that appropriate learning can take place.

     Over the past four years of directing the Federal Legislation Clinic, I have developed and refined various methods for teaching legislative lawyering to GULC students. The challenges in doing so have been manifold: finding the right clients with the appropriate legislative lawyering needs; teaching the students the relevant legislative process and specific legislative lawyering skills in a timely fashion; ensuring the Clinic's work will actually be used in the political process (where having one's materials used means having power); and finally, having the appropriate supervisory mechanisms in place to provide the students with ongoing and appropriate training, feedback and mentoring. The overarching challenge throughout this process has been to shape the Clinic's curriculum so that these educational and client-related priorities can all be achieved in one short academic semester.

     My goals in establishing and directing the Federal Legislation Clinic have always been (at least) two-fold: to provide a quality education for GULC students and to provide a quality product for the clients of the Clinic. (My Clinic materials also note a third goal -- maintaining a "happy and harmonious clinic family." I feel fortunate to have been able to meet this goal, as well as the other two.) I first set out these goals, and my suggested structure for meeting such goals, in a memorandum to the Clinics Committee and Academic Standards Committee in November 1993, requesting academic credit for the Clinic. In January 1994, I submitted a proposal to the Department of Education for a three-year grant for the Federal Legislation Clinic under the Law School Clinical Experience Program (LSCEP). That grant proposal laid out in detail the educational goals of the clinic, and the curriculum and supervisory structures that would be used to carry out such goals. In 1995, I described the curriculum of the Clinic for purposes of a two-year review I was scheduled to undergo as a clinical education teacher. Robert Stumberg, from the Harrison Institute, reviewed my curriculum at the time for the Clinics Committee. Each of these efforts provided an opportunity to describe the ways in which I had been developing and refining the Clinic's curriculum.

Components of the curriculum

     I have continued to refine and modify the curriculum of the Clinic in several ways over the past two years. The teaching of legislative lawyering in the Clinic currently takes place through the following mechanisms:

• An intensive three-day "bootcamp" in August immediately prior to the start of the academic year

       During three days of intensive classroom instruction, students are taught the basics of Congressional process and procedure; rules of statutory interpretation; and examples of legislative lawyering. Learning takes place through the use of case studies, lectures, guest speakers, and panel discussions.

• The development of legislative lawyering documents on behalf of a client, with critique and guidance from a Teaching Fellow and the Director

       The bulk of learning engaged in by the students occurs in the process of their doing legislative lawyering work on behalf of their clients during the Clinic semester. The work product produced by the students spans the spectrum of documents used by advocates and lawmakers in the federal legislative process. For example, a student may produce an in-depth research memo setting forth the background law relevant to a particular legislative provision; the student may then reduce that memo to two pages of simple "bullet points" for a Congressional staff member; the student may then write an "options memo" on the particular issue, setting forth different legislative texts with an explanation of what each text will mean as a substantive legal matter; and finally the student may write proposed legislative history for the legislative text chosen by the client and the Congressional staff.

       In the course of writing any one of these documents, the student will meet with his or her Teaching Fellow for guidance before writing the document, and for an in-depth critique once the student completes an initial draft. Most documents will go through two or three edits with the Teaching Fellow before they reach me. (I review, and edit as necessary, every student-produced document before it leaves the Clinic.) Each student also receives in-depth feedback directly from me on at least two documents she or he has written during the course of the semester.

• Ongoing seminars during the Clinic semester.

       In addition to the three-day bootcamp, Clinic students have 14 seminar sessions during the course of the Clinic semester. These sessions cover substantive areas that have not been covered in the intensive seminar (such as Chevron rules of deference to administrative interpretations and more on the Congressional budget process), and skills-building sessions on research, writing, and oral advocacy.

• Mock coalition meetings and mock presentations to Congressional staffers.

       In one area, I have developed mock simulations for the Clinic students: oral advocacy. Students' research and writing are usually translated into materials that are actually used in the legislative process. By contrast, students are rarely given the opportunity to speak at (much less run) a coalition meeting, or to present a key argument to a Congressional staffer during a meeting. The power in Washington to speak is too precious and closely guarded to be given very often to a student who appears on the scene for a mere four months. (By contrast, the Clinic's Teaching Fellows have often provided key presentations at coalition meetings or staff meetings -- with students in attendance.)

       Thus, in order to provide students with an opportunity to engage in the oral advocacy unique to legislative lawyering, I have each student engage in two simulations. First, the student arranges a coalition meeting on a legislative lawyering issue. The coalition members are the other Clinic students, each of whom is provided with an organizational identity and a set of materials by the student. I meet with the student several times prior to the meeting. We discuss the goal of the coalition meeting, how the meeting will be structured, the legal texts relevant to the issue at hand, and the particular legislative lawyering problem.

       At the end of the semester, each student makes a presentation on a legislative or administrative issue to a group of individuals posing as Congressional staffers or Administration officials. (These individuals tend to be former students of the Clinic, as well as real Congressional staffers.) The presentation is videotaped, and I then evaluate the presentation with the student.

• Mid-semester and final evaluations.

       A key component of the learning that takes place in the Clinic is the individualized assessment each student receives of his or her work. These assessments are based on a list of legislative lawyering skills the students receive in the beginning of the semester. In the middle of the semester, I meet with each Teaching Fellow for a day, and review every version of every document his or her students have worked on. I also review with the Teaching Fellows their assessments of their students' skills. I then meet with each student for approximately an hour and ask each one to assess his or her legislative lawyering skills. I have found that the students' self-assessments are usually remarkably similar to the assessments arrived at by my Teaching Fellows and me. This mutual acknowledgment of a student's strengths and weaknesses then provides me with a unique opportunity: I spend the remaining portion of the evaluation having a useful and focused discussion with the student on the ways he or she can improve his or her legislative lawyering skills throughout the remainder of the semester. A similar final evaluation process is repeated at the end of the semester, with the midsemester evaluation providing a basis from which to gauge and discuss the student's progress.

     At the end of the semester, we hold a "wrap-up meeting" for all the students. Each student prepares a short memo summarizing the state of his or her work and noting any insights received during the semester.

     The curriculum, supervision structure, and evaluation methods in the clinic have evolved through a rigorous process of trying out an approach, asking for student evaluations of the approach, revising the approach, and asking for evaluation again. Although I describe here my efforts to develop and refine the art of teaching legislative lawyering, the reality is that figuring out this art has been a team effort between me and my staff. The key personnel in this regard have been: Scott Foster, my first Teaching Fellow in the Clinic; Tim Westmoreland, a 16-year veteran Congressional staffer, currently the clinic's Senior Policy Fellow; David Rapallo, the Clinic's second Teaching Fellow and a master organizer, and Sharon Perling Masling, the third Teaching Fellow hired by the Clinic and a persistent challenger to doing things better. Scott developed an extensive questionnaire we have distributed to students after each semester since Fall 1996; Sharon suggested we hold day-long weekend retreats to assess the questionnaire results and make changes to enhance the clinic's structure and curriculum. We have held four such retreats since fall 1996, and I believe they have been essential for enhancing the clinical experience for our students.

     In meeting the goal of providing a quality education for the students, I have always worked to ensure that the goal of providing a quality product for the client is met as well. I believe we have been able to achieve that goal consistently.

     My goal in directing the Federal Legislation Clinic has been to teach students how to combine a rigorous knowledge of the law with a sophisticated understanding of political realities -- so they themselves can be capable of devising creative legislative solutions to difficult legal and political situations. And I have wanted to convey to them the intellectual joy, the creative stimulation, and the sense of gratification I experience in engaging in this form of lawyering.

     After exposing students to the joy of legislative lawyering, however, I also want them to be able to use their new-found legislative lawyering skills in advocacy and legislative jobs. While there are many advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C. (and in the states) that could benefit from legislative lawyers, most advocacy organizations do not distinguish between lobbyists and legislative lawyers. Hence, I have sought to use various outlets to convey to the general advocacy world the unique and distinct role I perceive for the legislative lawyer. These efforts include: developing issue-specific sample document packets for a Clinic Open House; highlighting the concept of legislative lawyering in profiles of my work; submitting a letter to the editor regarding the Federal Legislation Clinic; and a preparing a grant proposal to teach legislative lawyering to advocates outside the law center.

Revised June 26, 2003 (ML)