I bring you greetings from our colleagues in China!
I have just returned from my trip to Beijing for the two days of workshops on how we teach skills courses in the United States, and how Chinese law schools might do the same. Attending the workshops were Deans and Professors from 12 Chinese law schools in Beijing, Xi'an, Wuhan, Harbin and Tianjin. I opened each day with an hour long background speech; the first day was about U.S. Legal education generally, and how skills courses fit into it, and the second day was about the skills courses, and particularly how legal research and writing is taught in the U.S. The rest of each day was spent in discussion and exchange about these topics.
It turns out, while we have many differences, Chinese law schools are struggling with many of the same issues we have in the United States. They feel the need to teach more skills courses, but (with a few exceptions) do not have full-time teachers to teach them. Those schools that do have skills teachers have many of the same equality and respect issues that we have over here. The primary difference between Chinese legal education and U.S. legal education - at least with respect to skills courses - is that they are a few years behind us in teaching these courses broadly.
While many Chinese law schools have no legal research and writing course, most feel the need to have them - or add them - soon. Our Chinese colleagues were particularly interested in the details of how we teach the course here - from legal analysis, writing, and research all the way to citation and live grading conferences.
After the work was complete, I had two days for sightseeing. Among other sites, I saw the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. China is an extraordinary place, full of history, culture and mystery. I returned to the U.S. with a renewed respect for the Chinese people, and a deeper understanding of a country that is - and will increasingly be - an important player on the world stage.
There is a short video about the Beijing conference on the video page of the book's website. This video was put together by LexisNexis, which sponsored the conference.
