As the LEAPS Panels and website are now in place, I thought it might be interesting to share this experience. Yesterday I had the pleasure of joining a colleague of mine in his first year property class. He was using, for the first time, a commercial lease negotiation exercise in his class. This particular colleague has many years of experience teaching doctrinal, not dispute resolution, subjects. Although I had no doubt that he could handle it all without a problem, I was happy to offer whatever help I could (especially since his class was not in the early morning hours).
The lease had a number of parts to it, but there were only a few points of difference between the prospective tenant and the landlord. The seventy or so students were divided into 4 person negotiating teams (2 on each side) and got their confidential information a few days before the in-class negotiation. My colleague was able to reserve the large lecture hall next door to have additional space for students to go to for the negotiation itself, although in the end very few took advantage of the extra room.
The students had one hour to conduct the negotiation. The second class hour was spent debriefing. The students were the same group who I taught criminal law to last semester, so they had some experience doing negotiations in the context of plea bargaining. As expected, they immediately dove into their roles and were clearly enjoying the process of using the lease terms and property concepts they had been learning in a practical context.
But, for me, the most fun was watching how much my colleague enjoyed himself. It is never easy to do something new and to do something with so many unknowns (what will the students ask? What will they do with a new exercise? How to lead a debrief with a class of 70?). It is always impressive when anyone is willing to move out of their comfort zone and try something new. This class was no exception. And the joy for me was watching this colleague come to the very quick realization that although there are all kinds of wonderful pedagogical reasons for doing these exercises, it is also fun to do. It is great fun to watch students take on the role of a lawyer and see them grapple with how to get what their clients want.
I also enjoyed seeing the same group of students doing negotiations in a very different context. I was told by one and all that the plea bargains were “much harder.” Students quickly realized that the key difference was whether there were shared interests. The landlord and tenant both wanted to come to an agreement. In this context, as a few students pointed out, “money is easier to negotiate about than prison time.”
This experience reinforced to me the value of the LEAPS project and what fun it is to watch folks get introduced to the dispute resolution world. As my colleague announced to his class, “This is the most fun I’ve had teaching a class in 23 years.” What a joy.
How exciting! Hopefully, this is just the beginning of a new trend. As a law student, I think that classroom exercises, such as the negotiation exercise, help prepare us for the kind of work we’ll encounter once we enter the legal profession.
It is my personal opinion that these types of simulated real-life exercises—when artfully interwoven within the traditional lecture-based pedagogies of law school—are the best teaching tools because they develop communication skills, incorporate the abstract concepts discussed in casebooks, and reduce the ennui of law school.
Presently, however, I feel that law school professors focus too narrowly on lectures and individual student cross-examinations. In order to succeed in law school, we learn to adapt to these teaching methods by developing certain skills that are only useful in the context of law school.