Learning to be A Peacemaking Lawyer: Law Student Perspectives on Building Peacemaking into Law School Curricula, Building Paths to Practice for New Lawyers, and Interdisciplinary Training

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12182
• Date: 01 October 2015
• Author: Sara Zerehi,Sandy Yu,Matthew Zeidel
• Published date: 01 October 2015

LEARNING TO BE A PEACEMAKING LAWYER: LAW STUDENT

PERSPECTIVES ON BUILDING PEACEMAKING INTO LAW SCHOOL

CURRICULA, BUILDING PATHS TO PRACTICE FOR NEW LAWYERS,

AND INTERDISCIPLINARY TRAINING

Matthew Zeidel, Sandy Yu, and Sara Zerehi

From our perspectives as students, we reflect on the teachings of Lawyer as Peacemaker, a Winter 2015 course taught at

UCLA School of Law — the school’s course devoted to peacemaking lawyering. Utilizing our newfoundpeacemaking world-

view, we share our collective reactions to the Lawyer as Peacemaker course and the ten articles in the Family Court Review

Special Issue on Peacemaking for Divorcing Families. We then advocate for integrating peacemaking into law school curricula

and experiential learning offerings and make recommendations on how law schools today can prepare students to practice

peace.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

This article is a collaborative work product of three students who come from an array of work experience, backgrounds

and interests and from their newly founded peacemaking worldview, the three students collaboratively analyzed ideas

presented in the Lawyer as Peacemaker course and the articles from this issue.

The peacemaking mediation allows the parties more control over their legal disputes and allows the control of the costs

that come with litigation.

Peacemaking involves a holistic and collaborative method, involving mental health professionals to financial advisors

as well as legal professionals.

However, peacemaking skill courses are not readily available to many law students while studying in law school.

This valuable asset should be made available more extensively to law students interested in family law.

Keywords: Clients; Courthouse; Experiential Learning; Family Law; Law School; Peacemaking; Practitioners.

INTRODUCTION

In January 2015, UCLA School of Law offered the first-ever course devoted to exploring the

idea of lawyers as peacemakers. Professor Forrest “Woody” S. Mosten taught the aptly titled

course, Lawyer as Peacemaker,

1

during a newly introduced two-week intersession January term

(J-term). The J-term was created to offer a range of “short, specialized courses that offer the oppor-

tunity to delve deeply into skills trainings or explore doctrinal subject matter at a depth that one

cannot do in the regular semester format.”

2

Over five course sessions, Professor Mosten and eight-

een law students examined “cutting edge developments, lawyering roles, and practice skills that are

necessary to prepare law students for a successful legal career to serve clients using a non-

adversarial consumer orientation to expand legal access.”

3

This course explored the basic concepts

and values of peacemaking, dispute resolution, unbundled legal services, Collaborative law, and

preventive legal services.

In addition to assigned readings and classroom discussions, students engaged in role-play simula-

tions as lawyers forming a peacemaking law practice and conducting client consultations from a

peacemaking perspective. A collaborative practice team demonstrated how practitioners work

together when consulting on a case. And the final exercise required the students to draft a substantial

letter advising a hypothetical client how he might deal with an entrenched family dispute nearing liti-

gation, a broken marriage, and a schism in his family-run business through a variety of out-of-court

models of dispute resolution.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 4, October 2015 526–544

V

C2015 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

METHODOLOGY

After completing the J-term course, three students (the three of us authors) were selected and

given the opportunity to review ten articles from the Family Court Review (FCR) Special Issue on

Peacemaking for Divorcing Families. We were asked to author a piece in one voice responding to

the ideas presented in both the Lawyer as Peacemaker course and the articles from a peacemaking

worldview and ultimately in a collective voice.

During the spring semester of 2015, we met with each other weekly to share personal thoughts on the

course and the articles and discuss ways to work together on this meditative and collaborative endeavor.

We also met with Professor Mosten biweekly to discuss the articles and to go over drafts. After several

meetings, we collectively formulated common concepts and thoughts into this response piece. To garner

additional feedback from other students in the Lawyer as Peacemaker course, we administered a short

online survey with ten questions. Of the eighteen students who took the course, eleven completed the

anonymous survey. We also conducted follow-up interviews with a few of the students. We incorporated

the results from the survey, as well as course readings and outside research, into this article. Although

this article may have lost some of its individual edges, it represents the combined voice and collaborative

work product of the three of us, who come from an array of work experience, backgrounds and interests,

but approach this collaborative endeavor from our newly founded peacemaking worldview.

STUDENTS’ BACKGROUNDS

SAN “SANDY” YU

I am a fourth- year student enrolled in the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy at

UCLA School of Law and concurrently in the Social Welfare program at UCLA of Public Affairs.

Prior to law school, I worked at a transitional shelter providing case management services to survi-

vors of domestic violence and their families. I witnessed the difficulties clients had in accessing legal

protections (e.g., restraining order, legal custody of their children) for themselves and their families.

I came to law school and the school of social welfare with a specific direction: to acquire the legal

knowledge and advocacy tools that would allow me to provide accessible legal services to immigrant

victims of domestic violence.

I was the first person in my family to go to law school, and growing up, I did not know any lawyers.

It was not until I started work at the shelter, where I was interacting side by side with attorneys. Even

though I had a sense that I wanted to become a lawyer, I did not know how to get there. While working

at the shelter, I applied for the Asian Professional Exchange Mentoring Program, which is designed to

develop “future leaders by helping Asian Pacific Islander Americans with professional and personal

development.”

4

The program connected me with a lawyer mentor and exposed me to the practice of law.

The adversarial framework was greatly embedded in my first-year curriculum. In most of my

courses, the professors used the Socratic method, which mirrored an adversarial cross-examination.

Like most other law students, I felt immense pressure to keep my grades up. I was made well aware

of the prevailing metrics of law school success, which ranks students through relentless competitions

(for top-ten-percent grades, law review write-on, moot court, and mock trial). At the same time, the

skills I valued before law school, like active listening, interviewing, and counseling, did not seem to

matter in law school. By the end of my first year, I began to wonder whether I was suited to practice

law because I did not fit the model of an aggressive trial lawyer and/or litigator.

A month before the start of my second year, I met with my lawyer mentor to discuss my concerns

about law school. I distinctly remember telling her about my problems with the adversarial system and

how it exacerbates antagonism between parties and makes it virtually impossible for any peaceful rec-

onciliation. I am not an adversary type,but rather I see myself as an advocate, client coach, and educa-

tor. I came to law school because I wanted to provide accessible legal services and education to

Zeidel, Yu and Zerehi/LEARNING TO BE A PEACEMAKING LAWYER 527