The dean of the law school at the University of the District of Columbia urged students to take part in protests in Baltimore, even offering to defer an exam for those who help people on the street with legal advice.Dean Shelley Broderick of the David A. Clarke School of Law told students that community and police relations "is the civil rights issue of our time," and that law school leaders want students to be part of the "energy and commitment" of the protests.
I guess this is the time to confess that I talk to my students about the text of the Constitution, statutes, cases and that kind of stuff, and leave "energy and commitment" out of it.
(I also wonder why law students, who by definition are not qualified to practice law, should ply people on the street with "legal advice").
Some of that energy has taken an extremely ugly turn in recent days.
About 200 people have been arrested in Baltimore this week, after mobs set cars on fire, smashed windows, looted stores and threw bricks at police officers. Schools and businesses shut down, a state of emergency was declared...
Oooooooops.
The Dean's letter (which the story quotes in full) continues:
The situation in Baltimore is of particular concern. Not only is Baltimore just 30 miles up the road, but many members of our community have roots in the City. It is important that we not ignore what is happening to our neighbors. Several students have come to the Deans with a request that they be permitted to defer an exam so that they can provide legal observer and other assistance to those who have taken to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights and to address these serious issues.
We would like to support this activism. To that end, if any student wishes to participate in legal support for the demonstrations, we will defer one exam until May 11.
To my knowledge, none of the people actually exercising their First Amendment rights has asked for "legal advice," and I strongly suspect that, if they did, it would be from actual lawyers, not people who may or may not become lawyers.*
This is not to deny that some people in Baltimore could use legal advice. Among them would be the 200 or so arrested for arson, vandalism, riot, looting, burglary and throwing bricks, rocks and bottles at the police.
If the Dean offered to allow her students to defer their exams to furnish help, legal or any other kind, to any of the dozens or hundreds of people hurt by that behavior, the story doesn't say so. It seems that "energy and commitment" do not extend to crime victims.
* UDC Law School ranked 197th out of the 201 ABA-approved law schools in terms of the percentage of 2013 graduates with non-school-funded, full-time, long-term, bar passage required jobs nine months after graduation.
I'd pass this piece of advice to any law student whether at an elite law school or not so elite - sometimes you are going to lose a case, motion, appeal etc. If you can't psychologically deal with the outcomes of cases you aren't even counsel of record on, I doubt you can handle being an attorney as losing is part of the job.
Feel free to tell you students this for me.
This is really old, but in all fairness you quoted a newspaper that misquoted the original letter sent out to students, and then you continued to use the misquote as a major part of your story. No where in the original letter does it ever say "legal advice", it says "legal observer and other assistance". It also mandates that "you need to connect with one of the legal assistance organizations". The omission of that part leads to the inference that these students would just willy-nilly be walking the streets of Baltimore dispensing "legal advice".
The major point that is being missed is that UDC Law's whole existence is public interest law, and helping the community. While it is easy to attack the school based on some statistical data, it has one of the best clinical law programs in the country. It wants its students to be involved in the community. That is exactly what they were advocating for by doing this.
While your students and other top tier school students were trying to get out of exams because they read things and felt traumatized from. UDC said to its students "pull up your big boy pants and if you want to take your exam later then you better go and get involved". I find that to be very commendable, something the "elite" law students should learn when they are done being coddled. It seems as though the proper due diligence was not done before writing this article.