Transactional education: what's next

I recently attended and spoke at "Transactional Education: What's Next?" a conference hosted by Emory University Law School and its Center for Transactional Law and Practice on June 4th and 5th. The answer to the question posed by the conference's title is mixed: according to the Center's Executive Director Tina Stark in her opening remarks, practical transactional learning at American law schools is advancing at a rapid pace but is still at a stage that compares with where practical litigation learning was 20 years ago. As an example of the uphill climb faced by academics in this area, Tina reported that the AALS (Association of American Law Schools) has just recently agreed to consider an application to make transactional practice a provisional section of the organization (there are currently more than 90 sections). It was clear to me from the panels I observed, however, that there is a strong base of dedicated and talented teachers who are driving significant progress in this area. The fact that law firms are increasingly pressuring law schools to prepare law students better for the real practice of law can only act as an accelerant to this process.

One of the panel discussions that I found most interesting was titled "Innovative Transactional Pedagogies." (Perhaps I was drawn to it because two of the panelists, Joan Heminway and Mike Woronoff are, like me, part of the Skadden Arps diaspora.) Joan is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law and Mike is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Proskauer Rose LLP. In her talk, Joan detailed the multitude of teaching techniques that she employs in her corporate finance class, including drafting assignments, lectures, student teaching, guest lectures, group exercises, peer review, role playing/modeling, Q&A and traditional lecture. The focus of Mike's talk was teaching "numeracy": the ability to work with numbers and mathematical concepts. He described the methodology he uses as an adjunct professor at the UCLA School of Law in the context of teaching a challenging concept - dilution - to get his students over their initial resistance to the mathematical issues involved.

Another interesting session was led by Karl Okamoto, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Business and Entrepreneurship Law Concentration at The Earle Macke School of Law at Drexel University. He talked about the transactional lawyering competition recently held by Drexel, in which teams of law students from 10 law schools competed in a simulated negotiated transaction before a panel of experienced practitioners.

Here is a link to the conference's program schedule: http://www.law.emory.edu/centers-clinics/center-for-transactional-law-practice/2010-conference/conference-program-schedule.html.