Taking on the Role of Lawyer: Transactional Skills, Transnational Issues, and Commercial Law

Abstract

American law schools face an ever-growing call for more skills training and experiential learning as part of legal education. This call is mirrored by a call for expansion of experiential learning and skills to include those beyond litigation-based writing. Italian law schools tend generally to adopt a traditional theoretical approach, offering curricular activities that rarely include skills classes or experiential learning. But this situation has been rapidly evolving in the recent years. Increasing attention is being paid in Italy to the call for a more professionally- oriented legal education. Lawyers in both countries today also need to see themselves as part of the international community, not just as individuals concerned only with their localities. Traditionally domestic legal issues cross borders in amazing and legally fascinating ways. In this article, we encourage legal educators in the US, in Italy, and elsewhere to recognize these needs and we offer suggestions for incorporating transactional skills with a cross border dimension to help meet them. We draw on our experiences as teachers in two very different systems of legal education and our work together in Italy and the US to involve students in experiential learning of transactional skills. Although our experiences are based in Italy and the US, we see this effort itself as global and a way to help US law professors build relationships and expand teaching opportunities in other countries and in other legal systems. The article summarizes the arguments for expanding legal education in the US and in Italy to include transactional skills education within a global context. It then offers a model for how schools can do this based on the design and pedagogy of the Introduction to Transactional Skills program at Temple. Finally, it shows how the ITS pedagogical model can be adapted to other legal issues and local needs and can transfer to other cultures.