Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

Today, I want to highlight some changes in our first-year curriculum that will continue to define the Hamline Difference for our incoming law students next fall.

Let me begin by observing that there is nothing new about the need to bridge the gap between legal theory and practice.  Our focus on a practical skills-based curriculum-whether its through in-class instruction, legal clinics or practicuums-has been a feature of our law school for decades. 

What is new is the unsettled economy and how it is changing the market for legal services.  Now more than ever, employers are looking for more value-in terms of practical skills and experience-from law graduates entering the profession.

So Hamline is responding by reconfiguring its first-year curriculum, effective for the class entering this coming August 2010.  There are three features.

Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

Last week we lost Professor Angie McCaffrey to cancer.

She was a member of the Hamline law faculty for 25 years, and since 1987 had directed our law clinics.

Most lawyers do not appreciate their capacity to make a difference-to improve the lives of clients and others who they encounter in the practice of law. Angie's legacy is broad and deep.

In my tribute today, I will simply relate two examples of the work that she did for clients. The first story was shared with me this weekend by Ann Juergens, the co-director of clinics at William Mitchell College of Law. Ann was Angie's closest friend, and I thank Ann for the following account.

Angie's mother was a German refugee who fled when the Russian army occupied her homeland at the end of World War II. So Angie brought to her clinic work a special understanding for the loss and hopes of the displaced. Sometime in the mid-1990s, an elderly Hmong man came to Angie seeking her help to become a U.S. citizen. After the Vietnam war, many Hmong soldiers and their families came to Minnesota, worked, paid taxes, raised families, made their home here. However, they had difficulty becoming citizens. Because they came from a culture with no written language, learning English was much more difficult.

Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

Hi.  Welcome back.  By now, we are all well past the holiday season and are now "fired up and ready to go" into the spring semester.

Did you see the article two Sunday's ago in the New York Times about the employment prospects in the big New York City law firms?  It was in the "Sunday Styles" section entitled "No Longer Their Golden Ticket."

Its theme was that the value of a law degree was depreciating.

Until just a few years ago lawyers entering the New York job market could face life of comfort, security and social esteem.  Those days are over, according to the New York Times.

The Great Recession has squeezed the big client companies.  They don't want to pay the hourly rates of new associates.

Business is drying up.  Associates are working longer hours to justify their six-figure salaries.

Life in a big city corporate law firm has always been a grind.  But now young lawyers have lost job security, much less the lifestyle of they might have envisioned by watching TV episodes of "Boston Legal" or, more recently, "The Deep End."

Now, I have worked with East Coast lawyers over my career and have been impressed with their level of legal practice.  They have first-tier clients and cases that challenge the best attorneys in the world.