Problem Solving at Harvard

La Faculté de droit de McGill a l’honneur d’accueillir le professeur Todd Rakoff (Harvard) pour une présentation sur l’atelier de résolution de problème de Harvard (Problem Solving Workshop), un cours pratique que tous les étudiants en droit de première année suivent à cette université. Nos collègues de toutes les facultés de droit du Québec sont ainsi chaleureusement conviés à cette conférence très intéressante sur la pédagogie du droit à Harvard.

Cette activité est accréditée pour 1,5 heure de formation continue obligatoire pour juristes.

Résumé

[En anglais seulement] The Problem Solving Workshop is a three-week intensive program that all first-year Harvard Law School students are required to take.

As is set out in the course description, the Harvard workshop allows students to “confront client problems—framed from the clients’ and attorneys’ points of view and designed expressly for the Workshop—in the way practicing lawyers do, from the very beginning, before the facts are all known, before the client’s goals are clarified, before the full range of options is explored, and before a course of conduct is chosen.

Rather than teach law in the abstract, the course poses questions like these: What sort of problems do lawyers solve? How do they solve them? What intellectual constructs do they bring to bear? What practical judgments? And, as students find the answers to those questions, they learn to combine their knowledge of the law with practical judgment to help clients attain their goals within the bounds of the law.”

Professor Rakoff will share his experiences and insights in running this unique course that bridges the gap between academic study and practical lawyering.

Biographie

[En anglais seulement] Byrne Professor of Administrative Law Todd Rakoff teaches contracts and administrative law at the Harvard Law School (HLS), where he has been Dean of the J.D. Program.

Professor Rakoff has been actively involved in many of HLS’s educational experiments and reforms of the last quarter century, including the experimental integrated curriculum of the 1980s and the move to smaller first year sections in the late 1990s.

In the last several years, he and Professor Joseph Singer have created and led the School’s Problem Solving Workshop, an experiential course that is now a required part of the first year curriculum. He has also organized programs for teachers around the country, through the Association of American Law Schools, and internationally, through the parallel international association.