Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2003
Abstract
The author's memories of "the movie version" of The Lawyering Process, two courses she took in Gary Bellow's first two years at Harvard Law School (1971-73), are compared to the text and problem supplements published in 1978. The author traces the influence of those courses and books on her externship course and textbook, written with others. She cites the value of Bellow & Moulton's pioneering employment of visual and kinesthetic learning modes and explicit statement to students about educational goals and methods. She identifies paradigms for lawyering tasks that have remained useful to her throughout her career. With twenty-one years as a Professional Responsibility teacher, she marvels at the breadth and depth of the books' treatment of ethical issues and recalls the critical stance toward conventional statements of lawyer's role that suffused the course and book. She finds that the decision-making model, which she now recognizes as a creative problem-solving process, and the emphasis on social justice that she found central to the course are obscured by the complexity and scope of the books. She concludes with "dayenu," a hymn of praise for the course's gifts to her and for the books' contribution to all of us, each of which "would have been enough" and with a final word on the inspiration of Gary Bellow's passion for justice and joy.
Recommended Citation
Leah Wortham, Lawyering Process: My Thanks for the Book and the Movie, 10 CLINICAL L. REV. 399 (2003).