Problem Solving at Harvard
The Faculty of Law is honoured to welcome Professor Todd Rakoff (Harvard) for a presentation about Harvard’s Problem Solving Workshop. Colleagues from all Quebec law faculties are warmly invited to attend this presentation and learn about Harvard Law School’s exciting experiential learning course for all first-year students. Â
This activity is accredited for 1.5 hours of continuing legal education for jurists.
Abstract
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.
Biography
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.
