UW News

November 19, 2009

Class Notes: Testing academic theories in the real world

Class title: Law, Societies and Justice 401: Field Experience, taught by Michael McCann, a professor of political science and the Law, Societies and Justice Director.


Description: LSJ 401 is a graduation requirement for all Law, Societies and Justice students, which makes it unusual because few majors require students to complete an internship for credit. It allows undergraduates to gain experience working with agencies and organizations in our system of criminal and civil justice.


In the syllabus, McCann wrote, “The objectives of the internship are: 1) to provide students with insights into the workings of the civil and criminal justice systems that go beyond what you read in the literature [from past classes], 2) to ‘test’ some of the theories and concepts found in the literature against the ‘real world’ and 3) to initiate career developments and goals.”


Students can look over the department’s ever-expanding list of organizations or go out and find an internship on their own. Internships include: King County Public Defender Association, King County District Court Probation Division, American Civil Liberties Union, WashPIRG, and the UW Student Legal Services.


Instructor’s view: “Through the class our department wants to create an experience that bridges our students’ academic experience with a hands-on experience,” said McCann. “It’s not an escape from academics, though. The class asks students to connect what they are learning in class; It is one thing to read about what an attorney does, it’s another thing to be there and in it. These are situations that they aren’t familiar with. Most of our students come from middle class families and during this experience students usually come in contact and work with people who are less fortunate, more in pain than they are. It’s an experience that many of our students later use when writing their personal essay for law or grad school.”


Unexpected Experiences: McCann said, “It always surprises me how few problems the program has. We send 20 or so students out into these internships and there just aren’t many problems. Each quarter maybe about a third of these internships are new — we haven’t worked with the organization before, so when I step back it’s a bit surprising how smoothly it goes. Also the students’ writing surprises me each quarter. This is a credit/no credit class, so the bar is set pretty low for the papers, but every time a dozen or so of the papers are always among the best I read from any class. They are interesting and analytically rich. It’s great to see the students thinking so deeply.”


Student views: “Being an undergraduate you don’t get a lot of experiences outside of the classroom,” said student Maily Hoang. “One of the big things LSJ 401 helped me realize is that law really does permeate through society and you just don’t really notice it. Some people don’t realize that the law can help them, which is what I see interning at Student Legal Services. It’s a great resource for students. People don’t know that legal services are accessible. This class definitely solidified my interest in law school.”


Student Ashley Houghting took the class this summer and interned for the Law Offices of Catherine C. Clark. “The papers required for the class asked us to look back on the LSJ classes we’ve taken and to relate relevant readings to our experience in the real world,” Houghting said in an e-mail. “I found this to be a valuable process because it made me see how the academic information we read in class can be applied to real life experiences. For example, I took a class that focused on women and the law. We talked about oppression of women in the workplace. At my internship, I saw how men oppress women in the workforce first hand and wrote my paper about this topic for the class. An example of this would be that during an arbitration, one of the male expert witnesses tried manipulating the female questioning him, but he did not do this to the males questioning him. Also, there was a problem with a male on our floor stalking a woman on the floor. It was just interesting to see that oppression still exits against highly qualified women in the workplace.”


Reading list: There is no uniform reading list for the class. Rather, students are asked to look back at readings from past classes that relate to their internship.


Assignments: Students are required to spend a minimum of 100 hours at their internship throughout the quarter. There are two required papers: an organizational profile and an analytical paper. The profile is five to eight pages long and asks students to provide an “average” level of information about the organization they are interning for. The analytical paper is six to eight pages in length and asks students to compare and contrast their observations with academic literature. Students must also complete an evaluation of their internship experience for future students to read, and internship supervisors need to complete an evaluation of the student’s performance. Also, at some point in the quarter each student must meet with a program adviser to discuss the experience.

Class notes is an occasional column highlighting interesting and unusual class at the UW.