Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets - Pierce Law Center IP Mall - Training Intellectual Property, Commerce, & Technology Professionals Skills to Meet Marketplace Needs - Industrial, Trade Mark, Branding, Legal, Electronic, Privacy, Sports, Entertainment, Information, Resources, Research, Inventors, Inventions, Internet, Piracy, Service, Design, Infringement, Licensing, Technology Transfer, Education, School, Networking, Digital Rights Management, IPR's

News

January 1, 2005

Personal Reflections: My Story

By Ronald Abramson, Adjunct Professor of Law

In the spirit of the inverted pyramid, I�ll conclude with the least important information: some personal reflections on the experience of being a visiting professor in another country, in a different hemisphere.

My Story

I suppose it merits mentioning that I was born in Chile, left when I was two years old, and have since lived in the U.S. There was a strange prodigal aspect to my returning, where things seemed simultaneously strange yet familiar. My history complicated my ability to get all the necessary documentation to remain in Chile, since I handled everything as a �foreigner�, only to get to the final stage of obtaining a national ID card and learn that they would not issue it to me because I appear in the national registry as a Chilean. I�ll say parenthetically that the bureaucratic machine in Chile makes me long for the relative efficiency of the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles. Chile seems to operate in triplicate, and I am sure that a huge amount of government spending goes to the innumerable stamps that must go on virtually every shred of paper one encounters.

Although I grew up speaking Spanish at home, and have communicated in Spanish with a significant portion of my clientele over the past decade-plus, I was nervous about lecturing to university students in Spanish.There was the matter of legal vocabulary, much of which I have had to learn while in Chile. Then there were grammatical considerations, especially in the more complex verb tenses. Finally, there are those dastardly accents, which became a burden every time I used the whiteboard in class.What I needed was a whiteboard with a spellchecker.

As the first semester of law school generally teaches us, the improper use of legal terminology can create serious problems. In an early class on basics of the U.S. criminal system, I explained to my students that offenses in our system fall into three general categories: felonies, misdemeanors and violations. An American in Chile who may have had a few driving infractions on his record could explain his �criminal� history by explaining in Spanish that he�d only committed a couple of �violaciones�.The problem arises when the unsuspecting speaker learns that �violacion� in Chile means rape.

The Challenges of Teaching a New Generation

I arrived in Chile to teach law students about criminal defense in an adversarial system. Beyond teaching my students trial techniques and defense theory, I had to account for the fact that Chile has no �defense bar,� and thus the new generation of lawyers has no history from which to base its experience. Ironically, more recent graduates will know more about criminal practice in the new system than will their senior colleagues.While just about every respectable Chilean university has offered courses about the procedural aspects of the Reform, they have devoted much less attention to the art of advocacy and to the complex nature of the lawyer�s roles in such a system.

For those reasons (and at the school�s request), the course I designed and taught was not just a trial skills class, but a course on �Criminal Defense:The Role & the Practice�. I thought it necessary to begin with the most fundamental aspects of being a criminal defense lawyer. After comparing and contrasting the U.S. and Chilean systems, I covered the development of the attorney-client relationship. I also tried to address issues unique to being a public defender, since estimates indicate that over 90 percent of criminal defendants will require court-appointed counsel. After boring the students to tears with lectures about defense investigation (it�s not evident that the defense will have its own investigators under the new system), conflicts of interests (another novel concept) and pre-trial litigation (they have it, but absent a precedential system, it does not have the same emphasis as in the U.S.), we moved onto developing the �theory of the case� and specific trial skills.

Since the course was an elective (unlike my mandatory classes at Pierce Law), I did expect a high level interest from the enrolled students. However, I found the students� interests, abilities and dedication to be mixed, much like any other class I have taught. Most surprising was that out of the 30 students in my class, only about five were seriously considering going into criminal litigation, whether as prosecutors or defenders. The rest were either curious about the subject or thought it would be an �easy A�.

Without a doubt, the best moments came in the second half of the semester, when we took all of the theory (i.e., all of my rhetorical bluster) and moved into mock trial exercises. I had sought a much smaller class, but reluctantly agreed to the larger number (30) given the interest level (66 students signed up). Each student had to do either an opening statement or a closing argument and one cross-examination. On the whole, it was amazing to see them �get it,� to find a defense theory, work it into a cross-examination and close with some of the most persuasive arguments I�ve heard, from law students or experienced trial lawyers.

The decision to take the time away from my comfortable New Hampshire life, my practice, my teaching at Pierce Law, with my wife Tina and three small kids in tow wasn�t (and hasn�t been) an easy one, but chances like this one do not come up often�if ever, in life. As I�ve reflected on the experience, I came to the concept which forms the title of this article, that now that the revolution has come and gone (successfully), it�s time to give the trial lawyers (in my case those for the defense), the weapons they need to fight hard, fight fair and fight successfully. I have had a chance to live what Christa MacAuliffe spoke about when she said,�I touch the future; I teach.�

^ page top ^

Pierce Law IP Mall - www.ipmall.info

2 White Street, Concord, NH 03301
v: 603.228.1541 f: 603.228.2322 w: ipmall.info w: piercelaw.edu e: ipmall@piercelaw.edu