Comments on: Teaching Non-Lawyers http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/07/25/teaching-non-lawyers/ Information, Law, and the Law of Information Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:08:14 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: David Kabanda http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/07/25/teaching-non-lawyers/comment-page-1/#comment-84558 David Kabanda Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:16:09 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/07/25/teaching-non-lawyers/#comment-84558 commendable of you commendable of you

]]> By: Ted Preston http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/07/25/teaching-non-lawyers/comment-page-1/#comment-15840 Ted Preston Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:34:51 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/07/25/teaching-non-lawyers/#comment-15840 The experience of teaching non-lawyers is a great aid when you try a case to a jury. I handled some patent trials, and was fortunate to have had experience as a professor of electrical engineering. It was amazing to see how many patent lawyers were intimidated by the prospect of having to explain matters to lay people. I have recently tried to teach non-lawyers about what lawyers do, particularly in an effort to get the public to better understand lawyers' practices. In "Judging the Lawyers" I place the reader in the postion of a juror, and examine the primary complaints that the public has against lawyers; at the end of the "trial", the reader is asked to log onto www.judgingthelawyers.com and submit a jury verdict. My feedback is very limited at this point, but a number of my lawyer friends say that even though the arguments are addressed to lay persons, they expect that many will find it too complex. But it was a great experience to try to present the pro and con arguments on issues such as how zealously should lawyers represent their clients, when does the duty to the client conflict with the duty to the legal system (the court), and is there a conflict between lawyers' billing and their duties to clients? I hope to get some good feedback over the next year or so. Ted Preston The experience of teaching non-lawyers is a great aid when you try a case to a jury. I handled some patent trials, and was fortunate to have had experience as a professor of electrical engineering. It was amazing to see how many patent lawyers were intimidated by the prospect of having to explain matters to lay people.

I have recently tried to teach non-lawyers about what lawyers do, particularly in an effort to get the public to better understand lawyers’ practices. In “Judging the Lawyers” I place the reader in the postion of a juror, and examine the primary complaints that the public has against lawyers; at the end of the “trial”, the reader is asked to log onto http://www.judgingthelawyers.com and submit a jury verdict. My feedback is very limited at this point, but a number of my lawyer friends say that even though the arguments are addressed to lay persons, they expect that many will find it too complex. But it was a great experience to try to present the pro and con arguments on issues such as how zealously should lawyers represent their clients, when does the duty to the client conflict with the duty to the legal system (the court), and is there a conflict between lawyers’ billing and their duties to clients? I hope to get some good feedback over the next year or so.

Ted Preston

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