Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50903
Many of the theatrical exercises are designed to help stu- dents communicate non-verbally. "Law students really over- intellectualize. They want to deal with everything on a verbal level and they will discuss and analyze in that kind of format endlessly," says Sutherland. But media- tion involves knowing how to give and read non-verbal cues, she notes. In another exercise, Sutherland assigns Gradually, Sarophim explains, students become more com- fortable with the dramatic exercises. "The course really boosts your confidence," says the third-year law student who one day hopes to have a practice split between litigation and mediation. Sutherland plans to expand her one student the role of the mediator and two students act as the different par- ties. Then Sutherland tells the students to move their bodies in ways that draw power or lessen power. As the exercise continues, other students are added into the role playing to change the power dy- namics. For example, a student may play the role of a lawyer joining one party. "When you are talking about mediation, a very substantial part of what you're talking about is differences in power and how do you work with power? How do you work with non-verbals in power?" When students participate in these theatre games, "they oſten pull completely new insights about power," says Sutherland. Other exercises help students become more spontaneous. Law students really over- intellectualize. They want to deal with everything on a verbal level and they will discuss and analyze in that kind of format endlessly. — Professor Sharon Sutherland, University of British Columbia use of dramatic exercises beyond the mediation classroom. This fall, she'll teach a new course on law and the- atre. Part of the course will involve ex- ploring how dramatic techniques can be used when teaching other areas of law. For instance, in torts "we spend a lot of time reciting . . . the facts of the case. There are a lot of different games around storytelling and narrative that end with 'the moral of the story is,'" says Sutherland. "I'd like to try some of those kinds of games in a torts con- text." Douglas Harris, associate dean of graduate studies and re- In one drill, students are put into groups and told they have 12 minutes to come up with a group name, a tag line for the group, a graphic demonstration for the group, and a commer- cial. "To become an improvisional actor it's all about training you to . . . just go for it with your first impulse." This is "closely related to what we do in mediation because oſten it's more important that you time your interjection right than that you say the right thing," she says. "Students spend a lot of time thinking, 'How do I frame an open-ended question?' And they're sitting there so long that it's too late to say the ques- tion and the entire dynamic between parties has shiſted and if they had just jumped in and said anything at all, it would have made a difference." Many of the exercises are carried out in groups in order that students grow comfortable with each other. Later in the course, students co-mediate with a mentor and a classmate. Exercises that build trust among students are key because as co-mediators "they rely on each other to jump in and to sup- port each other," says Sutherland. Sarophim, who took the course last winter, says the trust-build- ing exercises worked. When it comes to co-mediating, "your part- ner is someone from your class that you're already comfortable with because you've done all of these games together. . . ." In law school, "every other class is so competitive because everything is on a curve." The mediation course is "all about collaboration." At different points in the course, students may be uncomfort- able with the dramatic techniques. But Sutherland explains there are benefits to this discomfort. For one thing, experiencing dis- comfort can help students understand what their clients may feel. In mediation, "everything they're doing with the clients is going to be unfamiliar to the clients." Learning how to navigate through discomfort "will increase their ability to work with the clients." C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS ntitled-2 1 SEPT E MB E R 2009 9 7/15/09 12:02:02 PM search at UBC's Faculty of Law, says Sutherland encourages law students to explore "the connection between a performance on a stage and a performance in a courtroom, a client interview, a discovery, or in a mediation. . . . In each case the lawyer or the actor is performing a particular role." n