Riga - On Completing My First Session

"Getting to Know You" should have been the theme song-- if any of the students would have recognized it, which is highly doubtful.  I designed the first session as CILS advised: background about me, where I live, my professional history.  Seven out of the 11 registered students showed up.  All spoke excellent English and a few had a good background on the U.S.  Some have had work experience, indeed, are working while attending school, and that livened the discussion.  They were far more interested in class participation and far more relaxed and informal than I had been led to believe.  As a result, my introductory PowerPoint slides on the geography, history and culture of New Jersey went a lot faster than it would have with a group that had less background.  In such situations, flexibility is vital.  I skimmed over parts when I realized that their interest was flagging.  Nevertheless, two left after the break.  We'll see if they return when the real content is presented.  I dismissed class ½ hour early, when the question-and-answer trailed off.

The students are all in the business school; there are no law students.  This is not the best match for the CILS Senior Lawyers program.  I had geared my course to law students and I'm sure everyone else in the CILS program did, but that’s not what these students really need or want.  At least I structured the course to present the practical details of what happens in a U.S. civil suit, instead of legal theory.  Once I got the course outline up on the screen, I think the students got more confidence that this might potentially be useful.  They might someday be employed by a company that is sued in the U.S.-- and won't they make an impression when they know what's going on!  Or so I hope.

Their questions focused on the empirical: how does one train for the law, could a lawyer accept money from a party to not sue that party, how many hours does a lawyer work?  While telling my war stories about working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day at my first law job, I introduced them to the phrase “billable hours.”  They were suitably astonished by the fact that New Jersey, one-third the size of Latvia, has a population of 8.7 million and 50,000 lawyers.  They're looking forward to the case studies I had crafted and which the staff will photocopy.

In sum, there has been the unexpected and the expected.  The unexpected, at least, has not been problematic, a good sign for the classes to come.