HPU Law is pleased to announce its latest curricular innovations to advance its mission to educate its students holistically in the knowledge, skills, and values they need to flourish as lawyer-leaders in the legal profession. Specifically, HPU Law will include as part of its required curriculum three one-week practicum courses on access to justice, advocacy skills, and leadership principles. The students will take these courses in their 1L, 2L, and 3L years, respectively.
The first course, titled Access to Justice Practicum, will introduce students to lawyers’ ethical responsibility to provide pro bono legal services to persons of limited means. Students will learn about legal access to justice initiatives from around the country and will participate in an experiential learning project through which they will be able to serve the legal needs of persons of limited means.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, Nathan Hecht, a member of HPU’s extended faculty, will teach the course. Chief Justice Hecht is the longest serving member of that court in Texas history. Chief Justice Hecht has been a state and national leader advocating for efforts to ensure that persons of limited means have access to basic legal services. Students will learn from his wealth of experience supporting access to justice and will participate in a project serving actual clients so they can better appreciate the unmet legal needs in our country. By enabling its first-year students to engage in such interactions with actual clients, HPU will be at the forefront of legal education in providing real-world instruction for its students.
The second course, titled Advocacy Skills Practicum, will expose students to core principles of advocacy they will need to represent their clients effectively in a variety of contexts. Skills such as client counseling and advising, client relationship and management, and negotiation and dispute resolution will be discussed.
The course will be team-taught by members of HPU’s extended faculty who specialize in these advocacy skills. By exposing students to extended faculty who are actually in these practice areas, students will gain a rich understanding of core advocacy principles.
The third course, titled Leadership Practicum, will serve as a capstone experience for our third-year students and will focus on leadership principles our graduates need to understand to be leaders in the profession and society.
A core value for HPU Law is to inspire our graduates to see themselves as leaders in their community, and this course will feature guest speakers who are experts on leadership in a variety of settings. Building upon the professional formation classes all students will take their first year, students in this class will draft a personal leadership plan to serve as roadmap of personal goals through which they can positively impact their communities and the profession as a whole.