From Robert Vischer, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Welcome to the academics web page for the University of St. Thomas Law School.  On the sidebar, you will find links to a variety of helpful resources.  The academic dimension of our law school is not just about course schedules and academic calendars, though.  At the School of Law, our academic program is part of a bigger story.

Law school has traditionally been an isolating experience.  The absence of any meaningful sense of community, coupled with intense competition, has led to what has been, for many students, a miserable three years.  The individualized approach to legal education creates harms that extend far beyond law school, for lawyers who lack relationship skills tend not to be very effective lawyers.  Clients have long complained about lawyers who can find their way around a statute, but who cannot find their way to practice empathy, effective listening, or cooperative problem-solving.  Within practice, lawyers who lack the ability to work as a team will find their time at a firm or agency to be short-lived.  As Indiana University’s William Henderson – arguably the nation’s leading authority on the legal profession – remarked recently, “Sure, lawyers need to be smart,” but in a very competitive legal market, they “also need to be personable, collaborative, entrepreneurial, service oriented, and interested in contributing to the collective welfare of the law firm.”  Relationships matter, and most law schools are just beginning to discover that fact.

St. Thomas is way ahead of the curve in this regard.  A commitment to take relationships seriously – and to educate students in a way that equips them to take relationships seriously – has been a hallmark of our school since we opened our doors ten years ago.  That may help explain why we have so frequently been at or near the top of The Princeton Review’s rankings for student quality of life.  The commitment is not an add-on to our mission; it is at the core of our mission.  As a Catholic law school, we believe in the social nature and inherent dignity of the human person – a belief we share with all major religious traditions – and we have built the law school community accordingly.  We want our students to work well with others, not just because doing so will advance their career prospects, but because doing so reflects our more fundamental commitment to honor human dignity.  As law schools try to respond to the demands of legal employers and the broader public that we do more than fill our students with knowledge of the law, St. Thomas has distinguished itself by bringing relationships to the center of professional formation.  A few examples:

Mentor Externship:

 A one-on-one mentoring relationship with a local lawyer or judge introduces students to the real world of legal practice, and at a more fundamental level, these relationships facilitate the depth of conversation with senior professionals that is essential to a student’s development of professional identity.  The classroom component of the program helps students understand the importance of relational skills in the practice of law and begins training them in the use of these essential skills.

Foundations of Justice:

The first-year Foundations of Justice course is designed to help students discern and articulate the moral dimension of law and lawyering, thereby empowering students to better serve the interests of their clients and communities.  A client’s interests are not always captured fully by the letter of the law, and so a lawyer who is unprepared to raise moral considerations is unprepared to enter into an authentic relationship of service with her client.  As the Carnegie Foundation observed in its recent analysis of law schools, “students are told to set aside their desire for justice,” and “[t]hey are warned not to let their moral concerns or compassion for the people in the cases they discuss cloud their legal analyses.”  At St. Thomas, we believe that lawyers can develop top-notch legal analysis skills without sacrificing their compassion for the humanity of their clients. The Foundations of Justice course is designed to deepen the student’s capacity to function effectively as counselor and advocate.

Experiential learning:

At St. Thomas, every law student will have the opportunity to integrate what they have learned about legal theory, practical skills, ethics, and professionalism, and, perhaps most importantly, to do so in a setting that gives students deeper experience with, and the opportunity to cultivate, relationships.   You might choose to participate in one of our five clinics serving real clients (elder law, immigration, community justice project, bankruptcy, or federal commutations).  You might choose an externship in which you would work for a public interest agency, a large business, or a judge while taking a class that helps you understand how to build the relationships that are necessary to succeed in that work environment.  Or you might choose to enroll in one of our practicum courses, which are small classes in which students delve more deeply into a given area of law by working as lawyers on a simulated problem.  The practicum courses place a premium on the development of interpersonal skills, not only because students work with each other, but because they work under the close supervision of a professor, with the opportunity for extensive feedback and mentoring.

Faculty scholarship:

 At St. Thomas, we take faculty scholarship seriously because we take your education seriously.  Lawyers are not merely technically competent mouthpieces for hire.  Lawyers wield an enormous amount of power in society, and they have a responsibility to exercise that power not only for the well-being of their clients, but also with an eye toward the well-being of society as a whole.  If law school only teaches you a set of doctrines or particular skills, it will be difficult to be a lawyer who is more than a mouthpiece.  By contrast, at St. Thomas you will be taught, shaped, and challenged by professors who are leading experts in their fields, who will not only teach you the doctrine or the skills needed to function as a lawyer, but who will take you deeper, who will push you to understand the origins, purposes, and shortcomings of law in a given area, and help you carve out paths of possible societal engagement and reform in which you can play a role.  For example, you can study constitutional law with Professor Tom Berg, one of the nation’s leading authorities on religious liberty who is currently helping state legislatures considering same-sex marriage laws to preserve freedom for religious institutions.  Or if you are interested in government litigation, you can study the topic with Professor Greg Sisk, who literally wrote the book on the subject.  Or you can study mediation and alternative dispute resolution with Professor Mariana Hernandez-Crespo, who is leading efforts to develop consensus-building mechanisms for legal disputes across Latin America.  The list goes on.  A recent study showed that the St. Thomas faculty is among the top 40 most frequently cited law faculties in the country.  Our commitment to scholarship is not a distraction from our commitment to teaching – it is central to our commitment to teaching.

Community accountability:

If we are committed to taking relationships seriously, that commitment has to begin with our accountability as a law school to you, our students. We start by making sure you have every opportunity to succeed in law school.  During orientation week, we provide an intensive one-week introduction to legal analysis, study skills, and law school exams.  All of our fall semester courses during your first year will include a midterm exam designed to provide you with feedback so that you are better prepared, and less anxious, for final exams.   There has also been a great deal of concern recently about the lack of transparency among law schools regarding employment data and scholarship policies, and rightfully so.   At St. Thomas, we list our graduates’ employers on our website for all to see.  And when we give scholarships, we guarantee them for three years as long as you remain in good academic standing.  We do not take steps like these in order to avoid negative publicity.  We take steps like these because it’s who we are.  A community built on false promises or inflated statistics is no community at all.  When you enroll at St. Thomas, you’re not just signing up to learn about the law.  You’re joining a community, and you’re entering into a whole set of relationships that will help shape and sustain your professional identity not only for the next three years, but for the rest of your career.