Global Legal Skills Conference in Costa Rica Will Include a Visit to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

The 8th Global Legal Skills Conference is being held in San Jose, Costa Rica, from March 11-13, 2013.  Speakers and attendees are coming in from Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and the United States.  The conference focuses on teaching and learning "Global Legal Skills" -- a concept broadly defined over the life of the conference to bring together a large number of people working together on international skills education.

The 2013 Conference includes these sessions:

• Lurene Contento (The John Marshall Law School) and Alissa Hartig (Department of Applied Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University) on "The Importance of Teaching International Students to Read Before Teaching Them How to Write."
• Mireille Butler (Pepperdine University School of Law) in a bilingual session (in English and Spanish) on "Academic Legal Writing."
• Sammy Mansour and Daphne O'Regan (both of the Michigan State University College of Law) on the "Benefits and Challenges of Using the Socratic Method to Teach Foreign-Trained Attorneys."
• Iselin Gambert (The George Washington University Law School) on "Connecting the Law School Writing Cetner to the International Human Rights Clinic"
• Michael Murray (Valparaiso University School of Law) on "Comparative Synthesis" and "Visual Rhetoric"
• Laurel Currie Oates and Mimi Samuel (both of Seattle University School of Law) and Ann Nowak (of Touro Law School) on "Teaching Skills Online"
• Deborah B. McGregor and Cynthia Adams (both of Indiana University) on "Using Contrastive Rhetoric to Balance LL.M.Students' Past Legal Experiences with their U.S. Legal Education."
• Ruth Thompson (University ofSaskatchewan) on "Implementing Human Rights in Law School"
• Robert Somers (Whittier Law School) and Maureen Collins (The John Marshall Law School-Chicago) on "Technology in the Classroom" 
• Diane Kaplan (The John Marshall Law School-Chicago) and others in a Roundtable on Teaching Materials
• Leo Ciano (Kansai University of Foreign Studies, Japan)
• A roundtable on Teaching International Law with Cindy Buys (Southern Illinois University), Gregory Gordon (University of North Dakota School of Law), and William B.T. Mock, Jr. (The John Marshall Law School-Chicago)
• Kathryn Mercer (Case Western Reserve University School of Law), David Austin (California Western School of Law), and Ruth Hargrove (California Western School of Law) in sessions diversity and on "How Gender and Cross-Cultural Communication Can Enhance or Interfere with Global Legal Skills"
• Attorney Matthew Rooney, Senior Counsel at Meyer Brown, Chicago, on "Teaching Legal Writing and Advocacy in Iraq and South Africa"
• Jennifer Davis (University of New Hampshire) on incorporating field trips to teach the U.S. legal system.

Also planned are sessions for bilingual contract negotiations (in Spanish and English) where law students and lawyers can improve their legal Spanish--and legal English--in simulated contract negotiations.

There will also be sessions on law and legal education in Costa Rica and Central America, and other panels as well.  

There is also a "Legal Field Trip" that will visit the Supreme Court of Costa Rica and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. 

There are special GLS8 rates at these hotels:

• Holiday Inn Aurola Downtown, San Jose
• Hotel Presidente, San Jose
• Gran Hotel Costa Rica
• Hotel Balmoral, San Jose

Registration information is available by clicking here.

For more information about attending the conference, contact Mark Wojcik (hey, that's me) at mwojcik [at] jmls.edu.  

(mew)