About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

16 U.W. Sydney L. Rev. 98 (2012)
Educating Culturally Sensible Lawyers: A Study of Student Attitudes about the Role Culture Plays in the Lawyering Process

handle is hein.journals/uwsydl16 and id is 98 raw text is: EDUCATING CULTURALLY SENSIBLE
LAWYERS: A STUDY OF STUDENT
ATTITUDES ABOUT THE ROLE CULTURE
PLAYS IN THE LAWYERING PROCESS
ANDREA A CURCIo*, TERESA M WARD** AND NISHA DOGRA***
ABSTRACT
Lawyers' cultural experiences, biases, and perspectives may differ from those
of clients, colleagues, and judges. Awareness of such differences is critical to
effective representation because cultural perspectives may affect numerous
aspects of the lawyering    process, such  as interviewing, counseling,
negotiating, strategising, and persuading. Empirical data that informs the
debate about the need to teach students to work across cultures is particularly
relevant as lawyers serve increasingly diverse populations and transnational
practice continues to grow. In this article, we describe a survey developed to
provide law faculties with data to help assess the need for cultural competence
education and to inform the discussion of what that education might
encompass. In this article, we discuss the reasons to consider developing
students' abilities to work effectively across cultures, the survey design and
methodology, and the survey findings. Initial results indicate that the students
surveyed largely want to learn about how culture may affect the lawyering
process, generally are aware that culture may affect client behaviours, but may
be less aware of the effect culture has on their own perceptions and behaviours.
They also indicate that simply taking a survey such as the one described herein
has an educational benefit. We discuss the implications of those findings for
law teaching. Mhile the work described herein was done in the United States,
we believe the issue transcends national borders and we hope this article
provokes discussion across borders about the need to develop law students'
abilities to work effectively amongst countries' own diverse populations as
well as transnationally.
I INTRODUCTION
Today's lawyers practice in a multi-national and multi-cultural world
and must be able to interact effectively with people from cultures
different than their own. While some legal educators recognise the
importance of teaching students to understand and address the role

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most