The clinical curriculum takes the form of a three-tiered pyramid. The faculty consists of sixteen full-time instructors who combine extensive and varied practice experience with a commitment to teaching. The first semester of the Program involves a series of drafting exercises designed to develop essential skills in legal research and writing, to examine the functions and techniques of different forms of legal writing, and to explore interplay of law and fact in legal analysis. The Lawyering faculty provides extensive and rigorous review of students' work as part of the program's emphasis on the development of mentoring relationships between faculty and students. Working in teams of two to four, students or role-play each activity and critically review the experience with the help of the lawyering faculty, augmented in the spring semester to include Professor Amsterdam and other members of the doctrinal and clinical law faculty.
Students are interviewees as well as interviewers, clients and witnesses as well as attorneys.
Every student plays several different roles, and all participate in the teams' collective review of every exercise. The review process often involves replay and analysis of videotapes or audiotapes of interviews, negotiating sessions, and witness examinations. Lawyering exercises expose students to the kinds of unstructured problem situations that are common in legal practice but seldom encountered in law school. Students approach these problems in role as lawyers for clients. They learn to identify and analyze a problem, to consider and evaluate possible responses to the problem, and to plan and execute a course of action.