By MATT CHANDLER
Buffalo Law Journal

"Many law students learn very little about the practice of law in law school, and often times the better the school is, the less they seem to learn."

That comment from University at Buffalo School professor Charles Ewing, recently named vice dean for legal skills, reflects a perception that drove the law school to reorganize its curriculum.

Though he felt confident that the school offered excellent legal classes, moot-court training and trial-competition opportunities, Ewing, a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, said there wasn't a cohesive nature to its practical programs. He and others on the faculty felt that the law school was falling short of the goal of preparing students to be courtroom-ready upon graduation.

They hope to change that with the rollout of a legal-skills program aimed at unifying the components of the curriculum and addressing areas of deficiency. Seventy-two students are enrolled in the new program, which includes eight trial-technique sections and four competition teams.

The revamping puts more focus on research, writing and litigation skills, areas Ewing said law firms expressed a need for increased competency in. It also covers appellate advocacy skills, non-litigation skills such as negotiation and alternative dispute resolution, and professional development. Professor George Kannar has been named director of moot courts, and associate professor Rick Su is director of journals.

"Dean (Makau) Mutua has recognized that there is an obligation the law school owes to its students to prepare them to be able to step into a courtroom the day they pass the bar," said Chris O'Brien, a partner in O'Brien Boyd PC who, along with Erie County Court Judge Hon. Tim Franczyk, is directing the litigation-skills courses. "To do that, you have to have certain base-level skills. Our goal is to not only provide that base-level competence, but to provide students with those core talents that will help them succeed."

"What this program does is set them apart from their peers," added Franczyk. "This is the most true-to-life experience they will have in law school before actually becoming a lawyer."

At a time when many law firms have laid off associates and cut back on new hires, Ewing and company hope the skills program will make the difference in getting UB Law graduates a foot in the door at law firms.

"Speaking for myself, when I went into a courtroom for the first time, I didn't know where the jury sat, where the plaintiff sat. Those are the types of things you have to learn on the fly out in the real world," O'Brien said. "Tim and I and our faculty all had to learn the hard way, and we are trying to pass along that knowledge to our students."

Siana McClean, a third-year UB Law student, said there's reason to believe these new focuses may give graduates a competitive edge.

"It will help other students coming up, because when they go out for an interview, (prospective employers) like to see that stuff on your résumé - that you have something outside of what's given to you in the books," she said. "I have friends who were actually told that the fact they had moot court on their résumé was why they got the job over somebody else."

That, says Ewing, is the bottom line.

"Our primary motivation for developing this program was looking around at what our students' needs were in terms of the job placements and what the employers' needs were and saying, ‘How can we do better and how can we make our students ready to work from day one?' " he said.

Dave McNamara, managing partner at Phillips Lytle LLP, says turning out courtroom-ready attorneys is an idea that is long overdue.

"The traditional law-school model has been criticized for being too esoteric and lacking in the development of real-world, nuts-and-bolts lawyering skills," McNamara said. "I think this program meets those criticisms head-on. And the more experience of a practical nature that law students can get, the less time we will have to invest in them in the early stages of their career, and the more useful they will be to our clients early on."

Seven professors will handle the research-and-writing component of the University at Buffalo Law School's new skills program, to be directed by Johanna Oreskovic '97.

Oreskovic also earned bachelor's, master of history and master of education degrees from UB, and has taught at the law school since 1998. Her practice while associated with Hodgson Russ LLP and Rupp Baase Pfalzgraf Cunningham & Coppola LLC concentrated on commercial and employment litigation.

Also on the writing-skills faculty are:

• Christine Pedigo Bartholomew: A 2000 graduate of the University at California-Davis Law School, she has worked in the San Francisco area in the areas of antitrust and consumer protection and helped open a branch office of a Washington, D.C.-based class-action firm.

• Nan Haynes '97: Haynes has served as a teaching assistant to professors Lucinda Finley and Nils Olsen, and practiced full-time at Lipsitz & Ponterio from 1995-2002 focusing on plaintiffs' environmental, occupational and civil-rights litigation.

• Patrick Long '00: Long spent four years in the U.S. Navy and another four teaching English at The Nichols School in Buffalo before enrolling in UB Law. He practiced for five years at Hodgson Russ, then rejoined the Nichols faculty in 2006.

• Chris Pashler: Pashler's JD degree is from the University of Iowa. He spent eight years as a civil litigator, including a stint as an assistant county attorney in Montgomery County, Md., and also was an attorney with the Social Security Administration in Chicago.

• Stephen Paskey: A 1994 graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law, Paskey once clerked for the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. He spent 12 years with the U.S. Department of Justice, first with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and then as a senior trial attorney in the Office of Special Investigations. From 2007 to 2009, he taught research and writing at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Calif.

• Laura Reilly: Reilly graduated from the William Mitchell College of Law in 1994. After clerking for the Denver District Court, she practiced civil litigation at firms in Denver and Buffalo, and joined the UB Law faculty in 2002.