Hello to everyone in the Council on Legal Education Opportunity family. My name is Professor Barbara Smith. I have been honored with the opportunity to provide CLEO's Fellows and Associates with Academic Support information for the 2010 - 2011 academic year. "Academic Support" means different things to different people, but there is one thing that we generally all agree on -- that is that the word support, in any field, usually means "help." And, that is what I am here to do.
I will work to make your first-year, your second-year and that final third-year as smooth a transition as I possibly can. I plan to do that by sharing as much information with you as I can to help you and by answering the questions and concerns of all law students who are CLEO Fellows and Associates (okay, okay - I will give a little more attention to the 1Ls, but that is to be expected). Let me not forget the 4th year, part-time students, either.
Everyone is included in our ASB system. It will be my pleasure to offer you as much information and insight into the process of becoming a lawyer, one year at a time. I hope to get to know and prepare you for the world of the law student in a non-biased fashion, but still remind all 900 of us that we (me, too) came to law school for a reason. That reason was to become a lawyer. That is the role that we have to play right now. And, that is what we are going to do.
Now, where do we go from here? Well, let me start off with a grand welcome to all of those in CLEO land, including all employees in the Washington, D.C. office, including Ms. Cassandra Ogden, Mr. Roderick Terry, Mr. Duane Tobias, and Ms. Laura Zamfir. I thank them for asking me to prepare this blog, and discussing with me their future plans for CLEO's Fellows and Associates. I truly appreciate that they have provided me with the opportunity to continue to work as a consultant for CLEO, on behalf of the American Bar Association. I offer greetings to all of the CLEO Fellows and Associates across the United States, whom I suspect are somewhere in the library staring down a few law books right about now.
I want to send a special hello to all of the professors and teaching assistants who worked with our incoming first-year students in the summer institute programs this past summer. I am aware that Florida International University Law School, and the University of Missouri Columbia, School of Law were this summer's host schools. I thank you very much for all of your time and effort and I will do all that I can to encourage and build on what you started for their first year of law school.
It would make sense to start off this post with information about me, as it would make sense to learn a little about the person who will be the source of some pretty important information you will receive over the next nine (9) months, but I will get to that. Later.
But for right now, in this moment - - I want to know a little about you, who you are, and what interests you. I want to know your name, a single reason why you decided to enter law school, and one thing (o-n-e) that you need from me as an academic support person seeking to help you navigate through law school. Who are you and what do you want from me? That is the question that I want to see in our first comment section. As I write, there is a realization that someone in CLEO land may be going through a rather difficult time, or is facing something a little bit more daunting than he or she suspected. If that person is you, and you have a question or a comment that you need answered immediately, make sure that you include an "urgent" status message next to your name. Please.
I want to hear from the 2L and 3L class, too. Where are you going this summer *(or, where do you want to go), and what bar exam are you sitting for in July 2011. That time will be upon us, soon. While we are throwing graduation hats up in the air, we will need to catch pens and pencils to get started the following week for the bar exam. As a friend of mine would always say, "girl, that's for real."
Now, I would welcome posts from anyone, but I live and work in Washington, D.C. I am aware that there are at least five (5) CLEO students at The University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law; five (5) at Howard University Law School; one (1) at American University; one (1) at Catholic University; and four (4) at Georgetown Law Center. I want to hear from you. I also want to know is it possible to get a message, or a comment from one person in a law school in the United States, who is part of the CLEO family, that is also a native Washingtonian, but is living in another state?
Now, who am I? I am Professor Smith. I am an adjunct professor at The David A. Clarke School of Law at The University of the District of Columbia. I teach first-year legal research and writing, and moot court. I also teach in the law school's MEPAS program (for incoming first-year students). I teach a bar skills course for alumni for the July bar examination and the February exam. I also teach in the academic success program at Howard University Law School. I have been a consultant for CLEO for almost a decade. I taught the mid-winter bar preparation program for eight (8) years, and recently, I worked with CLEO to produce a bar exam blog that I prepared for the July 2010 bar exam. CLEO expects to produce and I hope to prepare a number of CLEO alumni for the February 2011 bar exam. We hope to assist CLEO get ready to tackle the bar exam in the metropolitan area's surrounding jurisdictions.
I have talked about me. Now I want to hear from you.
While I am waiting for you, I will be preparing for my introduction to the 1L, 2L and 3L classes. Next week, I will share with you how I expect the blog to function for each class.
Thank you everyone for having me. I can't wait to hear about the things that interest you.
Until next week,
Prof. Smith
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