LAW 359P - Law, Politics, and Public Policy Practicum.

The subject matter of this practicum is the intersection of law practice and public policy/affairs representation, or the “lawyer as lobbyist.” There are three pedagogical goals for this course: (1) Mastery of the laws and best practices that govern the activities of professional lobbyists, including the intersection of regulatory principles relevant to government affairs representation and the ethical standards and professionalism standards that constrain members of the bar. In short, students will be exposed to and expected to gain a thorough understanding of the formal rules and informal traditions and expectations that comprise the legal constraints, ethical norms, and best practices for members of the bar who engage in lobbying activity. (2) Development of writing skills in the crafting of position papers, legislative testimony, and other legal documents setting forth the views of clients on proposed legislative action. Students will produce three substantial writing projects on three different pending legislative matters, representing a range of different fictional clients. (3) Development of non-written client representation skills, through oral presentations made to individual legislative members and legislative testimony presented in a legislative hearing. Each student will undertake three significant non-written exercises. The course will focus on the Virginia state legislative process, but will draw comparisons to processes at the federal level. The subject matter for the written and non-written exercises will involve three significant pending legislative issues facing the Commonwealth of Virginia. Students will represent various clients and constituencies, and will experience the interaction with fictional clients and the development of substantive positions and representational strategies on behalf of those clients. They will prepare a series of realistic written materials and oral presentations to individual “legislators” or “legislative committees.” Throughout the course students will be required to represent different types of clients, and to present materials from several different political perspectives. (Thus a student may represent a client with a position generally likely to gain support from Republican legislators in one exercise, and Democratic legislators in another exercise.). The instructor, Senator Creigh Deeds, will draw on some of his colleagues in the political arena to play roles for some of these exercises. In that effort, participants will expose students to “both sides” of important issues and that the course will be bipartisan and balanced in challenging students to appreciate and understand all sides of complex legislative proposals.Four hours.Deeds