UCLA law students explain the legal world to high school students
By Kendall Rogers
April 8, 2011 2:39 a.m.
A 12th-grade class at Venice High School got a lesson in contract law on Wednesday using peanut butter sandwiches.
Standing at the front of her class, Julieta Stepanyan, a third-year UCLA law student, reached into a grocery bag and pulled out two pieces of bread.
Students pitched in to create a contract specifying how their sandwich would be made. It began, “I, Julieta, am obligated to make a PB&J,” and continued with references such as, “The jelly has to be Smucker’s,” “Only Sarah Lee wheat bread,” and “If there’s an allergic reaction, Julieta is NOT responsible.”
At one point, Stepanyan added a generous amount of pepper to the sandwich. The students had not told her she couldn’t put seasoning on the sandwich.
But the students decided a peanut butter and jelly plus pepper sandwich was not going to be appetizing ““ though one student still took a bite ““ and the contract was modified.
This time Stepanyan tore up the bread to make a tiny bite-sized sandwich. The students said they wanted to modify the contract again.
Stepanyan hoped to illustrate an important point in contract law: Contracts that are not carefully thought out can lead to unintended results.
Stepanyan is one of the students in the community-learning based clinical class at the UCLA School of Law called the Street Law program. In this program, third-year law students become guest teachers for one hour each week at local high schools, where they teach students about the law, said law lecturer and director of the Street Law clinical program Tony Tolbert.
Every spring, about 18 to 24 law students are sent out to 10 high schools across the Los Angeles area to teach a 10-week curriculum focused on the fundamental parts of the law and its effects on society, Tolbert said.
“It gives the (high school) students an idea of how law has been used to push society forward and a sense of the connection between history and progress,” Tolbert said.
One of the objectives of the program is also to prepare law students to practice law.
“Street Law gives (the law students) a scenario in which they have to break down complex principles to the public, without using a bunch of law jargon, just like they will in their jobs one day in order to better communicate with clients,” Tolbert said.
While the transition from student to teacher is not always an easy one, Stepanyan said her inclination toward mentoring in high school and college helped her find her footing in the teaching world.
“I’d never actually taught a high school class, so I didn’t know if they’d be really rowdy or really shy. But they were nice to me, and they’d say nice comments like “˜Thanks for teaching us this,'” Stepanyan said.
The law students create their curricula based on teachers’ desires at the beginning of the 10-week period.
Stepanyan built her curriculum as a compilation of the requests from the teacher and students in addition to a general survey of different types of law, including criminal, constitutional, civil and contract.
Law students have had all different focuses for their curricula, Tolbert said.
“One student focused on various rights, one on life skills, like apartment hunting and what to look for when you sign a contract for a used car, and others teach general survey courses of different types of law,” Tolbert said.
Teachers said they feel the program is beneficial for their students because it gives them a break from textbooks and lectures. Some students have even expressed interest in law after hearing the UCLA law students speak.
Mike Finegold, an economics and government teacher at Venice High School, is in his 10th year of involvement with the Street Law program.
“It’s always a great experience. I actually arrange my schedule so I can have them here. Street Law is only the spring semester, so I teach economics in the fall and government in the spring,” Finegold said.
