At the end of the Spring 2009 semester, New York Law School presented Emily Campbell with an award for five years of dedicated service as an Adjunct Professor of Law. Ms. Campbell has been teaching Drafting Contracts, an upper level legal writing course, since the Fall of 2004.
New York Law School is a leader in the trend to offer practical drafting courses for law students. “These hands-on drafting courses provide students the opportunity to hit the ground running when they begin practicing,” Ms. Campbell said. The Drafting Contracts course is currently limited to 17 students, so they are able to learn drafting techniques in a small classroom setting. The students do four commercial contract assignments each semester – a revision exercise, a short drafting exercise , a negotiation exercise and a final, lengthier drafting exercise.
In the Fall of 2009, New York Law School opened its new building, and Ms. Campbell was granted one of the seminar rooms that is fully equipped with all the latest technology. She regularly uses that technology to enhance the classroom experience.
Ms. Campbell’s creative hypotheticals are all based on real world situations, and she has her students keep abreast of contract issues that appear in the news. She draws on sports and entertainment headlines and current events to keep her students engaged, including discussing the contract issues arising out of the Writer’s Strike; an agreement between Democratic and Republican political campaigns concerning the Presidential Debate that was released following the question of whether George Bush had “help” answering his questions since that “bulge” behind his back arguably could have been some sort of wireless feed device; failure of deliveries of oil and other products after Hurricane Katrina; employment, endorsement and sponsorship contract issues of celebrities such as Don Imus, Dan Rather, Michael Vick, Michael Phelps, Whoopi Goldberg, Britney Spears, Rhianna and Tiger Woods; reality television contract issues arising out of shows such as “The Bachelor” and “The Amazing Race”; the settlement of one of the child-centered cases against Michael Jackson; and many more newsworthy contract matters.
Ms. Campbell has seen her students over the last five years progress to interesting professional opportunities. She often serves as a reference for her students writing letters of recommendation for clerkships and for positions in private practice, as well as for those who want to obtain a LLM.
“I know that my students can compete with other professionals in the marketplace, in part, because of the skills they learn in my class that can be applied across many areas of practice,” Ms. Campbell said.
Ms. Campbell began her sixth year of teaching in the Fall of 2009 and has committed to at least continue teaching through the Spring of 2010. “I’ll do it as long as I continue to enjoy it and there is a need for me at New York Law School,” she said. “It’s a great way to give something back to the legal community, and I am proud to be an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School.”