Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Paralegals

Two Paralegal instructors and I took the MN metro students on a tour of a law library on Saturday. This idea has been "in the works" for about a month or so. The instructors asked me to participate b/c they knew that I had worked at a law library in the past. So, we met at William Mitchell Library. The paralegal students were all emailed about this event. I think there were 8 or 9 students-- which was perfect for a tour. I led the tour and the instructors had them do exercises of legal research. The students were beaming b/c they were so excited to get their hands on print resources that they'd usually find in Westlaw (online). It helped them understand the Westlaw citations that they use.. For example: They often cite things with NW, and then at the law library they were introduced to the Northwestern Reporters, and they were told that every time they cite an NW source - it's actually that reporter and the volume #.

We were in the library for over 2 hours, and then 1 of the instructors arranged for a lunch (paid for by Ras). It was a great afternoon, and it was a great way to connect with students that take all online paralegal classes. I am not sure which other campuses offer the paralegal program, but I'd highly recommend doing something similar in your respective cities/counties. Please let me know if you have any questions.

5 comments:

Sara said...

Amy,

How cool! I think we have online paralegal students at St. Cloud, so I'm not sure how we could do this without a residental instructor.

Dan said...

Great idea, were any of the students from BP?

Kate Bessey said...

Nice work, Amy!

Amy Springer said...

All Eagan paralegal students are "online".. so, this was the first/only contact that the students had with the 2 instructors that were there- Liz Hurley and Kirk Olson. I believe the students were notified of this tour via Angel. One of the students drove from Milwaukee!!! I know that there were Lake Elmo and Eagan students in attendance.

Amy Springer said...

Also blogged about by paralegal instructor-

Rasmussen Justice Jargon