PILS (Professional Identity and Legal Skills) is a one week skills-focused intensive for the entire Windsor Law first year class.
The problem-based learning exercise in which the students will be engaged for most of the week is a fictional – but highly realistic – client “file” in which they will represent either the plaintiff or the defendant in an employment dispute. The plaintiff has been fired from her job by the defendants because she took too much time out of the office (and getting really stressed) working on her case as a family SRL. (note, she is represented by a law firm for the employment dispute but she is acting for herself in the family matter – she got a family loan to pay for the lawyers in the employment case.)
“Its the first time we have ever done this and the first time I believe that any law school in Canada has taken a week to do problem-based learning” says Dr. Macfarlane “and certainly the first case with a SRL as one of the components to the story.”
PILS is part of U Windsor Law’s commitment to Clinical and Experiential Learning . The Faculty of Law has developed innovative and often ground-breaking programs in legal aid, prepaid legal services, community legal education, alternative dispute resolution and law in aid of development.
Windsor Law offers an amazing breadth of clinical and experiential learning opportunities. With initiatives like Community Legal Aid, Legal Assistance of Windsor and the University of Windsor Mediation Services, concepts learned in textbooks are translated into real world examples.
Their clinics, mooting program and other experiential learning courses help students develop important lawyering skills such as interviewing, counselling, mooting, drafting, negotiating, advocacy, research and problem solving.