Spring 2011 - College of Law - University of Saskatchewan

college news
i hope to encourage, and
ultimately implement, a
more ambitious agenda
for curriculum reform
at the university of
Saskatchewan’s College
of law.
FEATURE:
A visit with Sanjeev Anand
The incoming dean of the College of Law, Dr. Sanjeev
Anand, recently talked with of NOTE about some of his
thoughts, plans and hopes for his five-year term as dean,
which begins July 1, 2011.
Of nOTE: Have you set a particular overarching
goal for your term as dean?
SAnjEEV AnAnD: I don’t know if there
is just one, but I did run on a platform of
changing the curriculum and making it
more relevant to today’s environment. The
time is certainly ripe to seriously discuss
curriculum reform in the Juris Doctor (JD)
program as the Federation of Law Societies
has recently made a set of recommendations
for Canadian law schools. I expect that the
changes that many Canadian law schools
will make will be the incremental ones
that are mandated by the Federation of
Law Societies’ report. However, I hope to
encourage, and ultimately implement, a
more ambitious agenda for curriculum
reform at the University of Saskatchewan’s
College of Law – one that is modeled on
the recommendations made by the recent
Carnegie Foundation Report. The team that
penned this latter report examined the North
American legal education scene and after
exhaustive research, including site visits to
sixteen law schools in the United States and
Canada, the authors drew some interesting
conclusions. They concluded that while most
North American law schools do an admirable
job in getting students to think like lawyers
through Socratic case-dialogue pedagogy
supplemented by lectures, North American
legal education is deficient in that it fails
to adequately address the development
of practice skills for law students and the
formation of their professional identities. I
want to ensure that the curriculum in the
JD program robustly integrates all of these
essential elements of undergraduate legal
education so that every graduating law
student possesses a firm understanding
of how legal doctrine, theory, and applied
skills interact within a professional context.
But there are other important goals I
have for my term as dean. I would like
to strengthen the graduate program by
implementing a number of initiatives. The
first initiative would be to increase the
number of true graduate courses offered
by the law school, including the creation
of a mandatory graduate level course
on research methodology and academic
writing for LLM students. Another initiative
would be to encourage faculty members
to continue to treat graduate students as
junior colleagues, particularly when it comes
to their professional development by, for
example, giving graduate students more
opportunities to teach. If these goals can be
accomplished, I would like to begin a serious
dialogue about establishing a PhD program
in law at the college. Another vital objective
of my deanship is to revitalize the partnership
between the Native Law Centre and the
college and I am committed to doing this in
ways that will prove mutually advantageous
and desirable to both institutions.
On: What strengths do you see at our
college now, and how might we build on
those?
SA: On the curriculum front, the College of
Law has taken many significant steps toward
addressing some of the shortcomings of
traditional North American legal education
by, for example, addressing early skills
training through its implementation of
a dispute resolution program as part of
the mandatory first year curriculum and
by putting more resources into the first
year legal research and writing program.
The college has also developed, through
its participation in CLASSIC, a true clinical
4 SPRING 2011 www.usask.ca/law University of Saskatchewan