International Trade, Ice and Teaching the Next Generation of Lawyers

During my career at DLA Piper, I have participated in a number of rewarding and interesting New Perimeter pro bono projects. Those projects involved researching international topics such as economic development in Africa and drafting an innovation policy for Uzbekistan. In 2014, I was selected to participate in a program with a team of DLA Piper lawyers who taught a week-long course in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa that Andrew Chedwiggen previously blogged about in December 2014. The course topic was international trade and economic development in Africa, and more specifically, Special Economic Zones as Policy Tools in Africa. 

The teaching team, as described by Andrew, definitely had diverse talents and skills. It was especially interesting to watch everyone’s teaching style and how they connected and interacted with the students.

Our class was made up of  students from all over Africa, each of whom was enrolled in the LLM program. The class got off to a rousing start with a very unconventional icebreaker during which a member of the teaching team brought an actual bag of cubed ice. During the ice breaker, each person in the class threw the bag of ice on the floor and introduced themselves to the rest of the class, which worked out splendidly. On the second day, Andrew taught the first session and surprised the class by reciting each student’s name from memory, which impressed the students.

During the week, we discussed various aspects of Special Economic Zones as Policy Tools in Africa. Towards the end of the sessions, we divided the students into two groups (one group for Burundi and one group for Swaziland). We tasked each group with preparing a report to convince the government of their country to adopt Special Economic Zones. The teaching team acted as the government, and each group presented their report to the teaching team. Both teams did an exceptional job. Reflecting on the project, it was very gratifying to find out that several of our students actually chose some aspect of Special Economic Zones as their thesis topic for their LLM program.  

Like Andrew, I had never been to Cape Town, which I found to be beautiful in landscape and people and rich in experiences.