BC Law Professors Cheryl Bratt and Reena Parikh co-authored a chapter for the book Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Beyond the First Year, which has been awarded the prestigious Joseph A. Andrews Legal Literature Award by the American Association of Law Libraries.
Professors Bratt and Parikh’s chapter was entitled “Incorporating Critical Perspectives in Law and Professional Identity into the 1L Curriculum at Boston College Law School.” The two were inspired to become involved in the project to highlight a course they helped develop.
The course that Bratt and Parikh’s chapter is based on, Critical Perspectives: Law, Context, and Professional Identity, is BC Law’s first-year, fall-semester, one-credit, pass/fail, required course initially launched in the fall of 2021. The course won BC Law’s Faculty Prize for Innovation in Pedagogy in 2022.
“We are so thrilled that this important book is being recognized,” Parikh said. “In the nearly four years since BC Law first developed its 1L Critical Perspectives course, we, as course organizers, have learned valuable lessons that we wanted to share with other institutions that are looking to develop similar courses.”
Parikh described their chapter in the book as very practical. “It describes BC Law’s Critical Perspectives course in form and substance and then highlights the various decision points that came along with designing a course like this,” she said. “Including whether to make it mandatory, whether to offer it in the first year or upper-level, how to staff the course and train those teachers and facilitators, and how to assess the students in the course.”
Bratt called BC Law’s Critical Perspectives course “a vital part” of the Law School’s curricular efforts to examine identity and inequality in the law and our legal institutions. “After each iteration of the course, we gather substantive feedback, using multiple methods and from all stakeholders, to assess the course and make adjustments, so as to maximize the student experience and ensure sustainability of the course in the long-term,” she said. “With our chapter, we wanted to show other law schools that developing a course like this is an iterative process and that although one course will not be the salve to all problems, it is an important effort to undertake in order to create a more just, contextualized, and anti-racist law school education.”
The original task force that helped develop and manage the course for the first few years consisted of Professors Cheryl Bratt, Laurel Davis, Claire Donohue, Dan Farbman, Reena Parikh, and Evangeline Sarda. In order to ensure sustainability, over the last few years, one task force member has assumed leadership of the course. This fall, that leader will be Law Librarian Laurel Davis.
“One of my most meaningful experiences at BC Law has been working on Critical Perspectives (CP) with this amazing team,” Davis said. “Having Reena and Cheryl’s incredible piece on the course’s origins and evolution be honored with the Andrews award—the most prestigious in my own field of law librarianship—was a really exciting convergence.” She noted that the book pulls together so many resources, including this documentation of BC Law’s own story with CP, and that makes it easier for others to move forward with this work.
“As for CP,” Davis said, “I’m excited to keep the energy going this fall with our original crew, some seasoned facilitators and lecturers, and a great crop of new faculty, staff, and student partners. Collaboration and community-building will continue to be our touchpoints, and Cheryl and Reena captured both beautifully with their chapter.”
Read more on the award from the American Association of Law Libraries.