Indiana University McKinney School of Law's Professor Catherine Beck was getting ready to teach her Ukrainian law students at Chernivtsi University about US law when she read the headline "Heavy missile strikes by Russian forces on Ukrainian infrastructure." Meaning, once again, Catherine had to check her email before class to see if any of her students would be able to get on Zoom during the next hour. Beck, a Professor of Legal English at Indiana University McKinney School of Law, volunteered her during the Fall 2022 semester to teach an online legal English course to graduate law students in Ukraine. This course was part of a larger collaborative initiative between Ukrainian law schools and the international law school community, an initiative which grew out of relationships formed over the past decade thanks to seeds planted by groups such as the Legal Writing Institute's Globabl Legal Writing Skills Committee and the Global Legal Skills Conference community.
The purpose was to foster cultural exchange, and the result was the Global Legal Skills Virtual Workshop Series, made possible with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Justice for All Activity. The workshop’s three short webinars, held over the summer of 2022, brought together law faculty from Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union in an exchange of ideas on how to best support Ukrainian law schools, faculty, and students following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The primary needs identified during these sessions included Legal English courses, guest lectures on a range of topics, and support for Ukrainian legal academics to edit and publish their work in English-language law journals.
One effective collaboration was between Zaporizhzhia National University and Professor Robin Juni of GW Law, who gave a guest lecture on environmental law. Faculty and students of the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University and Vasyl’ Stus Donetsk National University also joined this lecture. “Prof. Juni’s lectures inspire [one] to study more deeply progressive practices of environmental law implementation, in particular in the area of atmospheric air protection from pollution,” said Associate Professor Oleksii Makarenkov. Professor Tetyana Kolomoets, Dean of the Zaporizhzhia National University Law Faculty, also expressed gratitude to Juni for teaching a course useful to both teachers and students and noted that Juni’s lectures helped re-establish a lecture series with US specialists that had run for many years until Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
For more information about the Global Legal Skills initiative or to get involved in helping, contact USAID Justice for All Activity Legal Advisor Artem Shaipov at [email protected].