prepation for initial meeting with law students

After selecting an apartment on Monday, we returned to the CHRD office, where we discussed the substantive work that I will be doing, particularly the law student clinical program that will be established for public interest litigation.  On Wednesday, we will meet the 10 students, whom I  understand have been divided into groups to review prospective cases. We will need to select two cases as litigation projects, and one of my roles will be to advise as to which cases should be brought and strategies to be pursued in bringing the cases. 

My initial task is to provide an overview and introduction to the concept of public interest litigation. In the meeting with Chimge, I initially suggested that I make three separate presentations: 1) introduce myself and my background, 2) discuss my experiences in representing police officers facing a corrupt police department in Herkimer, New York, as a case study of how to use law to address a difficult social and political problem, and 3) give an hour-long presentation on the American civil rights movement, with its use of both legal decisions and nonviolent social protest. I thought the last would be of some value, not only to our students, but also to some of the lawyers who work with CHRD, who probably do not have familiarity with the civil rights movement in the United States, and might see some parallels in the way in which the movement confronted plainly unfair laws,  unsympathetic courts and outright hostility. 

Chimge was too polite to say no. However, after the meeting, when I started thinking about how much time would be involved, the theoretical nature of the presentation, and the more immediate needs of the students, I realized that such a presentation would not be a good use of time. I prepared a presentation, which I believe will be about an hour, which combines a brief overview of my background, why I became a public interest litigator, and a description of public interest litigation.

This is the kind of presentation that, if I was to make in the United States, I would do pretty much off the top of my head, with maybe about 10 minutes spent to organize my thoughts beforehand.  However, here, because Chimge will have to translate from English to Mongolian, I pretty much wrote the whole thing out, which took me about an hour and 40 minutes. I e-mailed it to her on Tuesday morning, and when she saw me Tuesday afternoon, she said that she liked it and did not seem to think there was any need for us to do any additional preparation for the meeting with the students today.

On Monday, I also became aware of the possible communication problems. I need to learn to speak much more slowly; not only so that Chimge can translate, but also so that she can understand. Her English is very good, but not good enough to follow a fast speaking New Yorker. 

On Monday, we also discussed other matters. I told Chimge some of my thoughts about public interest litigation and advocacy, told her that I had brought a book for her: Saul Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals, and that I had some ideas as to how CHRD might confront the problem of human trafficking, which is a priority for the organization. I recognize, of course, that I know very little about Mongolia and the situation that they are confronting. Nevertheless,  one of the reasons why I am here, and one of the reasons why I assume that CHRD wants people like me, is the belief that some of our strategies, both legal and political, can be of some use.