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Boston College Law School has appointed Professor Paul Tremblay as its inaugural faculty director of experiential learning.
A member of the BC Law faculty since 1982, Tremblay will be responsible for coordinating experiential learning throughout the curriculum to ensure that every student will have reasonable access to such opportunities.
Administrators say creating the faculty director of experiential learning position will help the school strengthen its established and nationally known in-house clinics, its growing externship programs, and the increasing availability of practicum and simulation opportunities in classroom courses. Students will have a wider exposure to the richness of the practice of law, alongside the critical doctrinal and theoretical training of which the school remains so proud.
“The Law School has been a leader in clinical education for many years,” said BC Law Dean Vincent Rougeau. “At the same time, we recognize that legal higher education and the legal profession is changing, with a greater emphasis on real-world experience for law students. We want to prepare our graduates for every aspect of the practice of law in our global community. This new position is an effort to enhance our core mission, build upon our strengths, and lead us into an even stronger future.”
BC Law’s Legal Assistance Bureau (LAB) has been a model for other programs across the country since 1968. At LAB, students and their advisors represent clients with a variety of legal problems, including domestic violence prevention, family law, landlord-tenant disputes, Social Security disability appeals, as well as offering free legal services to small businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and first-time home-buyers through its Community Enterprise Clinic (CEC).
Administrators say Tremblay brings the perspective of both a clinical and classroom professor to his new administrative role. The founder of CEC, Tremblay is a leading authority on clinical education. He teaches clinical courses at LAB as well as classroom courses in legal ethics and professional responsibility.
Tremblay has considerable interest in professional ethics, interdisciplinary collaboration, and legal services for the poor. He has been a member of the Boston Bar Association Ethics Committee since 1993, and has served on the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Professional Responsibility.
He has published in several scholarly journals on matters of professional ethics, including articles on lawyers’ obligations with questionably competent clients, on rationing legal services for the poor, and on a method of ethical decision-making known as “casuistry.” Tremblay is a co-author of Lawyers as Counselors, a leading textbook used in law school clinics, and is now completing, with Alicia Alvarez of Michigan, a textbook on transactional clinical practice.
— Law School Marketing and Communications Director Nathaniel Kenyon