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Lubar Commons, Law School Room 7200
Thursday, Feb. 11, 4-6 p.m.

The lecture is presented by the East Asian Legal Studies Center, and hosted by Professor Sida Liu.
Light refreshments will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Abstract
Professor Silver's project generally investigates who belongs and who doesn’t in U.S. legal education, and how the terms of belonging are challenged by global forces that increasingly influence higher education and commerce generally, as well as legal education and the legal profession. The question of belonging shapes an exploration of the ways in which international students’ backgrounds and experiences enable them to compete for recognition as central actors in US law schools and ultimately the profession. International students are part of a larger movement of globalization in higher education, emanating from increased mobility of individuals and, with regard to law, the expansion of organizations involved in the legal profession. International students are a central mechanism of globalization in the legal profession, but generally are unrecognized in conversations about diversity. Nevertheless, their backgrounds and experiences often are quite distinct from the model of the typical JD student, who grew up immersed in US popular culture, earned an undergraduate degree in the US before enrolling in a JD program, where they will spend three years with the same cohort of peers, studying in their home language and preparing to practice without concern about their ability to remain in the US.

As international students become a more significant part of the JD student cohort, they can be seen to compete for recognition from their law schools and from the profession. This may inure to the benefit of international students in non-JD programs, as well. But recognition implicitly suggests that different characteristics, qualifications and career goals may press against existing ideal-types, and the shape of these characteristics, qualifications and career goals is relatively unexplored with regard to students who identify themselves as “international.” Thus, in this project we seek to begin to fill this gap by analyzing the backgrounds of the students as well as their experiences in law school; ultimately, we plan to identify several models of international students that will offer insight into status and hierarchy in the US law school environment.

About Professor Silver
Carole Silver is professor of global law and practice at Northwestern University Law School. Her scholarship investigates the influence of globalization on the work and structure of law firms, on legal education and on regulation of the profession. She currently teaches courses on business associations, globalization and the legal profession, and professional responsibility.

Submitted by Law School News on February 11, 2016

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