A LITTLE OVER A DECADE AGO, discontent spread about the quality of an elite law school education. Companies complained the degrees weren't sufficiently client-focused. Firms needed their future lawyers to be more business-savvy. And many lawyers were finding themselves called into the public policy arena but felt unprepared, with no relevant schooling or experience to draw on.
Stanford Law School faculty listened to those concerns and pondered how to reform their curriculum. One result has been the Law and Policy Lab, a policy incubator that enables small groups of students working with faculty members to advise government agencies and nonprofits on active policy concerns. The brainchild of former dean Larry Kramer, the lab officially began in 2013-14 with 22 practicums covering a wide range of topics. In 2014-15, some 159 students enrolled in the program.
A focus of the lab has been to cross disciplinary lines, just as professional policymakers do. To that end, approximately half of the practicums involved students from outside the Law School. Thanks in part to strong connections between faculty members and government officials, student recommendations have already gained traction with clients. Here are a few examples of how practicum participants are making an impact.
STOPPING THE SLAUGHTER
PRACTICUM: Wildlife Trafficking—Stopping the Scourge
PROFESSOR: David J. Hayes, distinguished visiting lecturer
THE CLIENT: Federal Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking
THE PROBLEM: Rampant ivory trafficking. Experts estimate that armed gangs slaughtered roughly 30,000 elephants and 1,000 rhinos in Africa in 2013 alone.
THE SOLUTION: Nine graduate students studying law, earth systems and African studies joined Hayes, who is vice chair of the advisory council, to suggest how the U.S. government should respond. Their recommendations included tightening the U.S. ban on buying and selling ivory, increasing U.S. fines and penalties for wildlife trafficking, and targeting traffickers with money-laundering enforcement tools. The Obama administration incorporated several of the students' solutions into its Implementation Plan for the U.S. National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking, released in February, including their call for a public-private partnership among the federal government, the nonprofit community, and the corporate sector to raise awareness about the problem and reduce demand for ivory. The resulting alliance is under way.
GIVING BACK
PRACTICUM: Improving Bone Marrow Donation Program
PROFESSORS: Mark Kelman, Larry Marshall
THE CLIENT: An international bone marrow registry
THE PROBLEM: Thousands of people die because they can't be matched with bone marrow donors fast enough. Legal uncertainty around recruiting contributes to inefficiencies in the donation process.
THE SOLUTION: Five graduate students in law, psychology and business created a new form for prospective bone marrow donors to fill out when they sign up for the registry. The form's revised wording may quicken the matching process with future patients and make prospective donors more likely to actually donate. Experiments tracking the effect of the new form are ongoing.
INTERNET ETHICS
PRACTICUM: Next Steps in Network Neutrality
PROFESSOR: Barbara van Schewick
THE CLIENT: Barbara van Schewick
THE PROBLEM: A court ruling called into question the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order preserving net neutrality. Under that doctrine, Internet service providers, or companies that connect us to them, can't charge more to provide faster Internet service to some content providers over others.
THE SOLUTION: Six graduate students studying law, international law and symbolic systems worked as a think tank for van Schewick, a key advocate for net neutrality and whose counsel influenced the crafting of the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order. The students' research helped van Schewick clarify what the legal foundation for net neutrality rules should be. Ultimately, the FCC agreed: ISPs—like telephone companies, airlines, oil pipelines and electric companies—should be treated as "common carriers" under the law, an interpretation that restricts them from discriminating among users.
PAY FOR SUCCESS
PRACTICUM: Designing a Social Impact Bond for Santa Clara County Mental Health
PROFESSORS: Paul Brest, Keith Humphreys
THE CLIENT: Santa Clara County (California)
THE PROBLEM: How to improve mental health treatment.
THE SOLUTION: Working with the county counsel's office and the nonprofit Third Sector Capital Partners, six law and medical students analyzed how to implement a pay-for-success model for social work focused on mental health. The model involves raising money up front from outside investors to fund treatment; the county pays back investors only if social workers measurably improve their patients' mental health. Students worked on designing an evaluation program to measure health outcomes and quantify cost savings; they also advised on issues of patient consent. With that research in hand, the county's planning continues.
