"...coming from an educational institution in New Zealand, that
sort of thing is just a
completely utterly, utterly different experience."
- Martha Coleman
Martha Coleman
Martha Coleman was a New Zealand Graduate Student to the
US in 1999 and studied for a Masters of Law at Yale Law School. Martha
is currently a Solicitor at Chapman Tripp Sheffield Young in Wellington.
I went to study at Yale Law School. I did a Masters in Law ... my
experience at the Law School was just unbelievable. Completely and utterly
unbelievable. I think it was such a different legal education than what
I'd had here... And one of the things that I realised, very quickly,
was that - and it's a joke I think that people in the legal
fraternity in the States make about Yale Law School is that they pride
themselves on not teaching you any law. That that's apparently what
you do when you sit for the Bar Exam, that you teach yourself the law
and it's so... different from New Zealand law schools. It is very
theory and very policy oriented and that personally was a real challenge
to me...
The diversity of the students was just incredible. They were so smart.
So articulate. It was really quite intimidating but I feel that I needed
to go through the experience, in fact I loved every minute of it although
sometimes I felt perhaps a little bit unconfident....
The last thing I'll say in terms of the experience was just the
wealth of American academic institutions.... one of the things I loved
about the place was the level of student activism. Just the whole of the
walls of the corridor of the law school were just amazing - there were
things all over it. They paid for students to go to protests at Seattle.
They had this conference every year that about 600 students came to, called
Rebellious Lawyering. One of my great sort of things I have is a t-shirt
that has emblazoned on the back "Rebellious Lawyering in the New
Millennium" which I loved. And basically the students organised it
but the Law School paid for it, and to me coming from an educational institution
in New Zealand, that sort of thing is just a completely utterly, utterly
different experience.
