July 29, 2008

Mitchell Professor John Sonsteng honored for innovative teaching in national trial advocacy programs

Professor John O. Sonsteng, a William Mitchell faculty member since 1979 and a National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) faculty member since 1974, received the 2007 Honorable Prentice H. Marshall Faculty Award for introducing countless educational innovations in NITA programs.

The annual award is named for the late Prentice Marshall, one of the NITA’s original teachers who pioneered efforts to support pro bono advocacy and teaching at major law firms and by the judiciary. NITA provides legal advocacy skills training, through a pioneering learn-by-doing methodology, to more than 6,000 attorneys each year at multi-day “boot camps.”

“John Sonsteng has been one of NITA’s most creative and innovative faculty members for almost three decades,” said John Baker, NITA Public Programs education director. “John uses innovations in technology and cutting-edge teaching techniques to enrich NITA’s legal skills training programs and NITA’s publications. He constantly designs programs for NITA that help meet the changing needs of the legal profession and of the legal education system.”

Sonsteng’s teaching methods—both to practicing attorneys in NITA programs and law students in William Mitchell classrooms, where he has taught for nearly 30 years—have come a long way since the days of reel-to-reel video recordings.

If you listen closely to the first legal educational videos Sonsteng produced for NITA three decades ago, you can hear the cheering fans.

Sonsteng and fellow collaborator William Mitchell Professor Roger Haydock recorded the initial class videos of trial lawyers in a tiny room inside the University of Colorado-Boulder Football stadium. At times during football games, they had to stop recording because fans’ loud cheering drowned out the recording.

Today, Sonsteng records instructional videos in a state-of the-art studio in downtown Minneapolis, while lawyers and legal educators from across the globe cheer his innovative teaching techniques.

He uses DVDs and computer-aided instruction to engage students in the learning process. He has even applied for a patent on his “21st Century textbook,” that lets law students read lessons, do exercises, watch videos, and take tests on their laptops.

“John’s interest has always been to create the optimum learning environment for students to not only think like a lawyer but to act like a lawyer and learn how to think through such action,” Haydock said. “His goal has been to simplify the complex, make clear the confusing, and present it through the written word, the spoken word, video, online, and any usable learning medium.”

Sonsteng integrates innovations from his Mitchell classes into NITA programs. For example, at Mitchell, Sonsteng created the Legal Practicum Program, combing the best of live clinical and simulated learning methods. He is taking elements of Mitchell’s Practicum, such as the fictitious but realistic case file of Darngood v. Landers and PUDS (Picket Up Delivery Service), and using them in NITA’s fall North Central Regional Trial Program: Advocacy from Start to Finish. He extended the program to a week to include all aspects of advocacy from deposition and negotiation to jury selection and expert examination.

“We have to change the way we think about the future of learning,” Sonsteng said. “In NITA programs and at William Mitchell, we are taking education to the next level and seeing how people can learn better. It doesn’t replace what we’re doing in the classroom. It makes it better.”

Sonsteng is encouraging law schools across the country to revitalize their curriculum in his new book, A Legal Education Renaissance: A Practical Approach for the Twenty-First Century. He calls for changes in curriculum, teaching, faculty, and costs over a 17-year period.

• Learn more about the National Institute for Trial Advocacy.
• Learn more about  A Legal Education Renaissance.

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