Susan Wawrose

What projects are you working on?

I am just wrapping up an article due out this spring titled A More Human Place: Using Core Counseling Skills to Transform Law School Relationships. In this piece, I argue for a shift from the traditional law school pedagogical style to a more relational approach and suggest steps faculty can take to incorporate relational skills into their interactions with students. And, I recently started a new project investigating stressors unique to members of the judiciary and the challenges of trying to address them.

I have also been involved with the production of short podcasts on law student well-being through an initiative sponsored by the ABA's Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP). Episodes in the Path to Law Student Well-being Podcast Series are available here.

What have you read, listened to, or watched recently that has influenced you or your work?

I love reading writers on writing, and I am halfway through Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan. Her description of the creative process is raw and honest. She is blunt about how hard it can be to write and how many idiosyncratic variables need to be in place to just begin. As a writer, I felt a connection with her description of what I would call the middle stage of writing, those moments where you hope you are headed in the right direction, or any direction at all. It is hard to show up on a regular basis to put words on paper and to overcome the "wellspring of doubt and worry" to persevere with no guarantee of success. I also recognized the glorious magic of "flow," and the hope and sense of accomplishment that accompanies it.  

As a legal writing teacher, I am reminded (again) that the challenge of the writing process is also part of our students' experience. So, Tan's work takes me back to the question of how to teach the formal elements of legal analysis and writing while also helping students find their own best process, the one that will allow them show up to the blank page and persevere, even when they have their own doubts and worries about the result.