Professor Jacquelyn Slotkin and program administrator Chinthana Konganda with LLM/MCL students at commencement in 2012

Promoting the rule of law around the world, helping Latin American countries reform their judicial systems, training foreign lawyers and judges to be better legal professionals, and exposing American students to other legal cultures are just some of the international efforts California Western has undertaken since Dean Smith arrived in 1996.

One of the most successful efforts is Proyecto ACCESO, California Western's rule-of-law training program that equips legal professionals around the Americas with the skills they need to promote sustainable reforms in their countries' judicial systems. Co-founded in 1998 by the late Professor Janeen Kerper and Professor James Cooper, Proyecto ACCESO has trained thousands of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, justice ministry officials, private lawyers, and law enforcement personnel to become judicial innovators.

"Proyecto ACCESO has played a key role in helping a number of countries in Latin America move their criminal procedure from the inquisitorial system to the adversarial system as well as helping create new institutions that protect human and civil rights, indigenous, and intellectual property rights," says Cooper, the project's director.

"What has been so gratifying for the faculty and students involved with Proyecto ACCESO is that we're seeing huge swaths of Latin America move to more transparent criminal justice systems. As a result literally millions of people will benefit in the years to come as more of these institutions embrace democratic reform and implement the kind of fair and open judicial systems we take for granted in the United States."

Proyecto ACCESO further expands its influence by co-sponsoring - with the Institute for Criminal Defense Advocacy - the annual Janeen Kerper Trial Skills Academy at California Western, in which 100 attorneys and judges from Latin America are trained in oral trial advocacy skills.

California Western has a different but equally significant impact on legal professionals from other countries through its Masters of Laws in Comparative Law and Masters of Comparative Law programs. Since the program was restarted in 1998, more than 360 lawyers and law school graduates from nearly 60 countries have obtained the advanced degrees that provide new skills and confidence to further advance their careers.

"This program has made wonderful contributions to both California Western and our foreign students," says Professor Jackie Slotkin, the program's director. "Because the students take classes with our JD candidates, they have strengthened and enriched the cultural diversity of our school through the unique international perspective they offer. In turn, the students gain new skills and insight about our system and take the best of what we have back to their countries where they often become important change agents. Because they return home with a prestigious degree and valuable skills, most of them either become judges or secure top jobs with major law firms or corporations."

BOB ROSS // RES IPSA ONLINE