Landlord and Tenant Law Week Builds Real-World Experience into Property Law

With a new program for first-year students, BU Law continues its commitment to experiential education.

First-year students taking Property Law don’t always find themselves as deeply involved in the learning process as they could be. But according to Professor Anna di Robilant, who teaches one of BU Law’s three Property Law sections, the week she spends on landlord and tenant law is consistently the one that captures the most student interest.

With this in mind, when Associate Dean for Experiential Education Peggy Maisel approached the BU Law faculty teaching 1L classes and asked if they would like help implementing an experiential component into their classes, Professor di Robilant jumped at the opportunity.

“Many of the faculty responded that they were interested, or that they were already trying some experiential components on their own,” Dean Maisel says. “Professor di Robilant was already spending a good amount of class time on landlord and tenant law, so it made sense to turn that into a time when students could not only read case law but could take advantage of BU Law’s access to Boston’s specialty housing court and see what the whole process looks like when a tenant is threatened with eviction.”

Building in Experience

Di Robilant worked closely with Dean Maisel, Associate Director for Clinical & Trial Programs Adrienne Smith, and Clinical Associate Professor Connie Browne, who teaches in BU Law’s Housing, Employment, Family & Disability (HEFD) Clinic, to craft a program that would allow students to learn the law as they would in the classroom, but also to expose them to the human context and the social consequences of how the law is applied.

“We really wanted to show them the life of the law,” di Robilant says. “In landlord and tenant law, there are larger questions of access to justice and the asymmetry of power that, in a classroom setting, students may not grasp. But going to housing court and seeing first-hand that most of the tenants in these cases are minorities and women, and that most are unrepresented in court, was a very effective way of conveying that asymmetry.”

Beyond the real-world implications of the practice of law, it was important that the students learn that effective lawyering doesn’t always end in the courtroom. “Mediation is an important tool in housing disputes, and far more problems are solved there than in court,” Professor Browne says.

To this end, di Robilant, Browne, Smith, and Maisel organized a week-long program around landlord and tenant law for the 70 first-year students in di Robilant’s Property class. The week began with a more traditional class lecture that was extended to include a panel presentation and a mock trial. Participating in the panel were two Boston Housing Court professionals, a mediator for the court, and an attorney representing Boston Housing Authority. Joining them was Milton Wong (’13), a staff attorney for the Volunteer Lawyers Project, which sets up a table at the Boston Housing Court to provide pro bono representation and legal information for people in need. In addition, Portia Smith (’16), a 2L in the HEFD Clinic, spoke about her experiences successfully representing several tenants at the Boston Housing Court as part of the Civil Litigation Clinical program.

Later in the week, the students visited the Boston Housing Court in two groups. The first group attended on Wednesday, the day the court hears cases involving the Boston Housing Authority. The second group attended on Thursday, and had the opportunity to sit in on mediations as well as a range of private housing cases, from landlords who need their apartments back for the use of family members to tenants who report poor living conditions. Both groups had the opportunity to observe cases heard by Associate Justice MaryLou Muirhead, and speak with First Justice Jeffrey Winik (’75).

Room for Reflection

“I found the mediation session that I observed extremely revealing,” says Kevin Beck (’17), who attended court on Thursday. “Thanks to the effective services rendered by a mediator and a volunteer attorney, both parties were able to exchange their positions and information in a very cooperative atmosphere and on equal footing. The law, ultimately, is about managing the intricacies associated with human affairs, and bringing the people to the fore of this practice can, I think, transform the whole process to be much more rewarding and effective for all those involved.”

The final component to the program was a debriefing session that allowed students to discuss their experiences and reflect on what they had seen and learned throughout the week. “The students saw different types of cases on each day at court, so the opportunity to share their experiences was an important piece of the program,” Browne says. “They were exposed to different sets of problems, and were able to reflect together on possible solutions.”

Nawf Albassam (’17) also attended housing court on Thursday, and found the experience so interesting that she returned the following week to go into further details of a specific case with Judge Winik. “It was inspiring, because you start to understand the power and great responsibility lawyers have to affect other people’s lives,” she says. “If someone has a bad lawyer or no representation at all, it really hurts their case. Judge Winik explained the power imbalance in the courtroom, and it is really sad in some ways because we saw people evicted from their homes, and you want to help them but you can’t. This is what law is all about—touching people’s lives.”

“When people are poor, it makes everything harder,” Professor Browne notes, “and it plays out in the most basic need, which is housing.” Lawyers develop a set of skills that can be used in a number of ways, both for profit and in service of the public. “On a larger scale, we hoped this program would begin a conversation about pro bono work, professional duty, and being a good citizen.”

Commitment to Practical Education

Experiential programs like this one, and the Lawyering Lab introduced this spring, are the result of a faculty task force established by Dean Maureen O’Rourke to consider systematic instruction in the competencies required by practicing attorneys. Following the success of the landlord and tenant law week, plans are already under way to continue the program next year, and to potentially use it as a template to expand into other first-year courses. “We are very committed to getting first-year students out of the classroom for experiences like this,” Dean Maisel says. “Being in the courtroom and in mediations, and understanding what it’s like for clients and that there are different ways to resolve disputes, are extremely important experiences to have in your first year. Moving forward, we plan to continue to build and refine programs like these.”