From May 13 to May 17, the Judicial Independence and Legal Empowerment Project (JILEP) worked in cooperation with the High School of Justice (HSOJ), to deliver the first two installments of an intensive training series entitled, “Fundamentals of Judicial Ethics for Georgian Judges.”  Professor James Alfini of South Texas School of Law, Houston, Texas, widely acknowledged as the leading expert on judicial ethics in the U.S., worked with two Georgian-judge counterparts to deliver two separate trainings to a total of 18 Georgian judges.  The judges represented both the Tbilisi City Court and the Tbilisi Court of Appeals.  Among other things, the training team provided the judges with a framework for analysis of ethical problems that they face in their everyday work.  The series will continue in June when it will be delivered in Batumi to two groups of judges from West Georgia.

On May 15-16, the JILEP-sponsored, National Center for Commercial Law (NCCL) hosted a lecture series designed to educate and inform debate on a number of key commercial law-related topics.  On May 15, Professor Mary Ramirez from Washburn University School of Law (WUSL), and Nikoloz Chinkorashvilli, former Director of the Ministry of Justice’s Money Laundering Financial Intelligence Unit (MOJ FIU), spoke to a group of 22 legal professionals and students about the “International Fight against Money Laundering.”  The purpose of the lecture was to teach the audience about the dangers of money laundering and the need for international cooperation.   The speakers noted that Georgia is especially vulnerable to the temptation of allowing “dirty money” into their financial markets as a quick source of investment funds.

On May 17-18, the JILEP-supported National Center for Commercial Law (NCCL) delivered a two-day commercial law symposium to approximately 100 Georgian lawyers, judges and government officials working in the field of commercial law.  The symposium presentation format was unique in that each topic discussion was led by a Georgia-U.S. team of commercial law experts.   The U.S. commercial law experts came from the NCCL’s partner institution, the Washburn University Law School (WUSL), Topeka, Kansas.  These experts complemented the Georgian speakers by providing a comparative law perspective on the topics presented.  These topics included: Liquidated Damages Clauses in Contracts; Comparative Analysis of Proposed Amendments to the Georgian Labor Code; Competition Law; and International Taxation and Liquidated Damages Clauses in Contracts. The symposium was open to students, professors, lawyers and the public free of charge.

On May 9, the JILEP-sponsored National Center for Commercial Law (NCCL) held the final workshop of its year-long, teaching method train-the-trainers program for Georgian law professors.  Professor Michael Schwartz of Washburn University School of Law (WUSL), Topeka, Kansas, led a team of U.S. teaching method experts delivering the program.  The U.S. professors worked with a select group of Georgian law professors who had taken part in the previous stages of the training series.  As examples of topics covered during the workshop:  Professor Schwartz shared best practices in providing transformative feedback to students on their work;  Professor Megan Ballard of Gonzaga Law School, Spokane, Washington, walked participants through her preferred methodology for creating effective student evaluations; and WUSL professor, Rory Bahadur, engaged participants in a variety of faculty development activities, such as creating and maintaining self-evaluation inventories.

On May 10-11, at Free University Tbilisi (Free Uni), the National Center for Commercial Law (NCCL), in cooperation with the Washburn University School of Law (WUSL), Topeka, Kansas, and the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning (ILTL) based in Spokane, Washington, delivered an “Advanced Teaching Method Conference” to a group of about 50 Georgian law professors representing various Georgian law schools.  The law professor-participants moved through a course of eleven learning sessions in which they experimented with various interactive teaching techniques.  Some of the sessions were led by U.S. professors but the majority were led by Georgian law professors who had learned new teaching skills in previous JILEP-sponsored workshops, and were passing along this knowledge to their Georgian colleagues.  These sessions included instruction and experimentation in such areas as:  Classroom Assessment Techniques; Teaching Law with Cases; Collaborative Learning; the Importance of Hypothetical Problem Solving; and the “Socratic Method” as an Effective Tool for Teaching the Law.