Emory Report homepage  

July 24, 2009
Emory partners with Panamerican University to enhance Mexican legal education

By Liz Chilla

Emory School of Law is partnering with Panamerican University in Mexico to develop a trial advocacy curriculum for Mexican legal education. The partnership is funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development and will be managed by Higher Education for Development.

“The center will work with Panamerican University to develop materials, case files and learn-by-doing programming to train Mexican law students and lawyers in the skills they will need in light of recent amendments to their constitution,” says Paul J. Zwier II, director of Emory's Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, which is leading the effort.

The goal of the partnership is to assist Panamerican University in creating a Mexican Institute for Trial Advocacy.

Through the partnership, Panamerican University law faculty and Mexican judges and lawyers will participate in Emory Law’s Kessler-Eidson Trial Techniques Program and take comparative law and criminal procedure courses at Emory Law in May 2010. Emory Law also will conduct intensive, two-week trial advocacy training programs in Mexico City during the next three years.

The grant also will fund scholarships for Mexican law students and attorneys to study trial advocacy at Panamerican University.

The training program at Emory and the two-week programs in Mexico will be taught in part by DeKalb County Assistant District Attorney Matthew J. McCoyd ’93L, and Georgia State Court Judge J. Antonio Del Campo ’89Ox-‘91C.

Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution Fellow Alexander G. Barney ’08L also will serve as a visiting professor at Panamerican University during the 2009 fall semester.