• PENN LAW  is seeking faculty members to serve as Senior Lecturers in the Legal Practice Skills Program. Penn Law’s innovative Legal Practice Skills Program offers practical training in the writing and communication skills today’s lawyers need. The centerpiece of the program is a mandatory first-year course, which spans two semesters and carries six credits (four in the fall; two in the spring). While providing students with a solid foundation in legal research, analysis, and writing, Legal Practice Skills also introduces students to a range of other essential practice skills, including fact development, interviewing, negotiation, basic contract drafting, and informal oral and written communication. The course presents assignments as simulations to help students understand the context in which these skills are deployed in practice.

  More broadly, the Legal Practice Skills program seeks to encourage our students to recognize practice readiness and skill development as central to their Penn Law experience and offer opportunities for them to build those skills over the course of their three years here. To that end, the Legal Practice Skills program also functions as an umbrella organization for a range of other Law School activities and services, including upper-level course development, the Academic Support program, the summer legal writing course for LLM students, additional writing assistance and writing sample support, co-curricular skills development programming, and the intramural moot court competition. The persons hired for these positions may also be called upon to assist with one or more of these related programs.

  Senior Lecturers teach Legal Practice Skills to one section of approximately forty first-year students, assume substantial responsibility for one of the other Legal Practice Skills activities and services, and have the option of teaching an upper-level experiential writing or practical-skills course. Senior Lecturers are encouraged to engage in the larger Penn Law community as well as the national legal practice and writing communities, including by attending conferences, presentations, and symposia.

  In their role as teachers of the Legal Practice Skills course, Senior Lecturers are expected to:

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• • collaborate with peers to design and execute a curriculum that is uniform across the first- year class;
  • teach first-year students in large lecture, small group, and one-on-one formats;
  • review and provide individualized feedback on student work; and
  • supervise third-year-student Littleton Fellows as they work with smaller cohorts of first- year students.

Senior Lecturers are not expected to engage in academic research or publication as part of the Legal Practice Skills program.

Penn Law seeks lawyers from varied professional backgrounds, including but not limited to litigation, public interest, government, and transactional practices, to join the Legal Practice Skills program for multiple Senior Lecturer faculty positions. Penn Law strongly encourages lawyers who would help our university continue to build a diverse, inclusive, and equitable academic community to apply.

For these Senior Lecturer positions, the salary will be $100,000 per academic year. Senior Lecturers will be eligible for the full range of benefits described on the Benefits of Working at Penn

website https://www.hr.upenn.edu/pennbenefits.

The appointment will begin July 1, 2021 and is subject to an initial, one-year probationary term, with the possibility of renewal for two additional one-year terms. After three years, the Senior Lecturer will be eligible for promotion to a three-year renewable contract. There is no limit on the number of times a successive Senior Lecturer contract may be renewed.

Candidates should have at least six years of recent, post-law school, professional experience; demonstrated ability in legal reasoning, writing, and other legal practice skills; and strong academic records. Prior teaching experience is not required.

To apply, please go to the Penn Faculty Searches website: https://apply.interfolio.com/84967

The materials required to apply are a one-page cover letter describing your interest, a resume, proof of law school graduation such as a transcript or state bar membership, a writing sample, and the names of three professional references.

Please note: The Legal Practice Skills program is not intended as a gateway to entering the academic or clinical teaching markets and does not provide instructors with institutional support for entering those markets.  Penn Law encourages lawyers and scholars specifically interested in gateways to legal academia to consider applying to one of its academic fellowship programs. More information on those programs is available at https://www.law.upenn.edu/faculty/fellowships.php.