Chesler to teach legal writing, drafting contracts

08/29/2008

Chesler to teach legal writing, drafting contracts

 Susan Chessler
Susan Chesler
     Susan Chesler got interested in the law watching "Perry Mason" with her mother.
     “I was the first in the family to go into law,” said Chesler, who joins the College of Law this year as an associate clinical professor in the legal writing program.
     Chesler graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1990, and practiced for a decade at a New York law firm, where she specialized in environmental law, insurance defense and legal malpractice. 
     “But I always had the itch to teach,” she said.
     So she switched jobs to work in human resources at Brookwood Child Care in Brooklyn, and started teaching as an adjunct at New York Law School. She moved to Widener University School of Law in Harrisburg, Penn., in 2004, to teach full time. Her courses included legal writing, drafting contracts and contracts. She also taught in the academic support program and was the faculty advisor for Moot Court. 
     This year she will teach first-year legal writing and upper-level drafting contracts.
    “In the first-year course, I will emphasize analysis along with writing,” she said. “It’s about thinking like a lawyer, understanding the logic behind the case.
     “In drafting contracts, I will talk about lawyers as counselors versus lawyers as advocates. Most first-year courses are based on cases where you have to take sides. Drafting contracts is a negotiation. You want both sides to be happy so they don’t go to court.” 
     Chesler said she and her partner, Marty Gromulat, an attorney in environmental conservation law, are outdoors people who plan to enjoy walking, biking and hiking in the desert. Their two Rhodesian ridgebacks, a breed indigenous to Southern Africa, are already luxuriating in the 100-plus degree weather.
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