On January 8, 2010, FINRA’s Investor Education Foundation awarded Pepperdine University School of Law’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution a grant of $250,000 to establish a comprehensive clinical education program in investor advocacy. In 2010, Robert Uhl was appointed as the first Director and as an adjunct professor at the Pepperdine University School of Law where he teaches a course on securities arbitration.
Director/Professor Uhl offered his assessment of the Pepperdine Model in the 2012 edition of the same issue of Inside Straus: “The clinic and the underlying securities arbitration course that we teach are a triple-play for all concerned. Clients receive professional representation at no cost for claims that otherwise would go begging, the students learn practical skills generally not taught in purely doctrinal classes, and I personally satisfy a longheld desire to pass on by way of teaching the incredible experiences I have had representing investors for more than thirty years.”
Professor Uhl’s “learn first, then practice” model detailed in the article below has proved successful at Pepperdine in both the actual results of the securities arbitration cases tried by the clinic and the students’ reactions to both the course and the subsequent clinic experience as detailed below. Pepperdine students have also been the recipient of various James E. Beckley writing competition awards and have authored or co-authored articles published by the PIABA Bar Journal and St. John’s Law Review.
- The Pepperdine Model: Learn First-Then Practice
- Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution (2014)