A Pitt improv course is turning students into better lawyers. Its professor wants more schools to try it.

On the first day of class, Ben Bratman is lecturing to a room of upper-level law students. But it's not a typical syllabus day in Pitt's School of Law.

"We're not going to talk about law, only lawyering," he tells the room. "And you can't make mistakes, as long as you're doing your best to follow the core principles of improv."

One student raises a hand. "That sounds like the exact opposite of every other class I've taken in law school."

"Exactly," Bratman replies.

Inspired by his own experience practicing and performing improv comedy at local theaters, the professor of legal writing in 2023 launched Applied Improv for Lawyers, his unique course aimed at building law students' confidence and communication skills. Rather than teaching legal doctrine or precedent, the course imparts on students the core tenets of improvisational performance - like agreement, supporting your partner and saying "yes, and" - and gives them opportunities to put the principles into practice through assorted improv exercises.

Since then, it's undergone a name change, now Human Skills for Lawyers, and earned Bratman a Robert T. Harper Excellence in Teaching Award from Pitt Law's Student Bar Association.

"Law school is such a great opportunity to embrace this, because outside of my classroom, 99% of law school classes are a stressor," he said. "I strive every class to make the environment pressure-free - except, of course, overcoming that little bit of fear to put yourself out there."

Now, in an new paper in the Journal of Law Teaching and Learning, Bratman is encouraging other legal educators to adopt his approach. Although law schools tend to train students rigorously in technical skills like legal research, legal analysis and legal writing, human skills like public speaking, listening, empathy and resilience are equally important to the profession. And improv is a tool that can "help along the path towards finding your authentic self and becoming a more self-confident professional," Bratman said.

"Clients don't hire lawyers, or like lawyers they hire, because they're brilliant," he added. "They like lawyers because they are helpful - good listeners who make big problems smaller problems. They listen and they care."

Not every faculty member has nearly a decade of improv experience under their belt, as Bratman recognizes in his paper, but law schools can still implement learning via improv, whether through retaining an instructor from a local theater or incorporating standardized patients into law courses as mock clients. If faculty do feel inclined to become trained to lead improv exercises, they don't have to commit to a full course - even one-off workshops and exercises within an existing course can help students "build or refine fundamental skills central to success in the practice of law," Bratman said.

And the human skills Bratman's course teaches are more relevant than ever with the advent of emerging technology like artificial intelligence, which the professor says is more likely to assist legal professionals with technical tasks than social ones - although he's quick to acknowledge that times of acute transition make it difficult for anyone to make predictions.

Good news: He thinks improv training can prepare students for that, too.

"Remain relevant. I don't know all of the change that is going to come - nobody knows exactly," he said. "But what's one of the fundamental core principles of improv? Embrace the uncertainty. Just go forward, adapt and be resilient."

Read more in Pittwire about the first iteration of Bratman's course.

Photography by Aimee Obidzinski