Professor Lin-Bo Fan of China’s Northwest University of Politics and Law is spending a month as a visiting scholar at Wayne State University Law School.
He arrived March 14, the first professor from his university in an exchange program that began during fall semester when Wayne Law Assistant (Clinical) Professor Nick Schroeck spent a month in China lecturing at NWUPL in Xi’an.
Wayne Law in fall 2014 began offering a master of laws degree in U.S. law for foreign law students and lawyers. The goal of the new program is to prepare international students for careers in which a solid grounding in the U.S. legal system is desirable, whether that career is in government, business, academia or private practice. The Wayne Law program is in response to a growing market of foreign lawyers seeking advanced degrees in U.S. law. The faculty exchange with NWUPL is an effort to build relationships with foreign universities.
“Professor Fan opens a world of Chinese law and practice that is unknown to most of our faculty and students,” said Professor Gregory Fox, director of Wayne Law’s Program for International Legal Studies. “We are so honored to have him here to give us a window into a very different legal culture.
“We hope Professor Fan’s visit will be the start of an active exchange of faculty and students between Detroit and Xi’an.”
Fan’s research is focused on international economic law, and he speaks fluent English. He’s written six textbooks on legal English, two books on selected readings in English on international laws and a book, also in English, on Chinese financial law. He’s also translated a book on American securities law. He teaches primarily master’s degree law students in China.
He earned a master of laws degree in Asian law from the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle in 1992 and a master of laws degree in international commercial law from the Queen Mary School of Law at London University in the United Kingdom in 1997.
Soon after Fan arrived, Schroeck took him to see the Detroit Institute of Arts, Belle Isle and downtown Detroit. Since then, Fan has taken a bus from his campus apartment to the downtown area on several occasions. Wayne Law also arranged for him to meet several leading international lawyers in Detroit to discuss their China practice. Associate Professor Paul Dubinsky, director of graduate studies at Wayne Law, hosted Fan in his Ann Arbor home for a welcome dinner.
“Detroit actually is a really nice city,” the Chinese scholar said. “You have the blue sky and clean air and not much pollution – much better than my hometown. I’ve seen a lot of sunshine. The climate is the same roughly as my hometown.”
He acknowledged having some “culture shock” since arriving.
“The Chinese way of doing things is totally different than the way it is here,” Fan said.
Students at Wayne Law have much smaller classes than do law students at his university in China, he said.
“There is more time and opportunity here for students to communicate with professors. I think the education here is more student-centered and interactive.”
He is pleased with the close tie that is developing between his university and Wayne Law, he said, and would like it to continue.
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