Chinese law students visit Oklahoma City University for workshop in American legal system

Yan, 21, is a student at Beijing Normal University's campus in the coastal city of Zhuhai, China. She arrived in Oklahoma on Sunday.

This month, she's one of 22 Chinese law students from three universities who are visiting the OCU School of Law for the school's monthlong Certificate in American Law.

Yan and the other students in the program will be in Oklahoma until early August. During that time, they'll take courses at OCU and visit sites around Oklahoma, including law firms, the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City.

Yan studies Anglo-American Law at Beijing Normal. She hopes to get a better understanding of the United States and a firsthand look at its legal system while she's here.

But she hopes it won't be her last visit to the country. After she finishes her law degree — an undergraduate degree in China — she wants to return to the United States to pursue a juris doctor.

After that, she hopes to take American ideas like democracy and put them to work in China, she said.

The OCU program was launched in 2007, and is designed to teach participants like Yan the ins and outs of the American legal system, including the role attorneys and judges play in the United States, said Eric Laity, the school's associate dean for academic affairs.

When the Chinese students come to the United States, they find a legal system that's different from their own, Laity said. For example, he said, they're often struck by the fact that American lawyers are to be independent from political influence.