Summer usually means hands-on legal work for students, but for two Chapman law students it meant much more. Third year law students Laura Moss and Jason Armbruster traveled to Africa this summer along with a team from Chapman’s film school to film Documentary: Africa. Selected law students are required to take cross disciplinary courses at Chapman’s Dodge Film School in the semester after returning from the filming location.

This year’s documentary focuses on the personal stories of people working for the Total Control of the Epidemic, an HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and rehabilitation program where Mozambicans empower others in their community to become educated about HIV testing and living with AIDS. And legal knowledge definitely made a difference for this project. Laura recalled both her trip to Africa and her law school classes. She mentioned, “It was really amazing that the legal skills I’ve learned in classes like Professor Heller’s Negotiating and Drafting Media Transactions and even Professor Doti’s Contract Law 1L course helped me to ready releases and aid in the actual production of this endeavor.”

Laura was also involved in “pseudo-mediation” and says, “It was great to see this process and work through concerns and conflicts in different languages and still result in a great resolution for all the parties involved.” Although the trip was certainly no vacation, Laura comments, “I wish I had been able to stay longer!”