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During her property law class at IU McKinney School of Law, Visiting Assistant Professor Aila Hoss asked her students to use creative skills rarely associated with law school.

Professor Hoss’s assignment—to incorporate property law into unique, non-essay creative projects—resulted in students showing off their artistic talents during her October 24 class. One student created a painting, another knitted a stocking, and others created games, memes, maps, and poems.

“Being an attorney requires more beyond writing and research,” she said. “I wanted them to start thinking about other skills that they would want to develop and how essential creativity will be to their success. It is also critical that students and attorneys engage in tasks that relieve stress.”

Victoria Speck (left), a 1L, created a hand-hooked rug with a fox face, depicting a central figure in Pierson v. Post, generally considered the most famous property law case in American legal history. The 1805 case, eventually decided by the New York Supreme Court, involved a dispute over a hunted fox in an incident near Southampton, New York.

Speck spent approximately 20 hours creating the rug using skills she learned from her mother. “It’s nothing I ever expected to use in law school, but it was nice to have a creative element in learning about Pierson v. Post.”

Her classmate, 1L Drew Warner (below), created an original cartoon based on the same case, but took the principle of possession and applied it to a hunt to which today’s students can relate:  a parking spot on the IUPUI campus. Warner, who says he loves creative pursuits like art and cooking away from law school, enjoyed sketching the cartoon in the law library while his fellow students typed away on their laptops. “It was awesome,” he said. “A nice break, and fun to do something different.”

Sam Burton, also a 1L, created a playlist on the digital music service Spotify using songs that included words from the four required elements for the legal concept “acquisition by adverse possession” in their titles. “I love music, so I thought I would give it a try,” Burton said.

The class assignment proved to Professor Hoss that law students thrive with open-ended, creative learning projects.

“I was so delighted by their creativity, humor, and critical analysis of U.S. property law,” Professor Hoss said. “It also gave me the opportunity to get to know each of my students better as I connected with them individually about their project.”