Teaching Representation Across the Line

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Session Type: Lightning Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Landmark 2

Floor: Ground Floor, Conference Plaza

With renewed interest in social justice issues among students, more students join a clinical program to represent clients from different cultures and walks of life. As a result, we as educators and advocates, have a duty to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary skills and tools to effectively and responsibly lawyer across lines of difference. Teaching cross-cultural lawyering can not only lead to more effective outcomes in students’ cases, but also interrupt and rupture the cycle of dehumanization that legal institutions perpetuate against clients belonging to underrepresented and marginalized populations. While each collaborator addresses cross-cultural lawyering through their clinic seminar and supervision differently, they share unified themes around client autonomy, zealous advocacy, and ethical lawyering. In this AALS session we hope to define cross-cultural lawyering and arm participants with effective strategies for teaching and troubleshooting cultural competency issues as students represent clients across lines of difference (e.g. race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientations, etc.).