Fighting for the Future While Living in the Present

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Landmark 1

Floor: Ground Floor, Conference Plaza

This presentation will focus on two aspects of clinical legal education and the tension between them. We will first discuss strategies that the presenters have employed to set norms and values in the clinic environment that are anti-racist and intolerant of other forms of discrimination (misogyny, homophobia, etc.). We will then turn to a discussion of what we can do to prepare our students for interactions with others in the system (e.g., opposing counsel, judges, clients, collaborators or partner organizations, etc.) who may subject either our students or their clients to harmful/discriminatory behavior, and how to teach them through those challenging moments. We will ground our discussion in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA Standards, and other frameworks that guide our teaching (including, for example, movement lawyering theory, critical legal theory, client-centered lawyering, and cross-positional lawyering). We will address how we can reconcile the tension between the environment we create for students in our clinics with what our students will encounter outside our walls, in courts, jails, and future workplaces. How do we give our students the tools to navigate the challenges they will likely face as new attorneys as they seek to enter our legal profession post-graduation?