Shifting Assumptions: Teaching to Center Commonalities

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Harborside Ballroom E

Floor: Fourth Floor

The legal field historically has been a majority white, male and privileged field, and has frequently represented individuals sharing the same characteristics. Clinics, in contrast, generally train students to serve underrepresented communities. Unsurprisingly, clinical pedagogy developed to center difference in the lawyer client relationship, especially in lawyering spaces serving underserved and underrepresented communities. The demographics of lawyers and law students are shifting. In light of this shift, we want to provide a counterbalance to clinical pedagogy that centers the navigation of differences between lawyer and client. While we don’t intend to discard ideas about the heterogeneity of lawyer and client and embedded power differentials, we want to reframe our teaching and acknowledge that many of our students (and us) share backgrounds, communities and lived experiences with our clients.