Working with Tenant Associations and Grassroots Tenant Organizations

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: The Raven Room

Floor: Lobby Level

Law school legal services clinics often provide the essential service of representing low-income tenants facing eviction. As tenant organizing takes hold across the country, a role for clinics has arisen to represent tenant associations and to represent individual tenants within the context of larger organizing campaigns. Tenant associations and organizations seek to better the conditions of their communities and, in some instances, enact more wide-ranging systemic reforms. Working with tenant associations helps students rethink the role of attorneys and truly embrace “community lawyering” principles. Students must employ a dynamic array of legal tools to help these associations and organizations achieve their goals. One of these tools, of course, is litigation, though such litigation may take place in atypical forums such as municipal code enforcement proceedings. In some instances, student-attorneys represent individual members of tenant associations facing eviction as a means to both safeguard the rights of the individual and strengthen the organization itself. Student-attorneys may also help tenant associations learn about their legal rights and responsibilities through know-your-rights presentations, draft association bylaws, bargain and enforce consent decrees, and draft policy and regulatory comments. Perhaps most importantly, working with tenant associations and other grassroots organizations provides students with an exercise in humility and active listening. The presentation will focus on various ways that law school clinics can support grassroots tenant organizations and - in the process - gain key lawyering skills. This session will also examine challenges that are inherent in community lawyering and how to address and mediate those challenges throughout the semester.