This session will explore a prevailing worry among the current generation of law students who come to law school wanting to do something about the racially disparate impact of the US criminal legal system and mass incarceration: If they choose to become a public defender, will they be a “legitimizer” of a flawed system that needs to be abolished? The goal of this session is to confront this issue honestly and creatively in order to more effectively teach students in criminal defense clinics and provide the necessary tools and perspectives for them to sustain a career in indigent defense. Participants in this session will do the following: (1) identify productive ways to confront the “binary” of being deeply critical of the current system--or wanting to abolish it--and being a player in it on behalf of the poor accused and convicted; (2) develop strategies for criminal clinicians to resist a certain “generational defensiveness” about our life’s work when challenged by students who might see things differently; (3) figure out ways to engage students in criminal defense who consider themselves abolitionists without either pandering to them or scorning them; (4) construct a class--with curricular materials and a teaching outline--that addresses the question “Can You Be an Abolitionist and a Public Defender?”