In the current historical moment, politicians and pundits frequently distort facts in order to achieve political objectives. Lawyers have emerged as the backbone of the resistance, calling out these falsehoods while shining light on the experiences of marginalized communities and the impact of policy decisions. Indeed, lawyers have been working to defend the rule of law against the corrosive effect of government mendacity and obfuscation. Yet lawyers themselves have always had a complicated relationship with the “truth.” Scholars have long debated whether the lawyer’s role is ultimately about truth telling, or whether zealous advocacy on behalf of a client requires shielding oneself from unfavorable facts, and narrative processes can create unconscious filtering and bias effects.
The goal for this concurrent session is to provide a framework for engaging clinic students on questions relating to truth telling, fact investigation, and narrative. A related goal is to add additional analytical lenses -- ethical norms, and the resurgence of both civil disobedience and calls for increased civility – and assess their impact on how and what we teach our students about truth telling.
The presenters will engage participants in a discussion of relevant considerations and examples and briefly share their own view. They will use a hypothetical case and small group work, and a brief role-play to encourage attendees to consider ways to surface these issues in the context of case supervision. Additionally, the presenters will describe a shared experiment in which each of them taught this topic separately in their clinic seminar, and then engaged their students in a joint virtual discussion about the topic. This experiment, albeit limited in scope, provides some empirical insight on how students perceive this topic. Additionally, the presenters will describe how they structured their individual class sessions and joint conversation.