Teaching Collaboration Across Clinics and Institutions

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Franciscan A

Floor: Ballroom Level

Reaching toward a future with equity and without oppressive institutions is not something that lawyers do alone. We must work in collaboration with our clients, within our own institutions, and across institutions to seek justice. Teaching law students this key concept and providing them opportunities to exercise these practices is fundamental to teaching hope as a discipline. In this session, clinical directors from the East Bay Community Law Center (Berkeley Law) and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles will discuss methods for incorporating these practices for teaching collaboration in case work and in policy work. The presenters for this session both direct clinics that directly collaborate with other clinics in their law school programs. Understanding that a key component to ending the school to prison pipeline for young people is collaboration between juvenile defense attorneys and education attorneys, both EBCLC and LLS have collaborative education and juvenile justice clinics. The presenters will share with attendees practical strategies for increasing collaboration within an institution across clinical programs, including discussions of case reviews/case rounds (sharing case rounds tools), co-teaching/cross teaching classes with other clinics, and using case management systems to further collaboration. The presenters will also discuss how to take lessons learned from case work and utilize it in a broader context to address systemic issues through cross-institution collaboration in policy work. Both presenters have extensive experience addressing school to prison pipeline issues in California through participation in various state and local policy initiatives. Through community lawyering and policy advocacy, law school clinics can address systemic issues across institutions and teach law students the value of this work through abolitionist and movement lawyering frameworks. The presenters will discuss ways to increase these opportunities for law students through policy projects and/or separate, stand alone policy clinical experiences.