Naming Our Core Values when Teaching and Lawyering in a time of Crisis

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Salon 12

Floor: Third Floor

This session considers how emergencies put pressure on some traditionally-accepted best practices of clinical legal education. We will use the experiences of several immigration clinics in 2017 and 2018 to consider how difficult situations have given rise to new, and sometimes exciting and fruitful, practices. We will emerge with a clearer understanding of which best practices are non-negotiable, and whether crises call upon us to reconsider everything from choices about non-directiveness to how we define success for ourselves and our students. During the session, we will provide examples of how recent events have called for different levels of “re-invention” in our clinics. Then we will collectively name our prior best principles, and consider which, if any, we have needed to bend. We will begin assessing whether those adaptations were fruitful or costly. We want participants to leave with a framework for naming and reflecting upon such choices in their own clinical context. Please note that, while led by immigration clinicians, this session should appeal to all who feel that their work has reached a level of “crisis” prompted by shifts in the political climate and in government policy.