Now, more than ever, with the attacks on affirmative action and the fear-mongering around crime and criminality, we need law schools to be accessible, inclusive, and equitable spaces. Clinical professors are in a position to fight for greater access to law schools and can begin to engage in this fight at their campuses. With expanded access to undergraduate education and a shift towards movement lawyering, law schools are seeing an increase in students who themselves have been directly impacted by the law. A movement lawyering approach necessitates the leadership of people from communities most directly impacted.
However, most directly impacted people often feel that law school is an inaccessible place. This is especially true for formerly incarcerated and systems involved (FI/SI) people. A major barrier to access is the criminal history questions on law school admissions applications. All but three law schools in the United States ask some form of a criminal history question. The schools that have removed it are part of a recent and growing consensus that these questions serve no purpose other than to exclude under-served segments of our population.
This panel will serve as a call to action for clinicians who understand the power of having law students with lived experience in their clinics, working directly with clients. Clinicians can play a powerful role in changing institutional practices that serve to exclude this group of individuals from attending law school.