Providing Competent Representation in a Surveilled and Algorithmic World: What Students Need to Know

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Plaza B

Floor: Lobby Level

Government agencies, private employers, schools, landlords, medical providers, financial services, and even family members are all using a variety of surveillance technology and “big data” risk prediction algorithms to control and manage various (vulnerable) segments of the population. Immigrants, people of color, poor people and people with disabilities are subject to intense scrutiny—scrutiny made possible and scaled-up by the use of these technologies. These risk prediction algorithms and surveillance technology act as carceral tools, severely limiting the freedom and autonomy of the individuals subject to them and reifying historical patterns of inequity. Students may have been raised in the world of computers and the internet, but many come to legal practice with fear and anxiety about this kind of surveillance creep, and their ability to provide adequate representation to their clients in the face of what may feel like insurmountable odds. As clinical instructors teach students the substantive areas of law in which we practice and the lawyering skills necessary to do the work, it is critically important that we also teach our students to interrogate the technologies that are emerging in their fields. The presenters practice and/or research in different substantive areas currently affected by emerging technologies: immigration, family regulation, disability and civil rights law and poverty law and economic justice. The session will begin with the panel presenting some of the technologies affecting clients in each of these areas. They will then turn to strategies clinicians can use to identify, investigate, and educate themselves and their students about technologies emerging in their fields, as well as strategies they can use in their representations to challenge the use of these tools against their clients. Attendees will be invited to share their own experiences and strategies, thereby build a tool kit for increasing students’ capacity to challenge digitized surveillance.