Excavating Hope Through Clinical Teaching and Substantive Practice

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Plaza A

Floor: Lobby Level

Students who enter the legal profession with the goal of advancing social justice must learn to bridge the gap between their idealized vision of tomorrow and the reality of today. Hope can provide the fuel necessary to do so. But how do you define hope for law students facing a world stratified by race and inequality and awash in oppressive systems and institutions? What are the barriers to hope that need to be uprooted and upended, and what tools and techniques do you impart to students to do so over the course of their public interest careers? How do you draw hope from clients, communities, and causes to advance racial and social justice? How do you redefine goals and shift strategy when advocacy and litigation efforts fall short? How do you teach students to wield the law as a tool to dismantle the status quo, while looking toward a vision of a more just, fair, and equitable world? This session will bring together clinicians whose substantive work centers on practice areas infected by legally sanctioned histories of racial injustice and economic inequality for a moderated conversation framed by these critical questions. The goal is to equip attendees with the tools needed to imbue the students they teach with hope while operating in oppressive systems that are bolstered by a legal regime designed to maintain an inequitable and unjust status quo. Attendees will gain insights about teaching students to find hope in unexpected places; drawing inspiration from clients and communities to foster hope; incorporating an abolitionist vision into clinic design; leveraging outrage over injustice to engage in transformative legal advocacy; using case rounds and class conversations to engage seemingly intractable problems and formulate pragmatic solutions that brings the law, practice, and policy one step closer to a transformative vision.