Revisiting Essential Skills for Law Students in an Era of Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Governing by Disruption

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Wabash Room

Floor: Third Floor

This session will focus on the challenges of clinical law teaching and social justice lawyering in this new political era of governing by disruption and disorientation. Law students are preparing to become professional participants in these changing systems, and must learn skills to equip them to function effectively in rapidly changing legal environments that no longer operate in time-trusted ways. In this session, we will explore our students' experiences in this current era, explore some essential skills that we think are necessary for students to succeed, and then work together on ways in which we can effectively teach and cultivate these and other important skills.
The format will be interactive, using video clips and/or hypothetical scenarios. Discussions will first take place in large group to establish a common framework and identification of the key issues to be addressed. We will present why and how we focus differently on four essential lawyering skills: fact analysis and objective fact finding in the era of "fake news," non-defensive communications skills for achieving understanding rather than polarizing situations, professional self-awareness and self-regulation in lawyering, and self-care to mitigate the multiple stresses of working in these challenging environments. Participants will work in small groups to identify their own current issues in their particular environments and what changes they have made in their teaching and supervision. We will then move to large group discussion to brainstorm suggestions for integrating more attention to social values and moral principles, discussion of professional identity along with more attention to core lawyering skills that are essential for effective law practice in disruptive social/political environments.