Race, Lawyering & the Experiential Curriculum

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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Five overlapping developments—the growth of experiential courses following the ABA’s adoption of a six-credit experiential requirement, the racial reckoning many law schools have undertaken in the wake of Black Lives Matter, the redoubled efforts by critical race scholars to reform the 1L curriculum, the professional identity curriculum movement, professional competency studies that confirm the soundness of the experiential project, and potential changes to the bar exam—provide the clinical legal education movement with the opportunity to root our pedagogy even more deeply in the curriculum. Clinicians have been instrumental in these initiatives. Join us in a conversation about how we can tie each in common cause. How can we as a clinical community seize these opportunities to further institutionalize clinical pedagogy? How do we strategize around the growth of experiential courses? How can we reform the 1L curriculum? What does antiracist legal pedagogy look like? Antiracist professional identity? How can we leverage professional competency studies to advocate for changes in the bar exam? What are our next steps? In this session, we assemble clinical and non-clinical law teachers to lead discussion of these and other questions with the goal of sharing and learning from each other’s experiences, developing a common perspective, and formulating successful strategies. We aim to break traditional silos (clinical v. doctrinal v. legal writing) and engage in wide-ranging but practical discussion of issues and next steps.