The challenges facing society today threaten to cause grave harm to underrepresented and marginalized individuals. To secure justice during these extraordinary times requires diverse subject matter expertise, multifaceted skills, and – above all – the ability to collaborate across disciplines and step out of silos. Multidisciplinary collaboration allows clinics to overcome individual limitations by augmenting resources, pooling knowledge, and taking ownership over acute issues within the larger framework. At the same time, these partnerships allow clinicians to teach students the value of and strategies for cross-subject collaborations. Drawing on their experiences, presenters will discuss how clinics at different universities can collaborate to deepen student learning and respond holistically and comprehensively to address clients’ multifaceted needs. The goal of this session is to train participants in collaborative methods to comprehensively address client and community needs, particularly in times of crisis.
The session will begin with a brief case study where concurrent presenters will describe a successful collaboration model, drawing upon their clinic partnerships with interdisciplinary professionals. Next, the leaders will moderate an interactive conversation among presenters and participants regarding specific teaching strategies and methods for engaging students and professionals from other disciplines in clinic work and strategies for overcoming challenges, with a goal of drawing out lessons that are transferrable across law clinic areas of focus and across partner disciplines. Participants will have an opportunity to develop a specific plan for incorporating professionals from other disciplines into their clinics, with feedback from other participants and presenters.