Clinical programs sometimes find themselves under attack for representing unpopular or controversial clients or clients challenging big business or state and local governments. When disagreeing with the actions of a clinic, politicians, alumni, university donors, and businesses have too often sought to use their economic and political influence to shut down or control a clinic. Today, with heightened backlash against those seeking social and legal change, clinics must be aware of the risks of their representation and of strategies for effectively countering any backlash. Resilient clinics cannot allow outside interference to prevent them from representing vulnerable clients and marginalized communities in need of legal assistance.
This session will provide attendees with the knowledge and tools they need to help avoid or respond to efforts to interfere in their clinic matters. The session will begin with an examination of the history of attacks on clinic legal work, including the most recent controversy involving the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University. The discussion will identify patterns from these attacks and ways in which clinics were able to, generally successfully, fend off the interference.
The session will then address the unique professional responsibility, academic freedom, and First Amendment issues that clinic educators face in their dual roles of lawyer and educator, including the tension between the individual lawyer-professor’s academic freedom and professional responsibility to clients and the law school’s decision-making authority. The presenters will discuss strategies for resisting the attacks, emphasizing the roles of academic freedom and rules of professional conduct.
The final part of the session will challenge members of the audience to consider how their clinic also might find its cases or clients subject to criticism or attack. The presenters will then moderate a discussion among participants about how best to respond to the examples.