In this moment of retrenchment, in which hard-won civil rights are under attack and our client’s legal needs are greater than ever, it is vital that we foster community among clinicians to exchange ideas and support each other in producing scholarship. This session will focus on creating and sustaining scholarly communities among clinicians who seek to develop scholarship that promotes enduring social change. For at least the last decade, the Mid-Atlantic Clinical Writers Workshop (MACWW) has fostered a collaborative community to workshop scholarship among regional clinicians. During this time, MACWW has become known for its collegial and constructive atmosphere and now draws several dozen clinical scholars from the region who workshop their pieces and provide feedback and commentary to colleagues. The scholarly topics addressed in the workshops, which transitioned to virtual convenings during the onset of the pandemic, range from clinical pedagogy to the substantive areas of law that the participating clinicians address in their clinical work. This thirty-minute lightning round session will feature facilitators and participants of the MACWW who will address issues and questions inherent in creating and sustaining an effective scholarly community for clinicians, including:
• Why organize a clinical writer's workshop?
• How to design and launch an informative and collegial clinical workshop series?
• Why do regional workshops present innovative models to share clinical scholarship?
• How to effectively facilitate workshop sessions?
• How to encourage participation in regional clinical writing workshops?
• How to sustain collaborative and supportive writing communities for clinicians?
This session will begin with panelists addressing these questions and engaging with the audience to address their questions about effectively fostering supportive, scholarly writing communities among clinical scholars.