Excuse Me: Teaching Interrupting Bias as a Lawyering Skill

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Salon 6 and 7

Floor: Third Floor

Many experiential education teachers are incorporating classes on how to recognize implicit bias in order to encourage our students to recognize bias both within the legal profession and within themselves. Missing from most experiential education syllabi, however, is an explicit discussion of how to deal with bias when confronted in the workplace, including gender-based bias and harassment from colleagues, courts, and clients.

While this panel’s presenters recognize the need to stop biased behavior at the source (i.e. by reforming the perpetrators), we also feel strongly that students need the skills to address it when it happens. Either as a target of bias or as a bystander, students must have the tools to interrupt bias, create safe spaces, and advocate for themselves and others, all while acting professionally and preserving workplace relationships.

This panel features a number of presenters from across the experiential education spectrum including clinical fellows, externship faculty, and clinical professors. Presenters and attendees will discuss their own experiences teaching how to respond to bias and share lessons learned from addressing these (often sensitive) situations in the context of experiential education.

In addition to discussing effective responses to implicit and explicit bias, micro- and macro-aggressions, this session will offer participants concrete methods for teaching these skills to students in a variety of settings, including how to incorporate popular culture, media, and technology. Our intention is to provide materials, discussion questions, and exercises that will enable participants to immediately incorporate teaching this lawyering skill into their curriculum whether it is through a clinic seminar, a training session, or individual supervision.