Cultivating Empathy as a Crucial Lawyering Skill

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Plaza B

Floor: Lobby Level

Donald Trump’s election has inevitably led to placing marginalized communities in imminent danger. Policies such as the travel ban and the separation of parents and children forced the nation to grapple with its visceral reaction as the struggle between morality and legality played out in the news cycle. Poor communities of all types, and communities of color specifically, have not been safe from the whims of those in power for some time. However, the last two years have seemingly invigorated the desire among some to resist, fight back, and question the sanctity and security of the legal, political, and social customs we have come to accept as norms.
Many clinical law students will encounter the real-life consequences of this cultural shift for the first time in their role as legal counsel to vulnerable clients, and may present a range of reactions from reluctance and judgment to an impulse to rescue clients and play the hero. This backdrop provides ample fodder for much-needed innovation within the clinical space. As clinicians, we provide our students with training that prepares them to be zealous advocates. Fact gathering, issue spotting, motion practice, and oral advocacy are crucial skills to be taught and learned, but in order to be truly prepared, students must also learn empathy and the role it plays in every interaction with clients and the legal system. Our task is to provide them with the framework to navigate ethically, morally, and empathetically through interactions in which they hold power and privilege. In this session small break out group conversations will delve deeply into some of the issues implicated in training students in empathy-centered legal practice.