With a broken national government, social justice activists are increasingly looking to state and local governments and organizations to protect rights and ensure progressive social and economic policies. Clinics need to prepare our students with the skills and strategic approaches that will ensure that they can be effective lawyers and leaders in their local communities. In this session we will explore how you might adapt your clinic to focus more locally. Using an interactive format, we will identify the critical skills that students need that going local requires, including networking, organizing, collaboration, and humility; address predictable challenges of local work including town/gown issues, changing budget priorities and media engagement; design teaching methodologies that can be used across issue subjects; pinpoint the transferable learning outcomes you might expect from this work; and develop pitches for this work that will make it attractive to students and faculty.
Participants in this workshop will leave with an action plan for how they might transform their clinic to include a docket that prepares students for meaningful participation in local advocacy.