Overspecialized and Underprepared: A Critique of Clinical Legal Education and a Model for Change

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Union Square 23 & 24

Floor: Fourth Floor

In this moment of social, political, and economic polarization, clinical legal educators must do more than equip students with the technical skills necessary to conduct the daily tasks of lawyering, and also more than address a single social justice cause. If we want to graduate lawyers who can meet the pressing legal problems of our time, clinics must teach and model integrative legal processes that draw complex connections between social/legal problems such as domestic violence, community violence, gender inequity, racism, homophobia, poverty, crime, mass incarceration, childhood trauma, unaffordable housing, and the plight of undocumented immigrants.
This session challenges clinicians to consider whether the specialized practices of subject-matter clinics sometimes foster narrow approaches to legal problem-solving in our students. Panelists will discuss how three specialized clinics at Tulane Law School —the Domestic Violence Clinic, the Criminal Justice Clinic, and the Civil Rights Clinic —developed a model that encourages students to draw connections between seemingly unrelated legal problems, and promotes integrative, global thinking about legal solutions. Guided discussion will help participants identify specific ways to implement a more integrative approach to clinical teaching by exploring a three-prong approach: 1) multi-dimensional lawyering (approaching client problems from a variety of angles, examining the social and legal context in which they occur, and advocating for clients through multiple legal processes), 2) inter-clinic collaboration (creating joint projects that encourage complex thinking about interconnected problems), and 3) integrated law and policy (examining the legal and institutional structures that contribute to a social problem, and then developing related training, policy, or law reform).