Clinical Legal Education and the "Making a Murderer" Moment

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Session Type: AALS Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: N/A

Room: Crystal Room

Floor: Third Floor

Netflix’s docuseries Making a Murderer told the stories of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man exonerated of rape before being later convicted of murder, and his sixteen-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey, who gave what is widely viewed as a false confession to helping his uncle commit the murder. Viewed by more than 20 million people, their stories will continue to be told: Netflix is now creating Season Two of Making a Murderer, which will continue to follow these cases.

The Making a Murderer story, however, is also the story of clinical legal education, as Dassey’s longtime attorneys are clinical faculty members at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Indeed, Season Two was filmed in part at Northwestern and will feature the work of clinical law students. In this sense, it will shine a spotlight on the awesome impact of clinical legal education. The law school clinic, we hope, will be portrayed not only as a valuable pedagogical space for teaching lawyering skills, but also as a laboratory of ideas in which interdisciplinary scholarship is tested and honed in real-world litigation to seek better, more just rules that govern society.

We hope to energize our fellow clinicians around the idea that building visible public support for our work is one opportunity we cannot afford to miss. Please join us for a highly interactive session that includes a presentation of this Making a Murderer moment, an exploration of the potential attention that will be focused on clinical legal education, and a collaborative brainstorming session regarding the ways in which the clinical community can leverage the upcoming release of Season Two of Making a Murderer to build our reputations, both individually and collectively, and increase awareness of and support for our work among the public and key stakeholders.