Fostering Wholehearted Lawyers through Clinical Legal Education

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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This interactive session will explore how clinical legal educators can foster wholeheartedness in their work, for themselves as well as their students. Wholehearted lawyering means bringing our full selves into our work using relational practices and habits of mind situated in three overlapping and interconnected dimensions: the personal (eg., character strengths and values; self-awareness; reflection) the interpersonal (eg., deep listening; storytelling; empathy; cross-cultural communication) and the systemic (eg., racial justice and equity; bias, power, and privilege; transformative approaches to law and lawyering). We and our students can pursue wholeheartedness through mindful engagement, which means harnessing our emotions and body wisdom as well as our analytical minds. Wholehearted lawyering contributes to law students’ positive professional identity formation and wellbeing and enhances their ability to work effectively across differences to bring about positive social change. Clinical legal education offers unique opportunities to cultivate these competencies on many levels, in part by placing students in the role of a lawyer with meaningful opportunities for feedback and reflection. The session will illustrate these points using stories and examples from the Stern Community Lawyering Clinic at the Drexel University Kline School of Law. Participants will be invited to consider ways their work already supports wholehearted lawyering or might be adapted to incorporate some of these ideas.