Clinics and Community – Engaging in Local Politics as a Way to Further Clinic Reach and Depth

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Session Type: Lightning Sessions

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This lightning session will focus on the special value and importance of utilizing local community ties to further clinic reach and deepen students learning goals. Each of us teaches in a clinic in which students and faculty collaborate with other professionals (social workers, medical professionals, media, organizers, public health professionals, and/or members of other professions and disciplines, local businesses). Professor Nicholson is an elected member of a local city’s school committee; Professor Lindauer is actively engaged in local politics and initiatives, hosting roundtables and city council meetings at the law school. This work has brought us out of our disciplinary “silos” and into disciplinary dialogue as well as into collaborative, coordinated client service. Thus, we have found, interprofessional collaboration enhances our connectedness to community—in several senses of that word: • Engaging in community-based work, taking our clinics to places where prospective clients already live, work, and/or obtain services; • Helping our students to see clients’ legal issues in broader context; • Enabling us, our students, and our collaborative partners to recognize other professions as allies in helping clients find solutions that address their legal and non-legal needs; • Improving our understanding of the structural barriers faced by the geographic, racial, and/or other status communities from which our clients come; • Exposing students to alternate models of professionalization and professional ethics; and • Fostering positive relationships between the legal profession (and our law schools in particular) and other professional groups in our localities, enabling new coalitions for systemic change.