Summary Prepared by Dean Hill Rivkin, University of Tennessee College of Law

The UCLA/Pepperdine Colloquium was jointly planned by faculty members and staff at the two schools. The planning committee also included faculty from other southern California law schools. Bill Hing was the representative from the AALS Project Steering Committee.

The Colloquium began on the afternoon of April 20, 2001, at Pepperdine Law School in Malibu. Approximately 30 people attended on what turned out to be one of the few rainy afternoons of the year. The attendees spanned several law schools, including a faculty member from BYU Law School, members of the judiciary, public interest and legal aid lawyers, community activists, and bar representatives. Elliott Milstein and Dean Rivkin also attended.

The first plenary Session was entitled “Taking Court to the Streets: Developing Collaborations Among the Courts, Legal and Social Services Providers, and the Community.” Jill Jones, a clinical law teacher at Pepperdine was the moderator. Professor Jones directs the Skid Row-Union Rescue Mission Legal Clinic, where Pepperdine students do clinical work. The first speaker was Nancy Chand, an LA Public Defender. She discussed the innovative Homeless Court in LA. In the Homeless Court, homeless defendants charged with quality of life offenses are referred by social service providers and are placed on restorative programs. Upon completion of the program, their warrants are dismissed. The leading force behind the creation of the Homeless Court, Judge Michael Tynan spoke next. He observed that the Court was the outgrowth of the what he termed as the crisis in the criminal justice system. This crisis is characterized by chronically overcrowded jails populated with homeless and mentally ill people. Judge Tynan recounted the political maneuvering that was necessary to the creation of the court-trying to reconcile the differing interests of prosecutors, public defenders, judicial personnel, and, toughest of all, the police. He sold the idea of the Homeless Court by emphasizing the financial savings that such a Court could realize. The location of the Court became an immediate issue. Ultimately it was placed in the downtown Union Rescue Mission, where students from Pepperdine and UCLA have been indispensable to the functioning of the Court.

Judge Tynan also discussed the still experimental but so far successful Drug Courts in LA. This Court operates on a rigid treatment model that seeks to rehabilitate drug offenders. To start, the LA Sheriff offered the program a facility for a treatment center. Through grant funds, two million dollars was raised for a staff and the facilities. There have been many success stories, offenders who leave the program drug-free and remain that way.

Finally, Judge Tynan analyzed the concept of the community court. He stressed that lawyers in these courts play nontraditional roles. The Public Defender, for example, does not have an advocacy role in the Homeless or Drug Court. He or she operates more like a social worker, while prosecutors truly have the opportunity to do “justice.”

These stories emphasized the importance of context in teaching about doctrine in law schools. Does the traditional criminal law course consider the contexts of courts such as these? If this context is injected into coursework, new topics and ideas inevitably would emerge. A wholly different “theory of justice” would also have to be considered. Community defending and community prosecuting would become models to examine, and the “new” skills associated with this notion of lawyering would need to be teased out. Elliott Milstein noted that there is a false dichotomy between lawyering skills and social work skills. He stated that law schools have come a long way in teaching about lawyering roles and responsibilities. He also noted that law faculty are well-positioned to evaluate the impact of these new courts.

Others commented that law schools might need to examine their admissions processes to ensure that students will be more attuned to assuming the new roles that these courts demand. One person stated: “How do you teach character, enthusiasm, and delight in helping others?” Another participant, a public interest lawyer, noted that it is the rare law school course that teaches how to represent addicted people or mentally ill clients. “The whole package” of necessary skills is not considered.

The second Plenary Session was entitle “Missionary Lawyers: Mixing Faith and Advocacy.” The moderator was Christa Crawford of Pepperdine’s Union rescue Mission Clinic. The first speaker was Professor Robert Cochran of Pepperdine. He discussed his faith-based approach to teaching professional responsibility through a seminar entitled “Christ, the Law, and the Legal Profession.” Unlike a generic professional responsibility course, in this seminar students were encouraged to explore their personal beliefs about law and lawyering. He explained how the Union rescue Mission Clinic grew out of an exercise in this seminar.

Professor Larry Sullivan of Pepperdine’s Strauss Institute for Dispute resolution spoke next. He talked about his law school course on Religion and Dispute Resolution. In this course, Professor Strauss trains students in the skills of reconciliation, including the importance of giving people a voice in disputes. Next, Joe Templeton, and attorney with the Inner City Law Center, explained his legal work in representing homeless people and others in slum housing disputes. The discussion turned to what it meant for lawyers to “mix” faith and advocacy and whether law schools should use faith to address the question of what it means to be a lawyer. Bill Hing observed that, without relying on expressions of religious faith, he teaches his clinical students that in searching for allies around the issues that he and his students work on, he encouraged coalitions that included churches and other faith-based institutions. Other speakers encouraged what they saw s the movement toward faith-based legal aid programs, citing, for example, the positions taken by Bush and Gore on this issue during the Presidential campaign.

The final Plenary session was called “The Firm Meets the Street Lawyer: Advancing the Public Interest From the Private Bar.” The speakers were Lisa Jaskol from Public Counsel’s Homeless Persons’ Representation Project, Celest Liversidge, the Director of the Mobile Justice Foundation (a mobile legal clinic that travels to shelters and clinics), Bill Rehald of the LA frim of Rehwald, Rameson, Lewis & Glasner, and Christa Crawford, who made the transition from big firm practice to public interest lawyer. Several themes emerged: (1) public interest practice demands skills and creativity that neither law schools nor firms address; (2) the entreprenurial side of public interest practice is not a subject of teaching in law schools. As a result, students don’t have a good sense of the process that is necessary to realize their aspirations to do public interest lawyering; (3) finally, it was noted that law schools can lend resources and legitimacy to the teaching and practice of public interest law.

The Colloquium reconvened on Saturday, April 21, 2001 at UCLA Law School. Approximately 50 people were in attendance, including students from UCLA’s Public Interest Law & Policy Program. Dean Jon Varat opened the day by emphasizing growing the challenges posed by issues of access to justice. Bill Hing followed by summarizing some of the lessons that we’ve learned from the Colloquia series. A major one is the need for collaboration among law schools, communities, and other allies. Bill stressed that the Project was designed to reach the “hearts and minds” of all law faculty, not just clinical teachers. He noted that with the dearth of legal services for the poor in this country, it was incumbent on law schools to address this need.

Elliott Milstein spoke next. He first sketched the unfairness that permeates our legal system in areas such as death penalty representation and asylum advocacy. He recounted the extraordinary developments that have been triggered by the Colloquia Series, such as the initiation of a state-funded legal services program by the judiciary, who met at the Texas Colloquium and the dedication of the new President of the Florida Bar to access to justice issues, something that was spurred by the Colloquium at Nova law School.

Professor Richard Abel of UCLA Law School introduced the day’s aims. He elaborated on the dimensions of “legal inequality,” where lack of access to the legal system yields no justice at all. Professor Abel introduced the first speaker, Professor Jody Armour of USC Law School. Professor Armour began by stating that he owes a special debt to equal justice projects. He recounted how his father had been falsely convicted of a marijuana charge and how students from Ohio State Law School’s Postconviction Project had assisted in overturning his father’s conviction. He said that he “was honored to speak at an event like this and to complete the circle.” Professor Armour’s inspirational talk ranged widely over justice and injustice in the United States, focusing on prison populations and racial discrimination. He then turned to legal education, wondering why legal education forces students to abandon their “ aspirations, principles, and convictions.” He keenly observed that law students “learn the words but not the music.” He also quoted Audrey Lord, the poet: “You can never dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.”

The first Plenary Session was entitled “ Challenges to Achieving Equal Access to Justice: Perspectives from the Field.” The participants were distinguished public interest and legal services lawyers from the southern California. They included Scott Cummings from the Public Counsel Law Center, David Lash of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, Professor Gary Blasi of UCLA Law School, Julie Paik, the Family Law Facilitator of the LA Superior Court, Bruce Iwasaki of the Legal Aid Foundation of LA, and Abby Leibman of the California Women’s Law Center. Scott Cummings of Public Counsel, who does transactional work for low-income communities, began by saying that L.A. was an appropriate site for the final Colloquium because the city exemplifies the obstacles and opportunities in pursuing equal justice. He described the staggering complexities of poverty in the region, noting that 1 in 3 children in the area lived below the poverty line. He also called L.A. the “epicenter” of new progressive coalitions whose missions are to alleviate the inequalities in the marketplace and judicial system that characterize today’s world. He commended the Colloquium Initiative for attempting to bridge the divide between law school pedagogy and justice activism.

David Lash of Bet Tzedek Legal Services discussed the built-in responsive of the judicial system (a judge has to rule, afterall, whether rightly or wrongly) and the need for individuals to secure representation in the system. Professor Gary Blasi of UCLA discussed a study of pro se litigants in which tenants who represented themselves in Housing Court lost overwhelmingly compared to those who had a lawyer. He discussed how people need lawyers to obtain basic necessities such as health care, housing, food, etc.

Julie Paik of the L.A. Superior Court described her work as a Family Court facilitator. In this capacity, she assists a range of individuals who other wise would not have “access” to the courts in maneuvering through the system. Bruce Iwasaki of the Legal Aid Foundation raised the dilemma of progressives whether in law schools or in the public interest community. He talked about the real work of challenging illegitimate authority and redistributing wealth and how we often mask those goals by using terms such “equal justice.” In poverty law, “access” is not the same thing as “ending poverty.” The final speaker was Abby Leibman of the California Women’s Law Center. She discussed the need to move beyond the courts to redress poverty and inequality. She noted that creating a sense of “outrage” is part of the work of those promoting acces to justice.

A free-ranging discussion ensued. A list of impediments (both external and internal) to equal access was generated. The list included:

1. Geographical dispersion.
2. Language.
3. The invisibility of poverty.
4. Ignorance and complacency.
5. Classism, racism, gender bias.
6. The U.S. Supreme Court and its creation of barriers to justice.
7. Poverty.
8. Efforts to gut IOLTA, LSC, etc.
9. The precariousness of the working poor, who can’t afford legal representation.
10. The need for “community judging.”
11. The limited resources expended on legal services for the poor, which has generated methods such as triage, unbundling, restrictive case selection, etc.
12. The need for loan forgiveness to attract law students into progressive legal work.

The discussion then turned to the strategic efforts various legal organizations are undertaking to address these barriers. These efforts included targeted case selection (e.g., is the case within the organization’s mission? Can money be raised around the case? Can the case have a broader impact?). The need to listen to clients in meaningful ways was also raised as was responding “holistically.’ Doing more “community lawyering” was mentioned, defined as facilitating the provision of more nontraditional services and encouraging more organizing and community education.

Law schools, it was observed, can develop and teach new “skill sets” in such areas as media advocacy Universities can also do the needed outcome studies to determine what works and doesn’t. This is uncharted territory. The role of the private bar was also discussed.

The second Plenary was entitled “Meeting the Funding Challenge: A View From Funders and Others.” The members of the panel were: Professor Scott Wylie of Whittier Law School and a member of the Board of Governors of the Cal. State Bar; Alicia Dixon of the California Endowment (www.calendow.org); Neal Dudovitz, Director of Neighborhood Legal Services of LA County; Miriam Porter of the Open Society Institute; and Rex Heinke a private attorney and ead of the LA County Bar Association Foundation. The participants made the following observations:

1. To obtain grant funding it is critical for applicants and funders to translate for each other their needs.
2. It is important for applicants to explain how the work of the organization shifts the nature of the debate over social justice.
3. Collaborative proposals , which change the way people operate to leverage resources, are attractive to foundations today.
4. The issue of “evaluation” is becoming increasingly important. How to measure the value of a project is a topic receiving intensive attention.

The third Plenary was entitled “ Building an Equal Justice Community: Innovative Roles and Relationships for Law Schools.” The panel members, all Professors, were: Scott Wylie of Whittier, Greg Ogden of Pepperdine, Rick Abel of UCLA, Sande Buhai of Loyola, and Carrie Hempel of Southern Cal. Each described the clinical and other programs at their respective schools. The range of legal work performed by the law schools was expansive. From direct service work in special education, homeless representation, children’s rights, postconviction work, family violence, disability rights immigration, etc. to public policy advocacy in education, to the publication of resource manuals for practitioners, each of the presenters portrayed various pathways of law school involvement in social justice issues in the community.

Rick Abel discussed UCLA’s innovative Public Interest Law and Policy Program. He first recounted the “most corrosive “ features of the law school environment for public interest work. These include:

1. The perception, particularly among students of color, that their own communities may think that they are doing public interest work by default, meaning that they didn’t qualify for the brass ring of big firm employment.
2. The public interest community itself is very elitist. There is a great emphasis on grades and pedigree among different strata of the public interest bar, and the work is often portrayed as a sacrifice, when it’s not.
3. The mentoring that is an integral part of UCLA’s program changed the law school experience for the students in the program.
4. Public interest law needs to be integrated into the curriculum.
5. Having a peer group within the law school and the broader community made a difference.
6. The traditional yardsticks of success in law schools (e.g., summer law firm salaries) need to be confronted. Students should not be “measured” against these firms or be inculcated with the message that the only locus of change is from within. Students should be taught how to shift power and make progressive change happen.

Abel also made other telling observations about the dynamic of building support for justice work in law schools. These were:

1. With the battle for the legitimacy of clinical education won, why hasn’t recognition of the value of clinical work spread more broadly throughout the curriculum?
2. Student-driven projects, such as the Workers’ Justice Project at UCLA, in which students work with mentoring practitioners, should be recognized for their educational value outside the traditional curriculum.
3. Law schools should pay more attention to issues like the integration of lawyers into the community.

The Colloquium concluded with an energetic group discussion. Among the points and questions raised were:

1. Law schools need to think about skills, knowledge, networks, incentives continuing beyond law school.
2. How can we insert into the law school environment alternative images of success?
3. Law schools need to educate about serving less sympathetic clients as well as the “deserving poor.”
4. Traditional coursework marginalizes public interest work by breeding cynicism-for example in jokes about greed and students losing their souls.
5. We shouldn’t overlook the progress that has been made in the last twenty years in creating a public interest community in legal education.

The UCLA Colloquium was a suitable finale for the Equal Justice Colloquia Initiative. It raised the complexities of the concerns that are driving us and the different approaches like-minded people are taking toward a shared end. As with clinical legal education 20 years ago, this movement, which builds on the foundation laid by the clinical movement, will grow in ways that are not predictable now.

For additional registration information for the Pepperdine University School of Law program contact:
Margaret Barfield
Administrative Assistant
Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, California 90263
(310) 506-4653
mbarfiel@pepperdine.edu