The Pace colloquium began with a Thursday night dinner that was planned for deans, associate deans, and legal services directors. Attendance wasn't huge (about 25, with 5 of the 13 schools represented by deans) but New Yorkers had a world-class alibi - it was the night of what turned out to be the last game of the Subway Series. Judge Juanita Bing Newton, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Justice Initiatives, gave an inspiring talk, as did Elliott Milstein, of course. Judge Newton recently was appointed by Chief Judge Kaye to this new position, and she is traveling around the state, looking at how the courts can better serve under-represented groups. Vanessa reported on the results of the survey distributed to deans (she received 16 responses from 13 schools), which, not unexpectedly, portrayed a rosy picture of how schools value public interest scholarship, service and teaching. The discussion of the survey was lively, and Vanessa followed it by distributing an exercise, in true clinical fashion. She put together a packet of articles on public interest subjects, including traditional law review pieces, bar association studies, case books, articles for practitioners, and op ed columns, and asked us to rank them using two criteria: how each piece would be viewed by a tenure committee, and how useful the piece would be to legal services practitioners. The group spent more time critiquing the exercise than actually engaging in it, but it certainly provoked a spirited discussion. Vanessa finally had to kick us out because the staff wanted to clean up and go home.

The Friday program was quite well attended, with more than 70 participants, probably equally divided between academics (primarily clinical) and practitioners. Unlike the other colloquia to date, the day was spent almost entirely in working groups. Vanessa outlined the structure in a brief opening session, and distributed a sample action agenda, listing various ways law schools could work more closely with legal services offices, that could be used as a starting point. (I've asked Vanessa to post this and her other materials to the list.) We then broke up into 5 groups: Civil and Administrative Procedure, Family-DV-Childrens Law, Criminal Justice, Health-Elder-Disability Law, and International-Human Rights-Immigration Law. The groups ranged in size from about 10 to 20 participants, and each had a raporteur and a law student with a laptop to take notes. At lunch, we heard from Deb Howard of the Consortium Project, Laura Abel from the Brennan Center, and Professor Randolph Scott-McLaughlin, who directs Pace's Social Justice Project. The speakers gave brief, descriptive and informative summaries of their programs.

After lunch, the working groups met again, and at the end of the day, we reconvened to report and plan for the future. Among the great ideas generated were: greater access to law school facilities (office space, law library, computer resources); better training of law students courtroom competencies, appreciation of facts, and "advocacy outside the box;" using first year orientation programs to highlight public interest practice; training for legal services supervisors in critique and simulation; from the Family Law group, a suggestion that every student in a traditional Family Law course should do an uncontested divorce; a clearinghouse staffed by the AALS to provide legal services offices with access to academics with needed expertise; a "hot line" program for quick advice; a visitor program for faculty to spend a semester at a legal services office at their law school salary; the development of a regional coordinating committee (perhaps 2 faculty from each local school), to funnel requests for help, both immediate and long-term, from legal services to the faculty members with interest or experience; involving SALT in the big issues through amicus briefs and lobbying.

At the concluding session, Vanessa raised the issue of whether we should meet again to report on progress in the implementation of these ideas. It was felt that we should get together when we had concrete results to discuss. One suggestion was that instead of scheduling a colloquium for a full day during the week, which is difficult for practitioners, we should hold a session at the statewide legal services meetings that are convened on a regular basis. It was also suggested that the working groups need not be organized around areas of practice, since all of the groups had similar concerns; participants could divide by interest in particular action items.

All in all, this was a stimulating and very productive day, using a model that minimized "talking heads" and truly engaged the participants.

You may visit the Equal Justice pages on Pace University's website:

Colloquium information: www.law.pace.edu/pacelaw/events/ej-colloq-home
Schedule:
www.law.pace.edu/pacelaw/events/ej-colloq-program

If you are interested in the Equal Justice Colloquium at Pace University, please contact:
Vanessa Merton
Pace University School of Law
78 North Broadway
White Plains, NY 10603
(914) 422-4333
vmerton@law.pace.edu

www.law.pace.edu