"[T]he current system for providing legal counsel to indigent parents accused of abuse and neglect in NYC neither protects the rights of parents nor serves the best interests of children. It denies due process, profoundly disrupts family life, and leads to inappropriately lengthy and costly foster care stays for children." The authors' extensive study describes the assigned counsel system and its problems and offers possible solutions to improve the whole Family Court system and to preserve families instead of destroying them.
This is a discussion of the ethical responsibility of lawyers to consider the common good in representing parties that are, in part, experiencing racial conflict. The article includes descriptions of certain lawyers that have recognized such a duty.
This article is a consideration of personal identification differences among lawyers, among clients, and between lawyers and clients, and what this means to being an effective community lawyer.
This article is a critique of Mark Feldman's article: Political Lessons: Legal Services for the Poor, 83 Geo. L.J. 1529 (1995).
"New thinking about public interest law integrates a critical approach to legal theories and practice with a visionary approach to social change." The author discusses the new public interest law in the context of old and new thoughts on the use of law to achieve social change. The vision of the role of lawyers in new thinking "represent three 'radical' moves: from the notion of neutrality to engagement; from the disjunction between law and politics to politicized representation; and from limited legal strategies to those which engender participatory empowerment and popular resonance."
In response to Professor Eric Yamamoto's article Critical Race Praxis: Race Theory and Political Lawyering Praxis in Post-Civil Rights America, 95 Mich. L. Rev. 821 (1997), the author argues that litigation is not the answer to significant social structure change, but rather that mass political movement assisted by litigation is required, as in the civil rights movement. The author also contends that the lawyer is limited in his efforts once he agrees to represent the client. Doing what is in the client's best interests is required by the lawyers ethics, and the social changes become secondary. Litigation tools for changing / enforcing the law are far narrower than political tools for changing / creating the law.
Jack Katz, Poor People's Lawyers in Transition (1982).
This book examines the influences on and attitudes of poverty lawyers and highlights the pressures on the attorney-client relationship stemming from the lawyers' individual political beliefs, sources of funding and oversight, organizational goals, and group versus individual needs.
This articles describes the history of landownership in El Salvador and the movement to narrow the gap between the economically dominant landowners and the itinerant rural peasants (campesinos) who work the land. The author suggests that there are lessons to be learned from by the El Salvadoran experience which are applicable to other subordinated peoples and that the traditional view of public interest law in the U.S. limits its effectiveness.
This article uses the case of Houston v. City of Cocoa (M.D. Fla. Oct. 26, 1990) to discuss how litigation may serve the goals of client and community empowerment.
Gerald P. Lopez, Rebellious Lawyering: One Chicano's Vision of Progressive Law Practice (1992).
This book discusses an alternative political theory of representing low income clients and addresses moral and professional ethics issues throughout.
David Luban, Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study (1988).
This book includes a chapter on "The People's Lawyer and Democratic Ideals" and chapters on ethical issues of client control and class conflicts within the subject of client control.
"The fourth installment of the [series], illustrates the importance of legal services advocates to the larger communities in which their clients live." This series of short articles from legal services practitioners around the country demonstrates the value of these practitioners to their communities.
This article begins by outlining the values served by conflicts of interest doctrine, including loyalty, confidentiality, and access. It then examines in greater depth the common carrier, moralistic, and monolithic models of legal services practice and concludes with a discussion of the kinds of conflicts that are most challenging in legal services settings: mission conflicts, doctrinal conflicts, and resource conflicts. Part II discusses ways of dealing with these conflicts based on the extant models of legal services practice. Part III outlines a contextual approach, which seeks to address the flaws of each of the other approaches. Part IV applies this approach to mission conflicts. Part V applies it to doctrinal conflicts of interest. In addressing these issues, the article maintains that the contextual approach preserves "the macro commitment to social access of the monolithic view, [addresses the] micro issues of social organization, and provide[s] legal assistance to clients, like tenants victimized by other tenants, for whom the monolithic approach lacks a ready category."
This article suggests "facilitative lawyering" as a model for preserving client autonomy in the attorney-client relationship, while working for social change. The author also differentiates this model from "client-centered lawyering" and the "collaborative" model.
Issues in representing a large group of clients with whom communication is problematic.
This article proposes several alternatives to traditional attorney-client relationships, such as hotlines, community education, volunteer paralegal assistance, and emergency assistance programs, to deliver legal services to the low-income elderly.
Susan M. Olson, Clients And Lawyers, Securing the Rights of Disabled Persons (1984).
This book describes the development of a style of social policy litigation that features greater participation by clients and employs differing goals and strategies from the classic model of social reform litigation; it also traces the political environment and social movements that makes this social policy litigation possible. The author argues that client participation is critical to success and especially helpful in consciousness-raising efforts. The author further suggests that the strategies employed in the disabled rights movement may be brought to use in women's issues.
Ascanio Piomelli, Appreciating Collaborative Lawyering, 6 Clinical L. Rev. 427 (2000).
The author provides a detailed analysis of collaborative lawyering using the "packing" of the East Palo Alto Rent Board as a basis. The author also finds Handler's, Simon's, and Blasi's critiques of Alfieri's, White's, and Lopez's work as unhelpful to efforts at collective social change.
This article contains the author's reflections about her representation of lesbian and gay activists and describes her involvement in civil disobedience lawyering. The author identifies the inherent conflicts of representing civil disobedience activists and states that "[e]very civil disobedience action needs a lawyer who does not blur the role between counselor and decision maker." The author answers her title question: she is not her own client.
Robert B. Porter, Tribal Lawyers as Sovereignty Warriors, 6 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 7 (WTR 1997).
This article is an "inspirational and informative written adaptation of [Professor Porter's] 1996 keynote address to the American Indian Student Prelaw Workshop. Professor Porter spoke on his view of the important role that Indian tribal lawyers play in preserving the sovereignty of Indian nations.
This article begins with interviews the organizers and stresses that the tools of empowerment lawyering included learning to join, to listen and to assist.
Data from 1990 and earlier shows a decline in LSC representation in Federal courts, indicating the emphasis on individual services rather than on social impact litigation. LSC's priority is to amass large numbers of cases in an attempt to justify its existence. The author calls on the ABA, the nation's larger law firms, and law schools to provide support for the litigation necessary to make sweeping social change.
Deborah L. Rhode, Class Conflicts in Class Actions, 34 Stan. L. Rev. 1183 (1982).
A discussion of the types of conflict which may arise in various types of class action suits, including typical public interest cases such as school desegregation, employment discrimination, and prison reform.
Article describes the efforts of the "Bronx Defenders," an indigent criminal defense group, in changing the perception of the traditional overworked public defenders office. "Working with social workers, drug treatment programs and community groups, [the group has] increase[d] their mandate to the 'whole client,' a practice that has garnered the New Age moniker 'holistic advocacy.'"
Using civil rights litigation as context, this article examines three models of decisionmaking when client group members disagree about goals and means, and proposes changes in procedural and ethical rules to encourage more productive decisionmaking in group litigation. Includes a discussion of pro bono and public interest representation of groups.
Professor Southworth uses the result of 69 interviews to consider what strategies civil rights and poverty lawyers pursue and what they believe they are accomplishing. In addition to litigation, most use multi-pronged strategies, such as lobbying, organizing grass-roots campaigns, training clients, and building coalitions, depending on institutional attributes and client characteristics.
Ann Southworth, Taking the Lawyer Out of Progressive Lawyering, 46 Stan. L. Rev. 213 (1993).
"Professor Southworth, in her review essay . . . faults [Gerald] Lopez for failing to provide a complete and accurate picture of both the process and the substance of lawyering for the poor. She contends that Lopez's model misses the ways in which lawyers can facilitate clients' assertion of control, and under-emphasizes the skills lawyers can and should offer to clients. Southworth describes a broad range of activities that lawyers are performing for poor clients today, including counseling and transactional work for community organizations and small businesses."
This book contains a series of short articles on public interest law. Briefly, law schools are designed to get top students jobs, not to develop lawyers with a zeal to serve; there is a lack of jobs for public interest lawyers; new graduates aren't prepared to enter public interest law on their own; law school placement offices need to consider the entire community, not just corporate opportunities for the select few; and the American Rule, whereby each litigant is responsible for respective costs, is detrimental to equal justice because of the barrier of legal fees leaving those without resources without a remedy.
The author contrasts two visions of the public defenders' office, one an institutional force in the justice system and the other, a collection of frantic lawyers dealing with huge caseloads. Public defender managers seek a unified office theme, but the realities of associate workloads preclude any effort to brainstorm and prepare cookie cutter style defenses.
The author argues that rebellious lawyering emphasizes the allocating of resources toward long-term solutions benefitting the community while regnant lawyering emphasizes short-term needs of individual clients, and maintains that the ethical considerations of rebellious lawyering must be examined.
Although this article primarily addresses questions of disability and diminished mental capacity in any context, it assumes that these questions will arise most frequently in representation of low-income persons. There are those who are not capable of making decisions for themselves, and intervention is therefore necessary. "Lawyers and the ethical rules that govern them, however, must acknowledge and counteract their natural attraction to dominance and manipulation. The trick is to assist clients while restraining lawyers."
This article examines the ways that lawyers and clients are collaborating to create more effective advocacy for battered women, low-income entrepreneurs, and nonprofit community-based organizations serving the poor as a result of changes in lawyering theory.
Stephen Wexler, Practicing Law for Poor People, 79 Yale L.J. 1049 (1970).
"The hallmark of an effective poor people's practice is that the lawyer does not do anything for his clients that they can do or be taught to do for themselves. The standards of success for a poor people's lawyer are how well he can recognize all the things his clients can do with a little of his help, and how well he can teach them to do more."
Law school clinics can become sites from which empirical and theory-building research can be built as part of advanced clinical courses. The author describes a clinical seminar that she designed and implemented and includes student observations of the experience. The author concludes with suggestions on expanding the range of clinical scholarship "to elaborate a new 'pragmatics' of community-based, collaborative lawyering for social change."
Lucie E. White, Paradox, Piece-Work, and Patience, 43 Hastings L.J. 853 (1992).
In their impatience to theorize their own practice, lawyer-theorists like Professor Alfieri risk usurping from poor people and their advocates the power to name the very forms of violence that pose formidable barriers to their empowerment.
We must still listen when others speak to us, and be moved. We must still seek to hear in the words of others not just negotiations of power, but appeals to our most difficult memories and deepest emotions.
When socially subordinate groups gain formal access to legal rituals, they are often perceived and indeed may feel compelled to speak in ways that invite dominant speakers to dismiss or devalue what they say.
"Empowerment through litigation": How advocates in welfare litigation can use the legal system to educate and mobilize, not just represent.
This article opens with a description of a pair of cases (Ho and United Minorities) and suggests that they "reveal[] a disjuncture between progressive race theory and political lawyering practice as well as an apparent dissociation of law from racial justice. It then present[s] a critical, pragmatic rethinking of antidiscrimination law practice in the context of a jurisprudence of reconstruction. And finally, it offer[s] the beginnings of critical race praxis response to problems of disjuncture and dissociation and outline[s] three consequences of this approach-the grounding of justice practice in concrete racial realities, the reframing of courts and justice claims as cultural performances, and the development of an interracial praxis."
Heightened disclosure requirements at the initiation of all tribal representations is the first step towards ensuring that cultural differences, paternalism, and conflicts of interest in the attorney-client relationship do not result in judgments detrimental to the interests of the tribe. Improved communications, particularly early in the representation, would add integrity and respect to the relationship in tribal litigation.
Rick Abel et al., Community Law Practice, UCLA Course Descriptions, Fall, 1999.
Syllabi of Law 510, Community Law Practice, Law 541, Problem Solving in the Public Interest Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, and Law 574, Policy Analysis for Public Interest Lawyers.
Jane Harris Aiken, Striving to Teach "Justice, Fairness, and Morality", 4 Clin. L. Rev. 1 (1997).
This article explores the need for teachers to be more outspoken about justice in legal education. It examines the MacCrate Report, which admonishes teachers to raise questions of justice, fairness, and morality that often accompany practical legal issues. The article points to the MacCrate report's identification of four fundamental values of the profession: provision of competent representation; striving to promote justice, fairness, and morality; striving to improve the profession; and professional self-development. The article argues that methods of promoting the second value--striving to promote justice, fairness, and morality--are less obvious and more difficult than they are for the other three values. The article criticizes the MacCrate Report for its brief discussion of this value and responds to it by presenting ways in which professors can teach future lawyers about how to promote justice in their daily practice. First, the article discusses the ways in which legal education is presently failing in this endeavor. Second, the article outlines a learning theory that offers a model for teaching about justice throughout the systematic study of incidents of injustice. The author then describes a clinical experience in which the students encountered injustice in the course of representing clients and analyzes how and why that experience affected the students' sense of justice. Finally, the article examines the ways in which the learning theory and the insights gained from this clinical experience can be applied in other clinical courses as well as in traditional law school courses.
Maureen N. Armour & Mary Spector, Epilogue: Theory in the Basement, 51 SMU L. Rev. 1555 (1998).
This article examines the dichotomy between theory and practice, in the context of modern legal education. This article argues that "from a clinical perspective, no conflict exists between theory and practice." It traces the history of the modern law school, noting that legal training once was acquired through an apprenticeship - on the job training. It explains how formal legal training evolved into the academy, from which divisions between theory and practice emerged. This article asserts that despite clinics' focus on "practice," clinical education is more than simply "practical." The author argues that "clinicians embrace theoretical perspectives in their teaching and in their research and writing," validating the belief that "any gap between theory and practice is illusory."
Milner S. Ball, Jurisprudence from Below: First Notes, 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 747 (1994).
Professor Ball relates his experiences with a course at the University Of Georgia School of Law with the "unpromising title 'Public Interest Practicum'" or PIP, where the class actively seeks public interest clients in Athens, GA juvenile courts and soup kitchens. The author then touches on the role of theory in legal education and calls for legal scholars not to lose sight of their interesting ideas and bury them under a mountain of "prose and authority."
This comment extends the article in the same volume by Professor Jane Aiken, Striving to Teach Justice, Fairness, and Morality, 4 Clin. L. Rev. 1 (1997) by reflecting further on the structure of legal education and its deficiencies in training students in the legal profession. The authors asserts that "the prevailing norms within legal education are inconsistent with students learning that the limited nature of their perspectives constrains their ability to represent clients in a fully competent manner." She believes that the entire law school, not just the clinical program, has responsibility for clients. This perspective, if adopted, would require revision of both curricular decisions and course content to "hold all persons in the law school community accountable for the delivery of high quality legal services to its clients." The article also looks at how the law school teaches students the values of the profession. The culture and values inculcated within the law school do not support a vision of lawyering that takes into account that lawyering involves responsibility to and relationships with others."
For those involved in clinical education, developing and refining creative solutions to the vicious cycle of deterioration in urban ghettos should be a priority.
This article discusses "the continuing transformation of legal education and the role of clinical education in training competent, ethical practitioners for the future . . . and how this third wave of clinical legal education will contribute to improving the future of legal education and the legal profession."
This article was part of the Minnesota Symposium on Legal Education and Pro Bono, that was a collaborative effort between legal educators and practitioners to increase the level of public service in the profession. Small groups discussed: Objectives of Developing A Pro Bono Policy; Mandatory or Voluntary; What, How, and Who of Structuring a Pro Bono Program; Financing a Pro Bono Program; and Pro Bono and the Law School Curriculum.
Susan D. Bennett, On Long-Haul Lawyering, 25 Fordham Urb. L.J. 771 (1998).
This article provides an account of the author's experiences in creating a law school-based community economic development law clinic to handle the legal issues of fledgling nonprofits, small businesses, tenant coops, and subsidized housing. The author provides insights into the challenges of such a clinic. She focuses on the concept of "long-haul lawyering," which she describes as "unbounded representation to the community." The author argues that such a practice is not orchestrated in a case-by-case manner, nor is it temporary in nature. Rather, it is a practice that requires the lawyer to become a part of the community and be willing to dedicate resources over time. Clients are not dismissed after resolution of a singular matter, but rather remain "clients for life." Accordingly, the author argues that mental, physical, and political stamina are the most important qualities of a long-haul lawyer. The author then explains how teaching the concept of long-haul lawyering to law students is particularly challenging. She argues that the longevity required for engaging in a community law practice is at odds with the brevity of the law school clinical experience, which often only encompasses a semester and encourages "lawyering-by-the-case."
This article is a frank discussion of the difficulties of teaching within traditional legal education settings and yet pursuing social change, including a discussion of the "Legal Theory and Practice" courses as taught at Maryland School of Law.
Barbara Bezdek, Reconstructing a Pedagogy of Responsibility, 43 Hastings L.J. 1159 (1992).
This article describes methods for teaching professional responsibility through investigation and personal reflection on the meanings of poverty.
The authors argue that the need has never been greater for competent, ethical attorney-advocates -- "lawyers skilled in the full range of techniques for resolving disputes and schooled in the exercise of judgment in their use." While the authors concede that the training of lawyers as advocates in law schools has improved, they maintain that few law schools undertake this task in a serious, disciplined way. The article discusses the University of Tennessee College of Law's establishment of a Center for Advocacy in 1993, created to prepare its students for the responsibility of representing clients early on in legal education.
The author seeks to identify the primary value of clinical legal education. While recognizing the benefits that stem from clinical programs, the author pinpoints the experiential learning process as the source of all other benefits. With this in mind, the author looks at how the experiences of students in clinical programs can change the face of legal education and practice. Through the use of three examples, the author describes "turning points" as a common feature encountered by those in experiential learning programs. These so-called turning points are situations where the "various forces that affect a lawyer's representation of his or her client" change. Unlike the fixed scenarios common to traditional law study, the experiential aspects of clinical education demand that students adapt to a dynamic of changing factors. Because of the immediacy of experiential learning, students are often profoundly affected by the cases they take and the changes they witness. The author argues that this social consciousness cannot be captured through traditional non-experiential instruction or simulation exercises. The author concludes that actual experience-based learning is crucial to developing students who are motivated to improve the law and the role of lawyers.
"The three paradigms identified in this article can inform the choices an externship clinician makes in working with students to resolve real-case ethics issues."
The authors address how a school's special mission to train public interest lawyers is implemented in the design and teaching choices of the clinic. An essential element is that students learn how to empower clients by using a client-centered approach.
This article considers whether an attorney-client relationship exists between a clinical supervisor and the legal clinic client. The article concludes that, in most jurisdictions, the prevailing law does not mandate such a relationship. This means that legal clinics are often free to construct the sort of relationship between the clinic and the client that will best advance its educational objectives and the interests of the client. The article discusses the reasons why clinics should take advantage of the freedom available under these rules to define the relationship in a way to work best for student and client. It concludes by describing some ways in which that relationship can be clarified for students and clients to avoid "a constellation of inconsistent expectations."
Introduction to the SALT conference, and its focus on the efforts to extend "teaching beyond the classroom and into the area of political engagement."
This article examines the differences in language and meaning that may affect the representation of a client possessing a different ethnic or socio-economic background from students and professors in a clinical law school setting.
This article provides description of an introductory course offering in ethics in the public interest. Both the format and the major issues covered in the course are included.
By allowing students to make a case against the first-year public interest law requirement, the author explains how such an exercise places them in the role of disadvantaged persons, thereby helping students to understand better important concepts of public interest law. The article contains a series of dialogues between teacher and student and among students to illustrate the benefits of positive recognition and self-help participation in the context of public interest law.
Jon C. Dubin, Clinical Design for Social Justice Imperatives, 51 SMU L. Rev. 1 (1998).
This article examines the social justice dimensions of clinical design features in the communities of South Texas's poverty belt. It begins by tracing the history of legal education and the evolution and growth of social-justice oriented directions of clinical education. The author points to the resurrection of clinical legal education's focus on social justice dimensions. The article next identifies and describes the social justice mission and the primary manifestations of that mission. The author maintains that the social justice mission is furthered by clinical legal education in three ways. First, through the provision of services and pursuit of legal reform on behalf of clients and community groups lacking access to legal resources. Second, justice ideals are served by exposing law students to an ethos of public service or pro bono responsibility to expand access to justice through law graduates' pursuit of pro bono activities or public service careers. Third, clinical legal education facilitates transformative experiential opportunities for exploring the meaning of justice through exposure to the impact of the legal system on subordinated persons and groups. Finally, the article examines some distinct characteristics of justice-oriented clinical design in underserved communities, praising St. Mary's University clinic's endeavors to foster social justice through holistic representation and service, community empowerment, advocacy across international boundaries, and through direct support, mentoring, and encouragement of alumni to create a self-perpetuating culture of lawyering in the public interest.
This book is a compilation of essays on social values and legal education and is the first publication of the International Working Group on Social Values in Law. These articles "hope to illustrate . . . the fulfilling role the law school can play in developing, transmitting and understanding the use of law to bring about social change to the advantage of subordinated people."
Jay M. Feinman, The Future History of Legal Education, 29 Rutgers L.J. 475 (1998).
The author writes that "my thesis is simple: Future historians will view our recent past (the early 1980s to the middle 1990s) as watershed in legal education." The article starts by characterizing every element of traditional law school as dominated by a unitary vision of the case method. The article charges that this focus has caused a divorce between law school and law practice. The new law school, however, is diverse "in the sense that no single, discrete vision motivates the curriculum, pedagogy, or scholarship of the school." Legal reasoning is cited as an example of how this new diversity has taken hold. Unlike "the traditionally analytical methods of the past," new legal reasoning is taught as a craft skill that involves a set of techniques and a mode of discourse. The author states that clinical experiences are crucial for the development of lawyering skills and the synthesizing of "legal reasoning, different bodies of doctrine, theories about the law, and lawyer skills." Lastly, the author notes that the new law school allows students the opportunity not only to analyze narrow and specific questions of law, but also to consider more general theoretical questions.
"The Legal Theory and Practice (LTP) program at the University of Maryland School of Law was founded on the idea that it is every lawyer's professional responsibility to provide legal services to people living in poverty. To make this idea both meaningful and persuasive to my students, I have reconceived professional responsibility to incorporate an 'ethic of care.' This ethic of care includes the ideas that students' professional lives are connected to the lives of those who live in poverty and that by working for and with people living in poverty, students can create relationships with clients and colleagues that are rewarding and sustaining."
This article focuses on the school as an access point; and deals with conflicts of interest among parents, children and school authorities.
The author describes his current work experience with The Legal Aid Society in New York City, and explains how his background in clinical teaching has benefitted him in many ways in his new position. The author contends that there exist problems with the current state of the clinical movement. First, the author identifies weaknesses of the clinical teaching method. He then notes that clinical teachers and poverty lawyers share common values and goals, but argues that the two communities have drifted apart. To remedy this, the author offers to the clinical community The Legal Aid Society as a laboratory for clinical research. He describes the vast resources available and offers them to clinicians in return for shared insights about this type of practice in an effort to foster the relationship between poverty lawyers and clinicians.
Based on the experience of the Child Advocacy Clinic at Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington, this article examines the practical, ethical, and pedagogical aspects of representing children in custody disputes through a "live client" in-house law school clinic. Parts I and II of the article describe the Child Advocacy Clinic at Indiana University and summarize the debate over clinical education, including benefits and potential pitfalls. Part III addresses the current debate over "best interest" versus traditional legal representation of children, exploring the ethical ramifications of the attorney-client and guardian ad litem ("GAL") models of representing children, in which the author extends unequivocal support for the GAL model. Part IV raises challenges and opportunities for law students in GAL representation.
Columbia University is embracing new technologies in the teaching of law. This article reviews advancements at Columbia and how the faculty is embracing the new technology. "For centuries, the law has depended on print technology. Now, electronic and digital technology is transforming the profession profoundly."
This article analyzes the historical development of a supervised externship program at American University, Washington College of Law. The article describes the externship program, emphasizing the externship seminars, taught for full credit by a broad cross-section of permanent, full-time faculty, as the centerpiece of the program. The authors analyze how the pedagogical theory of the externship program differs from, yet overlaps with and complements, the theory of the in-house clinical program. Part I of the article outlines the institutional history that led to the development of the externship pedagogy. Part II offers a description of the program's organization. In Part III, the authors present some of their thoughts on the directions for future development. Finally, the authors conclude with reflections on their experiences.
This note proposes that attorneys or paralegals provide classroom instruction in which legal problems common to the community are addressed and explained as a means of educating prospective pro se litigants. It also discusses, in part, the ethical issues raised by such a proposal.
Michael Meltsner & Philip G. Schrag, Reflections On Clinical Legal Education (1998).
The authors were members of the founding generation of clinical law professors. Their articles on clinical methodology, developed over a period of three decades, have profoundly influenced clinical supervision and the structure of clinical programs. Those essays, are collected in this volume, which includes a new introduction and Professor Karen Czapanskiy's 1996 bibliography of the literature on clinical teaching.
"These readings and materials-- articles, case histories, sample pleadings and class exercise--are intended primarily for the use of law students participating in clinical law programs and in non-clinical courses and seminars dealing with advocacy and public interest law."
Law school clinical programs experiment with limited-representation legal assistance model.
This articles describes Integrated Transactional Practice (ITP), developed at Temple Law School, which the author maintains "merges the teaching of theory and practice, keeps upper-level students engaged by providing a program of active learning, and provides a concrete and realistic context for students to experience the moral dimension of practice." ITP combines trusts and estates, professional responsibility, and transactional skills--interviewing, negotiating, counseling, and drafting -- in an integrated two-semester sequence. The article first explores the concept behind this course. Next, the article describes the course structure, skills teaching and mentoring, and integration and evaluation of the ITP. Finally, the article explores the benefits of teaching Integrated Transactional Practice. The author concludes that ITP "gives students a chance to learn the course material in a better and more realistic way, and also to appreciate who they are in their professional roles."
This article explores the use of an academic journal in an instructional setting. It seeks to explain the benefits of using such a tool and addresses the challenges educators face in achieving such benefits. Part II of the article begins with a discussion of the pedagogical goals that the author seeks to achieve through journal assignments, reflective of the author's current thinking about the important goals of legal education and the assessment of the contribution that journal assignments can make to these general objectives. In Part III, the author explores some of the challenges inherent in the use of journals and suggests how to respond to those challenges in a way that maximizes the pedagogical benefits journals can provide, while minimizing their costs, including the time commitment to the teacher. The author concludes that the total benefit to the students and to the teacher far outweighs the difficulties and costs.
The author explains how new law students, who have come to expect professional guidance from their employers, have in effect sacrificed autonomy over their career growth. The article describes ways in which clinical legal education offers opportunities for law students to gain professional direction from a more meaningful and self-directed process. This is accomplished because clinic programs often create structures and foundations that foster autonomous lawyering decisions by students. Instilling this autonomy is beneficial because it creates happier students and happier lawyers. This results in a more helpful and service-orientated profession. Because students are not trained to accept the "beaten path," they become thoughtful, reflective, and autonomous professionals who are more likely to enact changes within the legal system. After describing methods and exercises that can foster autonomy, the author concludes that clinical legal education is in a unique position to create meaningful change in the ability of lawyers to attain professional happiness.
This article discusses the role of law school clinical programs in developing lawyer strategies that emphasize non-litigation approaches to public interest law and problem solving.
Deborah Rhode, In The Interests of Justice, (Stan. L. Sch. Pub. L. Working Paper No. 15, 2000).
This paper, which is based on Chapter 7 of a forthcoming book, provides an overview of problems in legal education. It begins by examining law school structures, and suggests that the current "one-size-fits-all" model ill serves public concerns. Too many students are both over- and under-prepared to meet societal needs: they are typically overqualified to offer routine assistance at affordable costs, and they frequently are under qualified in practical skills and interdisciplinary approaches. Not only has legal education permitted too little diversity across institutions, it has also provided too little assurance of diversity within institutions. Women and men of color are still over represented at the bottom of academic hierarchies and under represented at the top. Women and minority students are also more likely to feel silenced in the classroom and to experience harassment outside it. They also report higher levels of disengagement and dissatisfaction with their law school experience. Part of the problem, the paper suggests, involves prevailing educational methods and priorities, which discourage involvement of less competitive students. Such methods also ill serve the needs of other students, by failing to provide the teamwork, practical, and empathetic skills that are necessary in practice. The paper concludes with some proposals for improving the structure, content, and methodology of contemporary legal education.
This article shows how an in-house appellate clinic synthesizes theory and practice while it trains students in appellate advocacy and professional responsibility. In Part I of this article, the author describes her in-house appellate clinic and summarizes five of its objectives. Part I attempts to demonstrate how such a clinic can unite theory and practice. In Part II, the author focuses on two of her appellate clinic's lessons in professional responsibility. Part II demonstrates how professional responsibility issues become entangled with the process of appellate work. In the conclusion, the author revisits Walter Pater's analysis of artistic achievement and attempts to further define an affinity between in-house appellate clinical education and music.
Suellyn Scarnecchia, The Role of Clinical Programs in Legal Education, 77 Mich. B. J. 674 (1998).
This article praises the role that clinics play in legal education and the development of professional identity. The article provides a description of University of Michigan clinical offerings, and examines the goals of the programs and the role that clinicians play, which include preparing students, assisting in the development of their professional identities, and exposing students to public interest law. While the author recognizes that there has been a growth in clinical programs in Michigan law schools, she argues that perceptions held by traditional classroom faculty and the high cost of clinical legal education remain two significant barriers to increased program growth. The author concludes that clinical programs in Michigan enrich the State Bar. They provide valuable training in legal analysis, practical skills, ethics and professional responsibility, as well as service to the community, and she appeals to judges and Bar members for support and promotion of clinical legal education.
This article provides an overview of the University of Kansas Elder Law Clinic. The author offers a brief history of the clinic. Composed of four broad categories of law, including health care, income maintenance, housing matters, and consumer problems, the clinic affords students the opportunity to learn substantive law and procedure from a variety of cases. The article identifies characteristics of the classroom component of the clinic, which include a combination of lecture and discussion on topics relevant to the work undertaken by the clinic. Another component of the clinic is the mandatory participation in the development of the Kansas Elder Law Network (KELN), a Web site designed to provide nationwide electronic access to primary and secondary materials pertaining to "elder law." The author concludes that elder law practice is a growing area of the law and recognizes the important role computers and Internet resources play and will continue to play in the context of law practice. Based on this, the author contends that the KU Elder Law Clinic and KELN are playing a very important role in serving the growing needs of society.
This article examines the quality of student representation in clinical settings. Part I of this article explores possible methods for comparing student representation with that provided by assigned counsel. It analyzes studies that have examined the quality of various types of criminal defense attorneys and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using an outcome based analysis as opposed to one focused on the degree of effort expended and the type of work performed by the attorneys. Part II discusses the means used to collect the relevant data and compares the outcomes of cases handled by students with those of other defense attorneys. Part III analyzes the nature and quality of the performance of lawyering tasks by students and defense attorneys for the indigent. In the course of that analysis, the article addresses the extent to which outcomes or results can be related to the effort put into the representation. The article concludes that students provide superior representation of defendants as compared to criminal defense attorneys,. The author expresses optimism that further examination of student defense counsel will lead to improvements in the delivery of indigent defense services.
Anthony V. Alfieri, Impoverished Practices, 81 Geo. L.J. 2567 (1993).
Part of a symposium at Georgetown Law School on "Critical Theories and Legal Ethics," this article provides a postmodern jurisprudential approach to client representation in poverty law practice.
This article examines the theory of ecological learning, which the author asserts "emphasizes co-participation in communal tasks, mutual respect from supervisors and peers, and responsiveness from the entire social environment." In Part II, the article begins with an exploration of supervisory sources of learning in traditional clinical terms, describing a full range of teaching/learning interdependencies with clinical supervisors including role-modeling, top-down collaboration, mentoring, case supervision, feedback, and mandatory reflection. Part III describes "participatory and lateral sources of learning that challenge and supplement the clinical model." In Part IV, the article addresses the more traditional concern of clinicians and focuses on the expert/novice interactions and explores how students acquire competence through interaction with their more senior colleagues. Finally, the article concludes by proposing a model of guided participation in "apprentice-like opportunities" as the best means to assist the socialization of a novice and ensure the "rapid replication of expertise."
Suppose a few poverty law scholars broadened their sense of narrative from the stories of individuals to the stories of groups, institutions, and collections of lawyers and sought to explore with them the record and sense they have made of their practice.
This article discusses the last thirty years of practice of poverty law and argues that a historical context can provide broad theoretical foundation on which to build future approaches.
Stacy Caplow, A Year in Practice: The Journal of a Reflective Clinician, 3 Clin. L. Rev. 1 (1996).
The article seeks to use the work of Donald Schön and Brook Baker as a framework for evaluating the author's own experience as an Assistant United States Attorney. The author declares that "the crux of Schon's theory is that professionals eventually acquire intangible 'artistry' by which he means the 'kinds of competence practitioners sometimes display in unique, uncertain and conflicted situations of practice'." Because much of this artistry is acquired by hands-on experience and is aided with the assistance of a teacher, the author explains why Schön is heralded as an advocate of clinical education. Baker is described as holding the "fairly straightforward proposition that practice-based experience may be the superior environment for law students to learn in even without the assistance of a teacher, provided that certain elements are present." Does practical learning require the guiding hand of an educator? By reflecting upon her own experience, the author concludes that both theories have a great deal of relevancy and importance, but neither one fits all learning experiences perfectly.
This article addresses the merits of incorporating learning through work, termed "ecological learning," into legal education. In Part I, the author describes his views about lawyer communicative competence, including what he believes to be the characteristics of effective conversational learning. Part II describes the origins of the present study, the methods used to collect data on law office learning, and the reasons for undertaking the study. Part III sets forth eight case studies in learning from the author's colleagues that provide evidence for the article's central analytical claims. In Part IV, the author explores some of the causes of the communication patterns he finds, and discusses implications of his analysis for questions regarding the design and administration of clinical instructional programs. The author concludes that "clinical teaching is successful to the extent it helps students think about their practice experiences 'from the standpoint of somebody else.'" Any instructional format, whether live-client clinic, externship, or other that enables students to step outside their "beliefs, expectations, hopes, and assumptions, and see their own behavior as data . . . and themselves as subjects," produces "reflective, critical practice," which is " the necessary and sufficient condition of ecological learning."
Anthony E. Cook, Toward a Postmodern Ethics of Service, 81 Geo. L. J. 2457 (1993).
"Throughout this foreword, I contend that the epistemology, normativity, and foundationalism of a postmodern 'Ethic of Service' is well suited for the public interest lawyer-client relationship."
This article examines clinical scholarship, and explores why clinicians often fail to meet their client's needs. The author contends that most clinical scholarship focuses on trial courts and activity surrounding the trial court, is interdisciplinary, and is comprised of subject matter that "talks back to us." The author elaborates on the latter point by describing a case he was working on while at the University of Michigan that involved a misdemeanor case that was dismissed. The author describes that, although the case was dismissed and a technical "win," the defendant was furious with the attorneys about how the case had gone. The article then explains how, through a series of letters and correspondence with this defendant, the author began to identify his failure to recognize underlying issues of race while undertaking representation of the defendant. By failing to recognize the needs of his client, the client was, in essence, voiceless. The author concludes by admitting the frustration he often feels in representing clients, particularly due to his inability to draft pleadings that will adequately describe the plight of the clients and provide voices for them.
Robert D. Dinerstein, Clinical Scholarship and the Justice Mission, 40 Clev. L. Rev. 469 (1992).
This article argues that clinical scholarship, as well as clinical programs, can contribute to the "justice mission" of American law schools. In their scholarship, clinicians are in a unique position to conduct a critical examination of the lawyer-client relationship and to analyze the components of the operation and structure of law practice.
Robert D. Dinerstein, A Meditation on the Theoretics of Practice, 43 Hastings L.J. 971 (1992).
This article criticizes some of the scholarship in the "theoretics of practice" movement for being overly opaque, academic, and insufficiently grounded in the realities of practical lawyering. Through describing a difficult case his clinic handled, the author argues for a literature that addresses the gaps between client expectations and the lawyer's ability to translate a client's story into a legally relevant communication. This article calls for theoretics scholarship that forges links with empirical work to fully ground its concepts within the practical constraints of lawyering.
This article asserts that clinical legal education has become an accepted and integral complement to traditional law school curricula. The author argues that clinical legal education is uniquely able to integrate the teaching of practical skills and legal doctrine, elevating students' understanding of both. The author maintains that a child advocacy law clinic can teach a comprehensive range of practical skills, enrich the hosting law school by providing an opportunity for interdisciplinary education as well as a public relations benefit, while further serving an important need in most communities for quality representation of all parties in child abuse and neglect cases. The author describes the University of Michigan Child Advocacy Law Clinic, detailing the selection of cases for the representation of children, parents, and social service agencies, the supervision of students, the classroom component of the curriculum, and the staffing and budgeting choices made.
Mary Jo Eyster, Designing and Teaching the Large Externship Clinic, 5 Clin. L. Rev. 347 (1999).
This article focuses on the design and teaching of the externship clinic. The author first reviews some of the traditional conceptions and misconceptions of clinical programs, including both externship and other clinics. In Section I, the author considers the range of goals that might be adopted, and how this choice will "affect the overall design of the clinic, including choices of host offices and seminar design." Section II discusses a number of teaching methods that might be used in the seminar. The author focuses on methods rather than content, because the author maintains that "content will be a function of the goal or goals of the clinic." Finally, Section III discusses the field placement design and supervision issues that must be considered in the overall design of the clinic. These include selection of placements, selection and oversight of field supervisors, faculty intervention in fieldwork, and assuring effective student supervision.
With the purpose of showing that a complete legal education involves the use of practical exercises and experiences rather than just scholarly examination of legal premises, the author describes the criminal law externship clinic that he started. The author details how legal clinics became part of law school curriculums and how their introduction into law schools represents a change in the way we think of legal education. The author suggests that the change resulted from the need to make attorneys more professionally competent and socially responsible. The article highlights the list of benefits and values that are promoted by a clinical education. The author goes on to state that the realization of these benefits and values comes from clinical programs that: (1) explain the development of the values and skills being taught (2) provide an opportunity for students to perform lawyering tasks with feedback and (3) provides reflective evaluation of a student's performance by a qualified assessor. Included in the article are thorough and comprehensive examples of programs that have successfully incorporated these objectives. The article concludes with the observation that, while there is not one system of clinical education that can work in every given context, there are common goals and experiences, many of which he touches upon, that can help law schools provide a balanced and productive clinical legal education.
In light the unsuccessful attempts on behalf of the organized bar to make pro bono service mandatory for lawyers, this article argues that legal educators can do more to foster a commitment to the pubic service among future practitioners. The author claims that, by providing law students with service opportunities, several important objectives will be met. Ideally, the article maintains, service opportunities should "instill in prospective lawyers a sense of the public interest obligations which they will carry into their post-graduate practices, sensitize prospective lawyers to the lives and needs of persons less fortunate, and provide legal services to persons in need who would otherwise be without them." The author argues that accessibility to service opportunities in law school may preserve the ideals of law students interested in such work who, without exposure to it, may have chosen another path. Moreover, exposure to service opportunities in law school will create a personal aspect and satisfaction to the legal profession, which the author argues will encourage future lawyers to insist that their employers' incorporate pro bono in their work experience.
This article "examines clinical legal education and its implications for subordinated communities." The author uses the U.C. Davis Immigration Law Clinic as an eyeglass into the usefulness and effect of law school clinic programs. To evaluate the success of the program and others like it, the author first provides background into the program's foundation, goals, and general working apparatus. From this background, the author then examines the variety of services that offered to members of the surrounding community. The impact of the program is judged from the perspective of both client and student. By looking at the impact of the program, the author makes several assessments of what can be done to improve the effectiveness of the clinics offerings. While noting that the program is "limited by the conservative forces in the law," the author also asserts that "long range social change goals can be promoted, if not accomplished, by clinical legal education." A prevalent consideration throughout the article is the relationship between the observations of the critical legal studies movement and the clinical experience described by the author. The author is sympathetic with members of critical legal studies who are frustrated by what they see as constraints upon the ability of clinics to produce change. Nonetheless, the author concludes that the realization of these constraints should not blind us to the promise offered by the clinical legal education.
Peter A. Joy, Clinical Scholarship: Improving the Practice of Law, 2 Clin. L. Rev. 385 (1996).
This article explores the proposition that clinical scholarship must incorporate both skills and values in order to fulfill its purpose of benefitting clinicians and the legal profession. Part I of this article briefly outlines the changing conceptions of law, legal scholarship, and claims of a dissonance between legal scholarship and the practice of law. It contends that "the debate over clinical scholarship is symptomatic of the debate over legal scholarship generally." Part II then examines the intended effects of the MacCrate Report on legal education and how the MacCrate Report can influence legal scholarship. Part III suggests a framework for evaluating clinical scholarship, broadly defined as focusing on lawyering skills and professional values and designed to improve the ability of lawyers to represent clients and to help law students prepare to represent clients. In light of the suggested evaluation framework, Part IV examines some examples of scholarship by clinicians that many presently consider clinical scholarship.
Drawing on her experience with the Rutgers-Camden Law School externship program, the author contributes to a discussion on the goals, opportunities, and methods of the role of faculty in externship pedagogy. The author begins by identifying the subjects of critical thinking in which externship students are likely to engage and then considers which of these "may be usefully addressed by faculty tutorial teaching." After describing principal models of faculty tutorials, the author suggests facilitators and barriers to success. The author provides illustrative examples of faculty discussions with recent students to illustrate these points. In concluding, the author identifies several issues that should be addressed when considering the use of nonclinical faculty to expand teaching resources for externships.
The author writes in response to an article by Robert Condlin that critiques clinical education for failing to provide a political critique of lawyering. The author agrees that Condlin rightly draws attention to the need for such a critical theory, but she asserts that the critical theory is in place at most clinical programs. She argues that the question is not whether a clinical program should be premised upon a critical theory, but how to develop "a methodology for systematically articulating and teaching the theory." The author shows how the development of legal clinics mirrored the development of critical legal studies. After concluding that the two are intertwined, she argues that the theory behind clinics is obscured in the micro elements of clinics-interviewing, counseling, and other practical skills. She argues that clinics should also teach the macro theory that gave birth to the clinical experience. The author concludes that adding the instruction of critical legal studies clinics will ultimately change for the better "the way law is practiced, and the way the legal system relates to our clients, as well as the way are clients relate to the law."
The author praises the ways in which clinical legal education can foster growth for experiential learners but also describes ways in which clinical legal education can resemble a "laboratory-like" practice where bad habits are formed by teachers and students alike. The author tells how a summer of reflection allowed her the room to examine ways in which her teaching style, methodology, and approach had developed. Through examples and personal history, the author reveals how things that she once viewed as advantageous to the learning process, she now views with guarded skepticism. She concludes that the treasures of clinical legal education can be reached best when students and teachers explore new ways of representing poor clients and forwarding political interests.
In light of the widespread distrust of lawyers and the perception that the legal field has lost its sense of direction, the author argues that implementing the skills and values articulated in MacCrate report will help improve the status of legal institutions. The author argues that the development of a clinical appellate program is one way that law schools can satisfy the professional objectives of the MacCrate report. To illustrate this premise, the author uses the University of Idaho's Appellate program as a model of how clinical programs can successfully instill important professional objectives. The author examines the program's case selection, student selection, student training, student responsibilities, faculty supervision, skills taught, and handling of ethical matters. She concludes that programs like the University of Idaho's are effective and needed assets in the effort to improve the legal profession as described in the MacCrate report.
The author writes in response to an article by Paul D. Reingold, Why Hard Cases Make Good (Clinical) Law, 2 Clin. L. Rev. 545 (1996) that suggests that the best clinical programs take on "hard cases." May opposes this position and holds that while tough cases should be tackled routine easy cases often provide excellent learning experiences and sometimes rise to the level of difficult cases. May supports this thesis by pointing out that difficult cases do not always allow students to get involved in all the elements of a case. Easy cases, on the other hand, can usually allow students to get involved in every aspect of a case. May also points out that easy cases pose a "lower risk of serious error or malpractice." Because easier cases tend to be less controversial and are done in volume, May asserts that they are often a better public relations option for law schools. In addition, easy cases allow students to wrap up their work within the academic year. In conclusion, May acknowledges that while hard cases can often be an asset to a clinic program, routine cases are often well suited to a student's development of competent lawyering skills.
"This paper examines and test some of the claims about the professional autonomy of attorneys working in a 'bureaucratic' environment . . . . Developing an adaptive strategy to avoid sociological ambivalence, attorneys see themselves as individual service providers, 'personalizing' the justice they deliver."
John B. Mitchell, A Clinical Textbook?, 20 Seattle U. L. Rev. 353 (1997).
In this article, the author explores the creation of a clinical textbook to "explicitly situate the student within the world/context/perspective/schemata of the client and practicing attorney, as contrasted with that of a law professor and appellate justice." The author argues that such a textbook is one vehicle for embedding clinical perspective throughout the law school curriculum. The author maintains that clinical perspective provides a context which is easy for students to understand. Second, the clinical perspective guides students in transferring their knowledge base into practice. Third, based on the fact that many students either enter a small firm or become sole practitioners, practical knowledge of the law is critical as they enter the legal profession. The author next describes a clinical textbook, paying particular attention to the role of the student in performing its exercises. The article concludes by providing excerpts from a mock torts clinical casebook to illustrate the author's vision.
"Most scholarship on the professional role of the criminal defense attorney focuses on a search for the appropriate philosophical or moral justifications for the attorney's zealous advocacy. In this [a]rticle, Professor Ogletree argues that this focus is misplaced. Nearly all lawyers and legal scholars agree that the criminal defense lawyer's role is justified and that public defenders are necessary to the constitutional and moral legitimacy of the criminal justice system.. However, because little attention has been paid to developing techniques that will motivate people to become and remain public defenders, many public defenders 'burn out.' The result is that conduct most lawyers believe is both justified and necessary fails to occur. Professor Ogletree argues that legal scholars should move beyond abstract justifications of criminal defense work and should instead explore and develop motivations for lawyers to represent the indigent."
This article examines the relationship between legal education and pro bono services. Part I discusses the rationale for pro bono involvement by lawyers. Part II next explores the origins of pro bono commitments. In Part III, the article offers the rationale for law school pro bono programs, and in Part IV, the author proposes a structure for law school pro bono programs. The article concludes by providing strategies most likely to increase the effectiveness of law school pro bono programs, and by advocating their application.
" The Dark Secret . . . is that effective lawyers cannot avoid making judgments in terms of their own values and influencing their clients to adopt those judgments."
This article explores the problems associated with scholarship that is based on clients' and students' experiences. Among the issues addressed by the article are whether the topics scholars choose to write about reflect their values, avoid exploitation and contribute to clients' or students' lives; whether the process created to review research is inclusive and "client-centered"; and whether informed consent in being obtained from people in a meaningful manner. Integrated into the discussion are articles by clinicians that illustrate the difficulties of this scenario. Ultimately, regardless whether any law applies to a research project, the article concludes that " the underlying value of respecting the autonomy and dignity of the individual reflected in the laws is shared by most clinician scholars."
Paul R. Tremblay, Practiced Moral Activism, 8 St. Thomas L. Rev. 9 (1995).
The author presents his theory of morally activist lawyering in the legal services / law school clinic environment.
This article is part of a symposium on poverty law scholarship that advocates new approaches to law school clinics and community-based advocacy coalitions.
The article examines the efforts of young lawyers to eliminate homelessness and poverty and contends that young lawyers who identify with progressive causes and want to work toward a more just society are often discouraged by modern critical scholarship. This article argues that there exists in current progressive scholarship "a philosophical basis for the work of activist lawyers seeking to eradicate homelessness." This article begins with a summary of the causes and extent of homelessness. Next, it traces the origins of four pivotal schools of thought, Legal Realism, Critical Legal Studies ("CLS"), the post-CLS critical lawyering movement, and Therapeutic Jurisprudence, paying close attention to the relationship between jurisprudence and social action. The article offers strategies for progressive action to combat the problem of homelessness. Strategies proposed by the author include litigation intended both for its own effects and to create public discussion, efforts to change legislation, utilization of current administrative procedures, consciousness-raising, media campaigns, the creation of new institutions such as multifaceted shelter facilities, and outreach activities encouraging progressive lawyers to reach out to potential clients. The author concludes that "the problem of homelessness presents a complex setting for the application of critical lawyering principles, without unnecessarily intensifying a biased system."
This article explores the use of pro se education as a means of providing access to the justice system. It reviews various pro se legal clinics across the country to assess how different jurisdictions are perceiving and responding to the needs of low-income litigants. It discusses in relative detail the pro se projects in the District of Columbia as well as law school pro se clinics, including Catholic University Law School's Families and the Law Clinic. Finally, the article examines the teaching and service goals that can be met by law school participation in pro se projects. The author appeals to the court system and lawyers to take responsibility to assure effective access to the judicial system for litigants. The author concludes that community education such as that provided in pro se projects has the potential to provide valuable assistance to litigants who have no access to legal representation.
HUD's Office of University Partnerships reports on the involvement of many law schools in community development, profiling examples of specific programs in which students are involved.
This article describes the impact of recent funding cuts and restrictions on legal services programs, and examines the traditional LSC service model of representation in providing legal services to the poor. Part I of the article provides a history of legal services to the indigent. Part II presents a critique of the service model of representation, including a description of the model, its political and practical effects, and its political role. Part III sets forth a proposal for a community-based program to replace the service model. The authors argue that the service model is not the best use of a limited legal resource, and contend that legal services programs can improve the quality of their service by establishing community-based programs which emphasize closer links with community groups and community institutions. The authors submit that by moving in this direction, legal services will be better situated to mobilize community resources and reflect community priorities. They conclude that a community-based program will avoid the "top-down, lawyer-dominated priorities" that currently exist.
By using some of his personal experiences in public interest work, the author maintains that lawyers today can make a difference and bring about social change. The author contends that, contrary to popular belief, there are many opportunities and new frontiers in human rights litigation. Moreover, the author stresses the need for young lawyers to commit themselves to moral reasoning and social responsibility as they enter the law profession. The article then describes two significant cases engaged in by the author during the late 1960s and mid 1970s, which culminated in important Supreme Court decisions of that era, as well as civil rights victories. The first case described involved the representation of a black plaintiff who had been convicted in Louisiana without a jury trial but was facing up to two years imprisonment. When the case reached the Supreme Court in Duncan v. Louisiana, the Court held that persons who are facing substantial punishment in a misdemeanor case are entitled to a jury trial. The author then describes a challenge to the prison system in Alabama, which resulted in the exposure of the ills of the prison system to the public, and the eventual closing down and destruction of certain prisons. The article concludes by affirming the great impact that these two experiences had on the civil and prisoner's rights movements, and the author uses these two experiences to demonstrate the significant role that a lawyer can play in social change. The author ultimately expresses concern over the current state of the legal profession, and appeals to law students and young lawyers entering the profession to take personal and moral responsibility for the consequences of their personal acts, and aspire to make a difference.
This paper discusses lawyering for and within distinct native communities and how clinical instructors and students can prepare to enter distinct communities and practice across cultures. Part IV defines community and culture. Specifically, it considers the lawyer's responsibility to value and to understand the importance of culture in representing clients. Part V examines the community lawyering concept. It provides a full definition of community lawyering and contrasts it with the traditional form of lawyering, and with the client-centered form of lawyering. This section analyzes and explains why the community lawyering approach is superior to the client-centered lawyering approach and is essential to the competent representation of native communities. Part VI concludes with a discussion of how the Southwest Indian Law Clinic (SILC) teaches this community lawyering approach to its students and explores the lessons and challenges that have developed through the use of this approach.
This article examines clinical training in law school, and uses Osgoode Hall Law School's Parkdale Clinic to assess the goals and benefits of such a program. The author maintains that clinical training has two purposes: to provide free legal services, and to provide second and third-year law students exposure and training into the practice of law. He then describes the Parkdale Community Law Services, including the academic requirements of student participants, as well as internal structure and community reaction. The author argues that the function of Parkdale Community Law Services is to be a neighborhood law clinic. In contrast to a legal aid office, a neighborhood law office is easily accessible and serves to educate the community. In sum, the author argues that a neighborhood law office has the ability to dispense both representative and service functions, and is amenable to community control. He concludes that the decision by Osgoode Hall Law School to create and monitor such a service should be taken seriously in order to be successful.
This article examines the value of collaboration between lawyers and social workers in order effectively to serve the client. Part I describes the value of collaborations between lawyers and social workers and the many important functions they fulfill, particularly in the legal services context. Part II examines reasons why such collaborations tend to be rare and why even the occasional collaboration sometimes proves to be ineffective. It also examines the attributes of the two professions that may inhibit or impair collaborations. Part III explores remedies that members of these professions can employ to rectify the impediments to effective collaboration and to "lay the groundwork for true interprofessional cooperation." The article concludes with a proposal for implementing collaborations during professional education. Specifically, the author suggests that a clinic case on which law students work together with a social worker or a social work student would be a useful vehicle for promoting effective collaboration.
This article explores community-based economic development by focusing on the significance of the Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A's strategy of community based economic development. The introduction provides an overview of the nature and importance of community-based economic development (CED), the types of community groups involved in this practice, the contributions that lawyers can make, and the significance of Brooklyn A's community development practice as a model of CED lawyering. Section I describes the context of the East Brooklyn experience through brief profiles of the East Brooklyn communities, Brooklyn A, its Community Development Unit, and the Unit's work. Section II describes Brooklyn A's house counsel approach and describes the rationale behind it. Section III examines the work of Brooklyn A's Community Development Unit through three detailed case studies. Section IV draws upon the case studies to assess the advantages and disadvantages of Brooklyn A's approach and the lessons its experience offers to other public interest lawyers and law offices. The article concludes that the case studies are illustrative of the difference that effective legal assistance can make in the ability of Community Development Corporations and grassroots ownership entities to protect and revive their neighborhoods under the difficult conditions of the 1990s.
This article analyzes state and federal laws and local regulations which control business development in public housing. Using case studies in Knoxville, TN, the author shows how community economic development organizations can help low-income people improve their lives and communities.
The article examines the current developing relationship between small business and community economic development and clinical legal education. It analyzes the benefits to clinical legal education of these transactional clinics by exploring these clinics' contribution to the development of the skills and values sought to be taught through clinical legal education. Part I explains the importance of microbusinesses to community economic development. It also describes the evolution of the inclusion of small business and CED clinics in clinical legal education. Part II uses the George Washington University Small Business Clinic to analyze the unique benefits of transactional clinics to explore the impact of small business clinics in developing skills such as interviewing and counseling. It also analyzes small business clinics' impact in teaching students values related to lawyers' professional roles, most importantly, lawyering for social change. The article concludes that small business and CED clinics provide much needed legal representation to low-income and under-represented communities, as well as valuable experiential learning opportunities and practical doctrinal knowledge to law students.
This brief essay focuses on what the author believes are three critical objectives for the next generation of poverty lawyers: identifying strategies that work, increasing legal representation for poor communities, and keeping a vibrant legal community engaged in poverty law. The essay explores these objectives and emphasizes the importance of building coalitions that increase the political clout or low income clients. The essay concludes that it is important to keep a vibrant community of law students, new attorneys, pro bono volunteers, and poverty law experts engaged in poverty law. Providing poverty lawyers the opportunity to reflect on their important work in an annual, week-long residence at a local law school would provide renewal and rejuvenation to these lawyers so that they might continue doing good work in the future.
Transcript of a speech that describes The Labor/Community Strategy Center of Los Angeles and its efforts to build broad, multifaceted working class community organizations, including specific uses made of the law as a tactic for social change.
This article employs the example of domestic violence lawyering to demonstrate that client service work has political content and argues that such political content is central to providing legal services to poor people. Part I of this article examines how domestic violence lawyering liberates crucial interactions from the "private sphere." Part II discusses how domestic violence lawyering, with its focus on the links between the ideology of patriarchy and affective issues in individual clients' relationships, integrates the professional and the personal. Part III argues that the struggle against the pervasive ideology of patriarchy transcends distinctions between impact and service work. In challenging these dichotomies, the author concludes that domestic violence lawyering realizes a vision of more engaged, less bureaucratic public interest law.
This essay applies the recommendations that emerged from the Working Group on Limited Legal Assistance, held at Fordham Law School in late 1998, to a variety of delivery models and evaluates the consequences of these suggestions. Part I of this essay outlines the Fordham recommendations regarding limited legal assistance. Part II applies the recommendations to various delivery models, including pro se clinics, hotlines, form pleadings, and ghostwriting. This application illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the recommendations. Part III proposes a different conceptual model for evaluating the role of limited legal assistance in the delivery of legal services. Part IV outlines a research agenda. These reflections conclude in Part IV by arguing for a "tentative application of the recommendations coupled with extensive assessment of their effects on clients' efforts to obtain justice."
This article reports on the creation and operation, between January 1995 and May 1996, of an experimental fee-generating clinic at Santa Clara University Law School. The authors report that the results of the experiment exceeded their expectations and "offer an encouraging new model for a clinical program that can generate substantial fees without compromising the goals and values of clinical educators." In the article, the authors identify their pedagogical goals and describe the components of the clinic, which involved taking both employment discrimination cases and cases involving criminal misdemeanors. The article also responds to common criticisms of fee-generating clinics.
Kamina A. Pinder, Street Law: Twenty-Five Years and Counting, 27 J. L. & Educ. 211 (1998).
This article explores the Street Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC), which allows law students to teach a year-long Law Related Education course to high school students. This article uses the GULC Street Law Clinic as a model of the program because it has developed an extensive curriculum and provides substantial supervision to its students. Part I of the article describes the history of the program and its clinical structure and requirements. Part II uses the GULC model to illustrate the benefits of Law Related Education to high school students. In Part III, the article explores the many benefits to law students as future advocates. The author argues that the GULC Street Law Clinic embraces learner-centered pedagogy, and this learner-centered model of education enables its participants to use law as a tool to promote discourse and intellectual inquiry. The author concludes that many of the requirements and philosophies of the program sharpen the skills necessary to become a conscientious lawyer and effective advocate. Moreover, the Street Law Program provides opportunities for law students, lawyers, and judges to connect with the community in a profoundly meaningful way.
This article discusses a video entitled So Goes a Nation, featured at the Seventh Annual Stein Center Symposium, Lawyering for Poor Communities in the Twenty-First Century. The video featured three public interest organizations that, the author claims, "represent community lawyering at its best." This article focuses on the work of one of the organizations featured in the video and further examines its place within the model of community-based lawyering. Part I describes the community-based model - or "rebellious lawyering." Part I also explores what rebellious lawyering might look like in practice. Part II introduces the work of Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A ("Brooklyn A"), expands upon the case study featured in the video, and thus further explores the lawyering involved in expanding of a community-based health care center. Part III identifies both common themes and inconsistencies between Brooklyn A's practice within the theoretical concept. This article concludes that such reformulations "are necessary to truly maximize the impact of newly developed solutions."
This article draws on an empirical study of civil rights and poverty lawyers to identify variations in accountability problems that lawyers confront in representing groups and to suggest that these problems are "much less pressing in some types of collective representation than in others." It examines structural factors that may help predict accountability problems in collective projects and presents empirical support for a differentiated approach with respect to collective practice for disadvantaged practice. In Part I, different forms of collective representation are compared. Part II applies current ethics doctrine to collective representation. The article concludes by calling for a revised ethics doctrine that takes into account the different types of collective representation in order to "avoid discouraging lawyers from helping clients build organizations and institutions serving clients' collective as well as individual needs."
This article presents a study performed by the author to determine lawyers' norms regarding allocation of decision-making authority between lawyers and clients in civil rights and poverty law practice. Part I of this article describes the research design. Part II shows how these lawyers' views about how they should interact with clients varied by the types of practice settings in which they worked and offers several explanations for these differences. Part III comments on how this research bears on debates about how civil rights and poverty lawyers should serve their clients. This article concludes with a call for further study on the ideologies of lawyers who work on civil rights and poverty issues.
This article questions whether nonadversarial planning work by lawyers remains rare today. The author explores how lawyers' planning skills advance community organizations' efforts to respond to urban poverty and minority entrepreneurs' efforts to navigate a regulated economy. Part II of this article briefly describes established forms of lawyer service in civil rights and poverty issues and factors influencing strategy choices. Part III describes the research design. Part IV describes the planning work performed by lawyers in the author's sample, the types of clients served by this work, the practice settings in which lawyers performed planning work, and the lawyers' understanding of their roles. Part V analyzes the implications of lawyers' planning work for the debate about lawyers' roles in social change movements. It suggests that lawyers who provide counseling and transactional services to community organizations and small businesses are performing a type of "impact" work that is conceptually different from litigation to establish or enforce rights through the courts. This article highlights the differences between two distinct categories of work: preventing problems and establishing and maintaining relationships, and responding to claims of injury. It also argues that planning, more than litigation, may lend itself to collaboration with clients. Part VI sketches a research agenda regarding clients' needs for planning services and the adequacy of existing structures for delivering those services.
This article highlights three emerging family law practices developed to respond to gaps in family law services, (1) multi-professional cooperation; (2) community education; and (3) information networks. The article describes each of their origins, funding, and collaborative styles and discusses how professional values influence the construction of the practices. Finally, the article examines how legal institutions are responding to challenges presented by these practices, concluding with proposals to mediate between autonomy values and collaborative techniques.