I'm happy to report that at the Tennessee Colloquium we had over 100 faculty (mostly, though not all, clinical) and public interest lawyers and advocates. The presentations were rich, enthusiastic, and engaging. We could hardly dislodge people from the small group sessions, and the final plenary (on a gorgeous Friday afternoon) was almost as well attended as the morning sessions. We timely tapped into the legal services civil justice planning process (we also had an excellent representation from the criminal defense community, and the seeds of an Innocence Project stoutly sprouted), and had meaningful discussions about the role that law schools could and should play in a statewide system of delivery of legal services to the poor. Below is a detailed report of the AALS-sponsored Equal Justice Colloquium held at the University of Tennessee College of Law.

The AALS Equal Justice Colloquia series is funded by a grant from the Law and Society Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI). The Planning Committee for the Colloquium was composed of the following individuals:

Professor Fran Ansley, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Doug Blaze, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Frank Bloch, Vanderbilt Law School
Professor Patrick Hardin, University of Tennessee College of Law
Neil McBride, Director, Rural Legal Services of Tennessee (Oak Ridge)
Russell Overby, Attorney, Tennessee Justice Center (Nashville)
Professor Dean Hill Rivkin, University of Tennessee College of Law
Professor Eugene Shapiro, University of Memphis Law School
Paula Voss, Knox County Public Defender’s Office

The Colloquium began on the evening of October 12, 2000, with an address by Jennifer Gordon, the founder of the Workplace Project and a recent recipient of a MacArthur Prize Award. The Workplace Project, located on Long Island, New York, is an advocacy center devoted to the legal, economic, and political rights of immigrant workers. The Project is organized to maximize the participation of its “clients.” Jennifer spoke about the intimate connection between economic inequality in the workplace and legal inequality in the courts, the legislature, and in administrative agencies. Her talk was well received by the approximately 50 people who attended. These included law faculty from the University of Tennessee College of Law, Vanderbilt, the University of Memphis, the University of North Carolina, and Appalachian Law School. Lawyers from the community, faculty from other University of Tennessee departments, and students also attended this evening session.

The day-long program on October 13, 2000, was held at the College of Law. Throughout the day, there were approximately 120 participants in attendance at the various sessions. A listing of the addresses and relevant contact information for each of the attendees is attached to this Report.

The Colloquium began with greetings from Dean Tom Galligan of the University of Tennessee College of Law and Professor Dean Hill Rivkin, Director of the AALS Equal Justice Project. Each described the commitments, both of the University of Tennessee College of Law and the AALS, to greater and more effective collaboration between law schools and the equal justice community in the State of Tennessee and beyond.

The first plenary session focused on the issue of legal needs, both civil and criminal. Neil McBride, Director, Rural Legal Services of Tennessee, began by remarking that spending a day talking about equal justice is a rare occasion. He discussed the substantial disparities in access to legal representation by poor people and communities. He illustrated this with an exercise, drawn from the many legal needs studies that have been done nationwide, by stating that of ten thousand people eligible for free legal services, approximately five thousand would have “cases.” He estimated that a legal services lawyer could handle approximately two to three hundred cases per year. In Tennessee, he said there are 1.5 million people eligible for legal services. If half of these people had a legal problem, there would be no possible way that all could obtain needed legal representation. He talked about the process of converting need into legal remedies and used the example of children who are having problems with their teeth. He wondered how many low-income parents in this circumstance view this as a problem of Medicaid law. Neil concluded by stating that it was critical to the legal needs of the poor to bring more legal resources to their service and, very importantly, to use more carefully and strategically the resources that already exist.

The next speaker was Mariah Wooten, the Deputy Federal Public Defender in Nashville. She emphasized the need for more substantial defender resources in the criminal system. Mariah said that, even though the Sixth Amendment guarantees the criminally accused the right to counsel, the system does not provide equal justice. Although Mariah stated that her public defender office has a moderate caseload with nine attorneys, two of whom handle capital cases exclusively, this is atypical around the country. She said that most public defender’s offices have too many cases, too few lawyers or investigators, and clients who often have difficulty reading, who have health problems, etc. Responding to the theme of the Colloquium, “What Can Law Schools Do?,” Mariah listed several directions:

1. Law schools could assist young, committed criminal law practitioners to make their services available to the poor and working class. She stated that firms that have resources are usually unaffordable to most people. She also noted that courts often expect defense lawyers to be in three places at one time, for example, by scheduling jury trials simultaneously.
2. Law schools can help change the law. Mariah used the example of mandatory DNA testing. She stated that law schools could help raise awareness in the community and among law-makers on issues such as this.
3. Law schools can question and challenge the system as it operates today. Mariah stated that the consequence of unequal resources is that many people do not start on an equal playing field in a system that profoundly affects their lives. She also noted that the problem is perhaps even more acute in juvenile courts and smaller counties. Mariah noted that, in Shelby County, for example, attorneys who represent juveniles are employees of the court, an untoward situation.

The final speaker was Gordon Bonnyman of the Tennessee Justice Center (TJC) in Nashville. Gordon stated that the challenge of equal justice is to keep a perspective on the progress that has been made, while keeping an intense indignation about current inequality. He used as an example the case of Lacky v. Nashville Bar Association, litigation from the 1940s. He said that Lacky was a young lawyer who was “charged” with representing “colored people” against insurance companies. He brought contract cases. Lacky was persecuted by the organized bar, which sought to disbar him. Gordon stated that this case was a benchmark for how far we have come.

He stated that the Tennessee Justice Center was formed as part of a broad-based effort. He said that the bar today helps support TJC in doing non-restricted work that legal services programs cannot do. Gordon sees law as a tool of social justice and social reform, not just as a tool of repression. TJC, he noted, practices a “ruthless triage.” TJC focuses on health care issues, welfare law issues, and other practices that affect the poor, including the “payday loan” industry, which got immunity in Tennessee the year after legal services lost their ability to do legislative advocacy.

Gordon acknowledged that TJC has not begun to touch the legal needs that exist in the State. He gave as an example the case in which one of TJC’s attorneys, Michelle Johnson, represents James, who is now 16 years old. When James was one or two, James was removed into State custody after his mom had died of an overdose of drugs. James was placed with a drug addicted father. James was removed from his father after he was found to be eating out of trash cans. He was then “warehoused” in multiple state placements. Michelle was appointed by the juvenile court to represent James.

Before being appointed an attorney, James had been in a series of private placements, where he had been raped and assaulted by a staff member. As a result of this, James went to the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute, where he had been “mouldering” for three months and was overweight and medicated. Gordon says that James could be the next Robert Coe, a prisoner who was executed recently in Tennessee. Gordon questioned, “What are our aspirations for James?” Gordon encouraged lawyers who represent persons like James to “tell truth to power.” He said, “Like Pogo, we are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.” In his view, lawyering for equal justice comes down to individual lives and, simultaneously, a vision for our country. A spirited question and answer session followed.

The second plenary session began with a presentation by Professor Frank Bloch of Vanderbilt Law School. He elucidated three things: (1) resources (what exists and what could exist?); (2) mission (access to the next generation of lawyers); and (3) serving communities.

The first full presenter on the panel was Professor Deseriee Kennedy of the University of Tennessee College of Law. She discussed a course that she taught called “Contemporary Legal Thought: Race, Gender, and Class.” A focus of the course was on how to do equal justice work in the community. The course combined legal theory, social theory, film, speakers, and field work by students. Students worked in the community on projects, maintaining journals and producing tangible products of benefit to community groups, as defined by each group. Deseriee used the University of Tennessee’s Community Partnership Center to align students with interested groups.

Deseriee stated that in the course students learned firsthand about the concept of “power.” She used as an example the power of student leadership in the “sit-in movement” during the civil rights era. She said that, in her course, students were able to use knowledge they possessed prior to law school to solve concrete problems. Students were placed with community groups, such as the Scarborough Community Organization in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This community was concerned about environmental racism and toxic pollution from the federal government’s facilities in Oak Ridge. Another student group was Citizens for Police Review, a Knoxville organization organized around issues of police abuse. Other students work with the Council of Involved Neighborhoods. This student worked on the use of civil forfeiture laws to divert seized money into drug-impacted communities. Other students worked at a domestic violence shelter.

Deseriee stated that students learned to listen to groups, figure out who the group was, what their needs were, etc. She said that defining problems the way the group did was a task that many students had not experienced before. The same was true, she said, with possible solutions to these problems. At bottom, Deseriee felt students’ learning of law and justice was enhanced through this multi-level course.

Next, Professor Susan Bryant of the City University of New York Law School at Queens College spoke to the plenary about the Law School Consortium Project. She stated that the Law School Consortium Project, which is supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute, and involves the law schools at Queens College, Northeastern, and the University of Maryland, began with several premises:

1. Law schools have a responsibility to the clients that their graduates represent and to the communities where they practice. The responsibility of the law school, in the view of her Project, extended beyond the three years of actual schooling. She called this “the longitudinal” law school. This is a law school that continued to support the justice work of its graduates.
2. Small and solo practitioners have an important role to play in equal justice communities. Seventy-five percent of people who consult a lawyer see them in small or solo practice firms. How can the large number of our students who practice in these settings continue to realize their visions of equal justice?
3. Students in this setting were in underserved communities, often over their heads, lacking resources, and in personally precarious positions.

The Law School Consortium Project has responded on three levels: financially, providing professional resources, and assisting with the personal satisfaction of practitioners by lessening the isolation of these lawyers. Susan noted that law schools have resources to assist in these areas. Law schools have credibility in fund raising, knowledge in the faculty, an understanding of technology, buying power, and access to the university and its programs. Working in the areas of domestic violence, community economic development, general practice, and immigrant practice, lawyers in the Project’s Community Legal Resource Networks are supported by their law schools in a variety of ways. At the same time, the law school and the faculty gain from this collaboration. Such a collaboration can provide a different understanding about the meaning and practice of law and influence how law schools teach and structure courses. The Consortium Project is a pilot project that, it is hoped, will be adopted by other law schools around the country.

Finally, Frank Bloch gave a presentation on Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE). This is an international organization that focuses on justice education. They conduct, for example, a law reform competition in India and South Asia where law schools compete in law reform projects. Students prepare dossiers to present in the competition. These dossiers identify community needs; frame issues in legal, political, and economic terms; devise solutions; and plan the implementation of these solutions. Frank stated that this competition was unusually successful in its educational efforts, which focused on very specific skills around communication, research, and activism. Policy makers and funders are brought into judge this competition.

Another project of the GAJE centers on legal advocacy for women. The project was started at Georgetown Law School as an international human rights course. From this, international collaboration grew between Georgetown faculty members and their LL.M. graduates. The projects use technology to stay in touch and to share information.

A final project is the effective lawyer-client communication research project. This project seeks to develop parallel studies on theories of communications, roles of lawyers in different communities and in different countries, and to development of effective approaches to lawyer-client communications.

The question and answer period following the presentations raised issues of how to bring the approaches that were discussed in the plenary to, for example, rural communities in Tennessee. We know that many of our law students are from rural communities and will return to these communities to practice. How can the states’ law schools use their resources to support these students?

The afternoon workshops were focused on current issues of advocacy and education in Tennessee. They ranged from a discussion of the legal services civil justice planning process, to the creation of an Innocence Project, to the creation of advocacy efforts for the new immigrant population in Tennessee, etc. There was also a workshop on Curriculum Planning for Equal Justice in the law schools. In this session, the discussion began with a focus on the “pillars” of what is presented as “law” in the first year curriculum. Through courses such as contracts, property, and torts-the private law trinity-imprints in students what “law” is and what is “important.” The bar exam reinforces this canon. A challenge for teaching equal justice concepts is to create communities inside the classes for students to work with each other. Students also do not have a common foundation in social justice courses. Students often do not know the basic ideas about equal justice work, including issues about poverty, social change, community organizations, grant writing, community organizing, staff and board dynamics, etc. At bottom, the practice images taught in law schools are impoverished.

In the long run, the challenge is to reinvent what poverty lawyers and lawyers for disempowered communities do. How can courses treat the legal needs of individuals and communities that are not “articulated”? How can this type of lawyering take place? By piggy-backing on learner-centered education, the civic mission of higher education, and other important current movements in higher education, equal justice teaching should expand in the curriculum.

A question was also raised about what to do for the eighty to ninety percent of students who do not go into public interest law. How will these students use their “power” to help others in equal justice matters? Will externships provide a vehicle for these students to get supervised experiences in equal justice work? How about building in extra credit for students in professional responsibility courses who do ten hours of pro bono work? Law schools need to encourage student initiatives through summer stipends, etc. There also needs to be more co-teaching between teachers oriented toward practice and those oriented more toward doctrine. The irony, it was noted, is that high-level corporate practice is more like public interest practice, yet neither are the center of law school attention. Both involve teamwork, interdisciplinary practice, and looking forward rather than back during litigation. There is also very little attention paid to community legal education. A course offered at UT Law School in Public Interest Law and Lawyering was also discussed.

The final plenary session was composed of individuals whose task was to consolidate the discussions that were held during the Colloquium and to make proposals for the future. Professor Eugene Shapiro of the University of Memphis began by talking about reawakening students to pursue their values. He asked what faculty can do to broaden the scope of the curriculum within the limited resources our law schools have. He suggested the importance of focusing on faculty that have interest in equal justice courses during the recruitment process for faculty.

Gordon Bonnyman encouraged the expansion of loan forgiveness programs. He stated that many students go to law school because they think it has something to do with justice and, when they graduate, are faced with crushing debt. He also suggested taking students to general sessions court in professional responsibility courses. He said that this is the court where poor folks and working class people go to have the law “done” to them. He suggested passing out a general sessions detainer warrant and examining what an “abomination” it is.

Neil McBride suggested that law schools should look for ways to include poverty issues into all classes. He suggested creating an institutional expectation that public interest law ideas be incorporated into all aspects of the law school. He stated it was the obligation of a law school to work with graduates. For example, Neil speculated whether law schools should assist with a revolving fund for attorneys who agree to sue affirmatively in cases resulting from illegal evictions.

Tom Galligan discussed the civil justice planning process to date in Tennessee. He described the possible creation of a statewide law firm to provide legal services throughout Tennessee. He also talked about the possible Tennessee Legal Services Partnership. This would incorporate: (1) task forces; (2) a Tennessee strategic advocacy collaborative; (3) a Tennessee pro bono system; (4) a Tennessee partnership for self-help; (5) a universal access system that would include technology, unbundling, etc.; and, finally, (6) a Tennessee mediation service. He told how those engaged in the planning process have articulated the principles that guide their effort:

1. All low-income Tennesseeans should have effective access to civil justice.
2. All low-income people should be provided full and adequate legal services.
3. These legal services should be rooted in local communities.
4. The system should be designed to get good results for clients. In answering the question, What can law schools do?, Tom stated:
5. Instill a devotion to pro bono work.
6. Assist in overcoming resource limitations by “pooling” resources.
7. Include law faculty on task forces, or as experts on list serves, involve law students doing research, and sustain pro bono programs through coordinators at various law schools.

He also noted that we should take advantage of the sophistication of our students in technology and the ability of law schools to connect with other expertise in the university.

Raney Irwin, a student at the University of Tennessee College of Law, discussed expanding pro bono work to include social workers and other professionals. She also raised the issue of required public service or mandatory pro bono. Professor Susan Brooks of Vanderbilt Law School discussed integrating advocacy with organizing. She discussed externship programs, summer stipends, programs supported by summer stipends, and promoting interdisciplinary work.

Paula Voss of the Knox County Public Defender’s Office discussed the promotion of mandatory pro bono programs, both within law schools and in the bar. She also discussed how specialization has impacted practice, even within the criminal defense bar. Paula stated that criminal defense lawyers are obligated to understand TennCare, psychology, social work, education, and science (e.g., DNA). Following these presentations, the professional responsibility of law school faculties was also mentioned.

All of us that were involved recognize that the key to success of this unprecedented meeting holds as a follow-up on the many excellent ideas presented at the Colloquium. This Report and the accompanying cover letter are intended as a beginning. We shall be working on several of the proposals that are contained in the letter. Please let us hear from you with your ideas.