Clinical Law Prof Blog

Prof. Bob Kuehn's Post on the Demographics, Diversity, and Salary Data Within Clinical Legal Education

In the Winter 2017-2018 CLEA Newsletter, Prof. Bob Kuehn of WashU published data on the demographics, diversity, and other data within clinical legal education. 

Read the entire piece cross-posted here at the Best Practices blog.

Here's the introduction: 

Though clinical faculty have largely moved out of the proverbial basement, they remain a distinct sub-group within most law faculties. Often labeled as something other than law professors (“clinicians”) because of their teaching methods and goals, faculty that teach law clinic and externship courses also differ as a group by gender, race, employment status, and salary from “podium” faculty teaching doctrinal courses. And unlike the movement out of the basement, it’s not clear that clinical and doctrinal faculty are moving closer to each other on those attributes.

 

ABA Student Legal Writing Competition: Affordable Housing and Community Development Law

By request of Prof. Tim Iglesias of the University of San Francisco, please see the attached announcement for the ABA's 2018 Affordable Housing and Community Development Law Law Student Legal Writing Competition. For interested students, the deadline is March 3, 2018.

Download Revised_2018_writing_competition_guidelines.authcheckdam

 

The Work of Law Professors: Trust, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

I am cross-posting my message as CLEA's president for 2018. This message appears in CLEA's Winter 2017-2018 newsletter.

 

I am grateful to begin service as CLEA’s President in 2018. This community empowers, equips, and inspires. Together we will continue to improve legal education and our work with students and clients. In my first address as CLEA’s President I want to urge us to remember the high calling of clinical legal education. We have important work to do this year.  

Clinical legal education has never been more important. Legal education itself stands at a crossroads alongside the nation. We bear an immense responsibility to the public and to the Republic. Law schools and law professors have profound, generational influence on the bar, the judicial system, and the laws that govern the land.  

The rule of law is essential to justice within a constitutional order, and it requires constant vigilance. Without the robust rule of law, democracy can become a dodge to pillage the people and profit pirates. The foundation of our American experiment rests on the demand that the governed participate in their own government, that no one will live outside the law established with the consent of the governed.

The rule of law depends on the trust of the governed. Trust in the law requires trust in lawmakers and the legal system. Trust in the legal system requires trust in those who operate and enforce it. Lawyers are the operatives of the rule of law, and if the people do not trust lawyers, they will not trust the system. If the system violates that trust, the rule of law will unravel and become vulnerable to poachers.  

Trust in the legal system requires expansive inclusion of the governed. This has been our great, national failure since the founding, the exclusion of people from the system that presumes to govern them. Just as the colonists insisted that they be included in the making of laws that governed them, so do all those disenfranchised across our history.

The rhetorical aspirations of a more perfect union ground the fierce urgency of expansive inclusion in the United States. The founding virtues, however flawed in execution, provide a moral foundation for inclusion and empowerment. Progress toward justice comes in fits and starts, and the jealous powers of exclusion never give ground willingly. The revolutionary United States rejected the idolatry of blood-and-soil nationalism for an order built on laws and ideals. Those laws and ideals must propel us toward inclusion and thriving human dignity.   

If we are true to the founding notes of liberty, justice, and equality for all, we will reckon with our laws, lawmaking, law enforcement, and legal systems to guard against exclusion. Justice in all its forms - social, economic, political, legal - rests on the dignity of every person. Human dignity demands inclusion and voice in government and courts that sustain the rule of law. Inequality and inequity in all their forms undermine the experiment and erode trust and reliance in the rule of law. Inequality and inequity threaten the foundations of justice. If the nation is interested in justice under the law, then lawyers must be keen to promote and protect human dignity, equality, and equity wherever we can.  

Inclusion gives life to the rule of law; exclusion kills it.

This is the urgent work of legal education. We teach and train lawyers to be public citizens, operatives of the rule of law. To be effective lawyers, our students must have a deep knowledge of the law, expertise in the tools of the trade, and wisdom to apply them both in the service of clients. To be fruitful public citizens, law schools must teach students to criticize the law and improve it, to understand its relationship with lawmakers and the governed, and to witness the nature of justice. Our students must be worthy of trust. They must dignify their neighbors and work for the ever-greater inclusion of all people.

For twenty-five years, this has been CLEA’s mission, to improve legal education, to promote better law teaching, to cultivate the virtues of public citizenship in law students. Pioneering generations of lawyer-teacher-scholars have organized, advocated, and pulled alongside eager students to teach them how to be excellent attorneys.  

In 2018, the second year of our five-year strategic plan, we continue their work in this critical institution that binds together schools, clinics, professors, and practices. In each of its committees, CLEA members contribute to the work of justice and good teaching. CLEA’s strategic plan, membership dues, conferences, newsletters, social media platforms, advocacy memos, best practices resources, research, and gatherings all promote the missions of clinical legal education. As we teach students and serve clients, CLEA works to improve the enterprise of legal education and to promote the just rule of law in the United States.

The work of self-government and the rule of law never ends. CLEA continues and accelerates its work to ensure law students become excellent lawyers who promote justice, inclusion, and dignity throughout their long careers at the bar.

Thank you for your work and vision. Thank you for your commitment to our common mission.    

CLEA's Winter 2017-2018 Newsletter

Edited by Prof. Tanya Cooper with the CLEA newsletter committee, here is CLEA's Newsletter for Winter 2017-2018.

This first issue of Volume 26 includes articles on clinical teaching by Robert Kuehn (Washington Univ.-St. Louis), Joshua Medina (Alabama), and Millicent Newhouse (Baltimore); messages from the outgoing Co-Presidents and incoming President; CLEA committee reports; several announcements about upcoming events at the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego; and clinical news from our colleagues around the country.

The CLEA Newsletter Committee is Lauren Bartlett (Ohio Northern), Tanya Asim Cooper (Pepperdine), Susan Donovan (Alabama), D'lorah Hughes (UC Irvine), and Kate Kruse (Mitchell Hamline).

(This year, I'm serving as CLEA president and as editor of this blog so will make my interests and roles clear when our content requires it.)