Riding the Wave: Uplifting Labor Organizations Through Immigration Reform

In recent years, labor unions in the United States have embraced the immigrants’ rights movement, cognizant that the very future of organized labor depends on its ability to attract immigrant workers and integrate them into union ranks. At the same time, the immigrants’ rights movement has been lauded for its successful organizing models, often drawing upon the vitality and ingenuity of immigrant-based worker centers, which themselves have emerged as alternatives to traditional labor unions. And while the labor and immigrants’ rights movements have engaged in some fruitful collaborations, their mutual support has failed to radically reshape the trajectory of either cause. In this Article, I argue that the ongoing legislative debates around immigration reform provide a unique opportunity to reimagine and revitalize traditional organized labor and to strengthen newer, immigrant-centered worker organizations. In my view, this can be accomplished by positioning unions and worker organizations as key actors in immigration processes (for both temporary and permanent immigration) and in any likely legalization initiative. Their specific roles might include sponsoring or indirectly supporting certain visa applications, facilitating the portability of employment-related visas from one employer to another, offering training opportunities to meet immigration requirements, assisting with legalization applications, leading immigrant integration initiatives, and more. Apart from the instrumental objective of attracting immigrants to the ranks of unions and worker organizations, this set of proposals will position these institutions as sites where the virtues of leadership, democratic participation, and civic engagement can be forged in new Americans. Indeed, these virtues coincide with the founding values of most U.S. labor unions; to the extent some unions have strayed from these values, the proposals provide an external imperative to reorient and rebrand unions as core civil society institutions. Moreover, immigrant worker centers have already become known for their focus on leadership development, democratic decision making, and civic education, and are therefore uniquely positioned to play this role. This convergence of utilitarian and transcendent objectives, in the current sociopolitical moment, justifies a special position for unions and worker organizations in the U.S. immigration system

The Transformative Potential of Attorney Bilingualism

In contemporary U.S. law practice, attorney bilingualism is increasingly valued, primarily because it allows lawyers to work more efficiently and to pursue a broader range of professional opportunities. This purely functionalist conceptualization of attorney bilingualism, however, ignores the surprising ways in which multilingualism can enhance a lawyer\u27s professional work and can strengthen and reshape relationships among actors in the U.S. legal milieu. Drawing upon research from psychology, linguistics, and other disciplines, this Article advances a theory of the transformative potential of attorney bilingualism. Looking first to the development of lawyers themselves, the Article posits that attorneys who operate bilingually may, over time, enjoy cognitive advantages such as enhanced creative thinking and problem-solving abilities, a more analytical orientation to language, and greater communicative sensitivity. Moreover, the existence of lawyers who are fully immersed in the bilingual practice of law will transform and invigorate interactions between attorneys and limited English proficient (LEP) clients and, more broadly, among attorneys, the parties to a proceeding, and legal decision makers. Although many U.S. lawyers possess non-English language ability, few are equipped with the complement of knowledge, skills, and values needed to utilize that language ability effectively in a professional setting. Therefore, the Article also calls upon the legal profession to adopt a more rigorous approach to bilingual training and instruction and outlines a set of competencies that underlie effective bilingual lawyering. These competencies relate broadly to cross-cultural interactions, knowledge of foreign legal systems, specialized and versatile language ability, and verbal and nonverbal communication skills

Promoting Language Access in the Legal Academy

Since the 1960s, the United States government has paid increasing attention to the rights of language minorities and to the need for greater civic and political integration of these groups. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the issuance of Executive Orders, and intervention by the federal judiciary, progress has been made in the realm of language access. State and local courts have likewise taken steps (albeit imperfectly) to provide interpretation and translation assistance to Limited English Proficient persons. Most recently, responding to both lack of services and inconsistent practices, the American Bar Association has set out national guidelines on the subject. As language access rises in importance – within the government as a whole, and the legal system in particular – law schools have begun to develop strategies to promote language access within the academy. These strategies serve multiple purposes: to prepare students to identify, and respond to, issues of language difference in the context of legal work; to ensure that the policies and practices of law schools comply with language access norms; and to foment student awareness and advocacy on language access, as a key social justice issue. Indeed, educating future lawyers involves not just teaching law students how to read a case, interview a client or draft a brief, it also includes introducing them to the numerous ways lawyers seek to participate in and improve the justice system. Promoting language access in the legal academy offers numerous opportunities to expose students to a diverse set of organizations and skills, and to a community of advocates who have engaged on these issues. This article describes some innovations and best practices relating to language access in the legal academy. It opens with a description of the salience of language access in the current political moment, noting recent demographic trends, and the political importance of language access. It discusses the contemporary salience of language access and the ABA’s 2012 Standards for Language Access in Courts. The article reviews various models for incorporating language access into the law school curriculum, in both doctrinal and experiential settings, and positions bilingual instruction as a language access strategy. The authors describe how law schools can expand the pipeline into the interpreter professions by training and deploying bilingual college students as community interpreters

Lawyering Skills 2.0: Specific Pedagogical Approaches for Emergent, Non-Litigation Lawyering Practices

As originally conceived, clinical legal education operated primarily within the context of litigation, social justice lawyering, and live-client in-house clinics. Over the years, diverse models of clinical education have emerged: non-litigation clinics such as transactional clinics, mediation clinics, and legislative policy clinics; externship programs; hybrid clinics that combine aspects of direct representation and externship placement; and the expansion of clinical education in countries around the globe. In many respects, the pedagogies of these diverse models have been developing outside the mainstream of clinical legal education through forums such as distinct conferences dedicated to transactional clinics, externships, or global justice issues. This conference seeks to bring the pedagogies from these diverse models of clinical legal education to center stage, examining the methods and assumptions of non-litigation, externship, hybrid, and international clinic models and engaging questions about how these pedagogies can or should inform earlier understandings of clinical education, lawyering skills, and social justice work. An exploration of the diversification of clinical legal education compels a focus on the divergent approaches adopted by both clinical faculty and law school administrations. A predominant mode of clinical education involves teaching the professional skills of interviewing, fact investigation, counseling, and negotiation within a framework that assumes litigation as a backdrop. The rise of non-litigation clinics, however, has led to pedagogies of lawyering skills organized around the different objectives, methods and competencies of non-litigation work. Moreover, the role of clinicians in assisting law schools to develop lawyering skills training across the curriculum challenges the model of social justice lawyering that has shaped the growth and development of traditional clinical legal education, re-framing questions about the trade-offs between teaching skills and advancing the social justice mission of clinics. The in-house, live-client clinic has been the preeminent model for American clinical education. Yet, externships have existed at least as long as clinics and form the core of many experiential programs in the United States and abroad. Supervised work in outside practices dominates training in other professions such as medicine, education, social work, and ministry. The need to provide more practical skills training to more law students has pushed law schools to expand the reach of clinical education beyond the limited slots available through in-house clinics taught solely or primarily by in-house clinical faculty. Law schools have responded to these realities by expanding the range and variety of externship program designs, by developing hybrid models that divide client work, student supervision and classroom teaching between in-house clinicians and adjuncts, and by creating new courses that utilize aspects of externships (e.g. court observation or shadowing) together with more traditional approaches. These diverse models break down some of the traditional distinctions between in-house clinics and externships, prompt both questions and creative dialogue through the contrast of clinical pedagogies. With the diversification of models of clinical legal education come not just opportunities, but also challenges, critiques, and controversies. This conference will provide space to explore the pedagogies of these diverse models as well as the underlying challenges inherent in the expansion of the goals and limits of clinical education. To highlight these points, the conference will consider the possibilities for cross-fertilization from different pedagogical models. Each day of the conference will feature a single plenary session addressing the diverse pedagogies of clinical education and one or two concurrent sessions. Working groups will meet four times during the conference. To address conference themes of diversification and cross-fertilization, while also allowing clinicians to meet in affinity groups, the first two working group sessions will feature mixed subject-matter groups and the second two sessions will feature affinity groups organized by subject matter

Lawyering Skills 2.0: Specific Pedagogical Approaches for Emergent, Non-Litigation Lawyering Practices

As originally conceived, clinical legal education operated primarily within the context of litigation, social justice lawyering, and live-client in-house clinics. Over the years, diverse models of clinical education have emerged: non-litigation clinics such as transactional clinics, mediation clinics, and legislative policy clinics; externship programs; hybrid clinics that combine aspects of direct representation and externship placement; and the expansion of clinical education in countries around the globe. In many respects, the pedagogies of these diverse models have been developing outside the mainstream of clinical legal education through forums such as distinct conferences dedicated to transactional clinics, externships, or global justice issues. This conference seeks to bring the pedagogies from these diverse models of clinical legal education to center stage, examining the methods and assumptions of non-litigation, externship, hybrid, and international clinic models and engaging questions about how these pedagogies can or should inform earlier understandings of clinical education, lawyering skills, and social justice work. An exploration of the diversification of clinical legal education compels a focus on the divergent approaches adopted by both clinical faculty and law school administrations. A predominant mode of clinical education involves teaching the professional skills of interviewing, fact investigation, counseling, and negotiation within a framework that assumes litigation as a backdrop. The rise of non-litigation clinics, however, has led to pedagogies of lawyering skills organized around the different objectives, methods and competencies of non-litigation work. Moreover, the role of clinicians in assisting law schools to develop lawyering skills training across the curriculum challenges the model of social justice lawyering that has shaped the growth and development of traditional clinical legal education, re-framing questions about the trade-offs between teaching skills and advancing the social justice mission of clinics. The in-house, live-client clinic has been the preeminent model for American clinical education. Yet, externships have existed at least as long as clinics and form the core of many experiential programs in the United States and abroad. Supervised work in outside practices dominates training in other professions such as medicine, education, social work, and ministry. The need to provide more practical skills training to more law students has pushed law schools to expand the reach of clinical education beyond the limited slots available through in-house clinics taught solely or primarily by in-house clinical faculty. Law schools have responded to these realities by expanding the range and variety of externship program designs, by developing hybrid models that divide client work, student supervision and classroom teaching between in-house clinicians and adjuncts, and by creating new courses that utilize aspects of externships (e.g. court observation or shadowing) together with more traditional approaches. These diverse models break down some of the traditional distinctions between in-house clinics and externships, prompt both questions and creative dialogue through the contrast of clinical pedagogies. With the diversification of models of clinical legal education come not just opportunities, but also challenges, critiques, and controversies. This conference will provide space to explore the pedagogies of these diverse models as well as the underlying challenges inherent in the expansion of the goals and limits of clinical education. To highlight these points, the conference will consider the possibilities for cross-fertilization from different pedagogical models. Each day of the conference will feature a single plenary session addressing the diverse pedagogies of clinical education and one or two concurrent sessions. Working groups will meet four times during the conference. To address conference themes of diversification and cross-fertilization, while also allowing clinicians to meet in affinity groups, the first two working group sessions will feature mixed subject-matter groups and the second two sessions will feature affinity groups organized by subject matter