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Abstract:
This article explores a new approach to legal practice grounded in human development and social interaction theories, and previews the contents of a forthcoming volume co-edited by its authors. The context for this approach is the deep and widespread yearning among legal professionals to recapture past idealized images of the 'citizen lawyer', guided by the dramatic changes that have occurred within the profession as well as in our increasingly global society. This yearning is reflected in the convergence of a number of movements that have swept across a wide swath of the legal profession - including practitioners, judges, and legal scholars/educators. Such movements include Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Preventive Law, Restorative Justice, Transformative Mediation, and Humanizing Legal Education. This forward-looking approach, called 'Relationship-Centered Lawyering,' directly responds to the call for a revitalized understanding of professionalism and professional training when it comes to the practice of law. A unique feature of this framework is its empirically tested scientific base. This relational approach is grounded in well-accepted principles and theories principally drawn from the mental health fields of social work and psychology. The relationship-centered approach calls upon lawyers to gain competency in three distinct areas: (1) contextualized understandings of human development; (2) just and effective legal process; and (3) affective and interpersonal competence.

Professional Relationship, Carnegie, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Social Science

Abstract:
This Article explores the pedagogical and professional challenges and rewards of community lawyering and clinical legal education. The authors are clinical law faculty who self-identify as community lawyers and teachers of community lawyering clinics. They have gathered in recent years with a larger group of similarly engaged colleagues to discuss what is meant by community lawyering, how it is taught, and how it is practiced. This Article seeks to capture some of those conversations, crystallize some of the ideas that have arisen out of the discussions, and examine the implications of these ruminations for future directions in clinical legal education.

clinical legal education, legal education

Abstract:
The field of child welfare law exemplifies opportunities and challenges facing the proponents of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL). The field has held itself out as promoting a therapeutic standard and goal for children, and explicitly embraces a psychological preventive law theory. Nevertheless, it has failed to embrace contemporary mental health thinking about children and families, known as family systems theory, and reflects an outmoded, psychoanalytic, medical model.

This model has contributed to an antitherapeutic child welfare system inconsistent with preventive law principles. Adopting a family systems approach requires a paradigm shift toward respecting and empowering the family as a unit. This approach is consistent with TJ preventive law principles and provides a better fit between the legal system and social reality.