A Home of its Own: The Role of Poverty Law in Furthering Law Schools' Missions

Abstract

This author argues that poverty advocates who are willing to carefully attend to their law school’s mission and vision, and to give careful thought to how poverty law may play an important role in achieving that vision, may win a more lasting place for poverty law in the curriculum than it has heretofore managed to achieve in most law schools. This article will argue that poverty law can be a key piece in the curriculum of law schools who define their mission, at least in part, as educating lawyers according to one of five paradigms: 1) lawyers as public citizens and leaders, 2) lawyers as skilled technicians of the law, 3) lawyers as skilled counselors, 4) lawyers as advocates on behalf of a cause in legal institutions, and 5) lawyers as transformational partners with the poor.

Keywords: poverty law, legal education, mainstream academy, law school curriculum, Civil Gideon