Finding Our Way: Teaching Legislative Advocacy Clinics

Abstract

Legislative advocacy clinics are excellent vehicles for teaching lawyering skills, for achieving broad-based social change, and for imparting to law students the important roles they can play in preserving and strengthening our democracy. Notwithstanding their growth over the last 15 years, there has been little scholarly reflection about the pedagogy of teaching such clinics. This Article helps to fill this gap. We provide a roadmap through the challenges that come with teaching legislative advocacy clinics-some inherent to working within legislative bodies and some that accompany working with organizational clients and advocacy partners-identifying ways that clinicians can ensure an excellent learning experience for our students while achieving essential and systemic social change for our clients and the communities they serve. We discuss four features of clinic design-project selection, supervision, the seminar, and project rounds-and explore how best to reinforce four key clinical learning goals-taking responsibility and self-reflection, client-centeredness, collaboration, and pursuing social justice-in these contexts. We also share stories from our own clinics' legislative advocacy projects, trusting that clinicians can learn from our successes and our struggles. We conclude by encouraging our colleagues to more actively consider offering legislative advocacy clinics-or to mindfully incorporate such projects into their existing clinics.

Keywords: clinical legal education, legislation, legislative advocacy, clinical pedagogy, experiential learning, legislative advocacy clinics, clinic design