Report of the Working Group on Representation within Law School Settings

Abstract

The Group addressed the role of law schools in providing representation to low-income persons. In the Group's view, law schools must act in two broad ways to improve the provision of legal services to low-income persons. As legal institutions, they must play a direct and active role in providing legal services to low-income people and, as educational institutions, they must educate, train, and socialize law students to address these issues throughout their careers. We viewed these responsibilities as complementary and identified a wide range of strategies for meeting them. In our discussions, we tried to account for the wide differences in resources and viewpoints among law schools, law students, and law faculty, but, as a group we shared the view that all lawyers, regardless of their practice settings or political beliefs, have, and should have, an obligation to address the unmet legal needs of low-income people. We came to view our recommendations as aspirational-we asked ourselves what law schools should do to fully meet their obligations in this area. We recognized that few schools combine the resources and the commitment to do all the things we outline, but we saw value in identifying what we believe are the "best practices" in each of these areas. We discussed many individual examples of tremendous commitment and creativity and hope that our recommendations and report will be useful to those trying to solve particular pieces of this complex puzzle.