'I'm Blending': 'Cultural Compassion' Taught as a Critical Pedagogy

Posted: 3 Apr 2017 Last revised: 11 Oct 2017

Date Written: March 31, 2017

Abstract

Introduction:

"People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups. We can love what we are, without hating what – and who – we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings.”

Knowledge of applicable laws and rules, with an ability to analyze and distinguish precedent are important lawyering skills, many of which are taught and perfected during one’s law school experience. However, effective legal advocacy involves more than a mastery of the law and skill, it requires a deep understanding of the client, which necessarily means a respectful understanding of the client’s culture. “In our growing multicultural society, while cultural competence is increasingly important for professionals to create effective working relationships with their clients and adequately address their clients’ needs”; competence alone is insufficient. This article examines why “practice readiness” requires law school curriculums to introduce and to incorporate “cultural compassion” as a critical pedagogy.

There are a lot of articles that speak to the importance of the cultural environment within learning institutions, but there are only a few articles that discuss the importance of teaching “cultural respect,” more specifically, “cultural compassion” as a component of professional competency. This article is intended to introduce “cultural compassion” into the vernacular of legal education and thereby serve as a platform for this much-needed discussion. With that being said, I want to acknowledge the leading scholars in this area for their scholarship and thank them for their foresight and contributions that have yielded progress on this journey of transformative education. Specifically, I owe my awakedness, growth and transformation to leading scholars like Serena Patel, Kristen B. Gerdy, and Susan Bryant whose groundbreaking contributions have transformed adult education and legal education alike.

Section I begins the transformative journey toward cultural compassion with an example of a “clash of cultures”. This very personal example shows how common it can be to have a conflict of cultures between the lawyer and client that is significant enough to derail the entire professional relationship. In fact, this clash of cultures happens multiple times a day, every day, in every genre of the legal profession from direct representation of clients, to arbitration, to mediation, to transactional representation of multi-million-dollar businesses, to advice given by agents to their professional athlete clients, and so on.

Section II defines and discusses the importance of culture. The author introduces a sequential progression of a soul scrutinizing journey that begins at cultural awareness, continues through cultural competence, advances through the potential land mines of empathy and ultimately lands in the garden of cultural compassion.

Section III is where the concept of “cultural compassion” is introduced and explored as a component of competent legal representation as defined by the American Bar Association, (hereinafter ABA). Section III also discusses the MacCrate reports’ implication of competence; and how practical competence must include a recognition of the importance of and the incorporation of culture.

Section IV further explains the importance of culture and why good lawyering cannot be blind to cultural realities and why “cultural compassion” is the vehicle needed to transform students into self-actualized people and “whole lawyers.” Section V discusses the role of experiential learning and how teaching cultural compassion via experiential experiences improves the law students’ experience with legal education.

Section VII concludes that educating lawyers skilled at addressing the legal needs of the 21st century client, a diverse society “involves not the fulfillment of a competency as some sort of educational nirvana, but the development of an orientation-a critical consciousness-which places law in a social, cultural and historical context and which is coupled with an active recognition of societal problems and search for appropriate solutions.” Allow this to be the seed that prayerfully bears much fruit.

The simple, practical message of this article is one that we have heard before, but it cannot be said enough, “…to promote effective change in a networked world dependent on professional relationships and global cooperation, the legal profession must empower its newest members with the tools that will help them learn from, lead, and inspire others”; and of these tools, “cultural compassion” must be one. In its conclusion, this article encourages law schools to partner with law students and seek their student’s active participation in a systems theory shift that allows the birth of a curriculum that ensures a law student who is self-actualized in their culture so that they become legal professionals and leaders that are respectful of the culture of their clients. Thus, the focus of this article is to initiate meaningful discourse between law school professors and law students, focused on the creation of a pedagogical model that compels law students and young lawyers to: 1) know their culture; and 2) use their culture in ways that respect and acknowledge the cultures of their clients so that the legal representation and advise that is provided is greater than the total sum of its individual parts.

Keywords: culture, cultural compassion, competence, competent, MacCrate Report, ABA Model Rules, Committment to clients, professional responsiblity

Suggested Citation

Ledesma, Stephanie, 'I'm Blending': 'Cultural Compassion' Taught as a Critical Pedagogy (March 31, 2017). Thurgood Marshall School of Law Research Paper No. 2944350, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2944350 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2944350

Stephanie Ledesma (Contact Author)

Thurgood Marshall School of Law ( email )

3100 Cleburne Street
Houston, TX 77004
United States
5122282307 (Phone)

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