The Economic Justice Imperative for Transactional Law Clinics

Abstract

This Article examines the necessity for weaving economic justice and social justice teaching into the fabric of transactional law clinical pedagogy. This Article, through narrative theory and exploration of clinical teaching, questions the dominant model of litigation as a means to achieve social justice goals, and counters that not only is transactional lawyering a social justice vehicle, but that transactional practice and the transactional lawyer has been at the heart of the civil rights movement in the United States. The current scholarship in this area fails to address the implications and consequences for economic justice if a business law clinic overlooks poverty and justice in favor of corporate practice-readiness. While many scholars have discussed the need for training students to be practice-ready and the need for transactional teaching during law school, this Article builds upon that body of work to interrogate the exclusion of economic justice teaching within business law clinics. By understanding the history of social justice movements, ideology of economic empowerment and clinical legal education, the Article establishes that transactional lawyering and economic and social justice should be inextricably linked.