Social Responsibility and Justice: Fostering the Ethos in All Students

Externships provide students with unique opportunities to experience and witness issues of justice and fairness in the context of real legal matters that affect real people. The externship classroom provides a place to identify and address these issues deliberately. We will share teaching strategies and materials that help foster students’ understanding of and commitment to public service and social justice in a range of externship seminars, including general externship courses and those focused on one particular type of placement. We will also offer specific approaches for working with classes that include students who may be reluctant to embrace a commitment to social justice or may not see a direct connection between their workplace and social justice goals, including those working at law firms or corporate counsel offices. The session will also include strategies for using current events related to social justice as teaching moments and for identifying material that is current and relevant to today’s students. We will share specific exercises and assignments that are designed to facilitate the exchange of perspectives among students on both furthering justice and career paths. The goal of these classroom strategies is to encourage students to incorporate these values into their professional identity, regardless of their intended career trajectory. Given that our programs are in different stages of development and organized differently, this information should be helpful to new and experienced faculty and to a range of program models. Our schools are diverse in terms of class size, resources, program design, and the types of placements available. We each draw on different work histories and backgrounds to inform our teaching. This diversity of experience and approach will be reflected in the seminar designs and teaching tools that we will share