Connection, Capacity and Morality in Lawyer-Client Relationships: Dialogues and Commentary,

As important,and difficult, as it is to offer new law students clearand helpful frameworks for the interpersonalwork of lawyering, do-ing so is only part of what a clinical textbook may aspire to. In ourtextbook-in-progress, we hope to offer both frameworks and support for students\u27 sense of the incompleteness of every framework and for their recognition of the need for careful,flexible response to each in-dividual client. Even care and flexibility by themselves are notenough, however, and every text must choose which aspects of law- yer-client relationshipsit will emphasize most. In the sections thatfol-low, we focus on lawyers\u27 development of connection in context, emotional connection and common ground with clients forged even across considerable gaps of difference; on the application of these skills across especially large contextualgaps, as illustratedin an inter-view with a client with a mild intellectualdisability;and on the ethicsand skills of making one specialform of connection with a client, themoral relationship entailed in a moral dialogue. These dialogues and commentaries explore many complex moments between lawyerand client, but they also reaffirm the central importance of a funda-mental skill and virtue - listening - in the lawyer\u27s work of creating,in each case, a theory of the representatio