Thankful

There are precious few jobs in the world, much less in the legal profession, quite like clinical legal education. We clinical law professors may struggle in our institutions about rank and status, resources and misunderstanding, but we have an inimitable seat to observe and participate in extraordinary work. We clinical program directors enjoy the multiplied variety and challenges that come with running an academic department, managing a law firm, collaborating with talented partners and teaching intense students.   I try never to take for granted the opportunity for such engaging work, even when stress and anxiety ramp up.

Today, I am reflecting, as we do, with gratitude on this work.   At Pepperdine, I am in partnership with brilliant, committed, creative and compassionate lawyer-teachers, Profs. Brittany Stringfellow Otey, Richard Peterson, Tanya Cooper, Jeremy Rosen, Stephanie Bell Blondell, Bob Uhl, and Judy Norris, my law partners and friends, who direct clinics and teach students with grace and heart. We are joined by our beloved Prof. Terry Adamson, former prosecutor and judicial commissioner and long dedicated teacher and coach, who is set to retire as our externship director next month. She is a true friend and loves students with unfailing generosity. Supporting us all is Donna Brabec, our clinical program manager, a consummate professional and humble friend who keeps the enterprise running.  

In our clinics, like almost all clinics, we have the unique opportunity to provide pro bono legal services with our students without the worry of generating revenue from our practice because of the support and vision of our school. This is a manifestation of our institutional commitment to education and to access to justice, in an age of outright crisis of accessible legal services. To have the foundation and support of a university gives us the opportunity and power to affect lives for generations. 

I get to direct the Community Justice Clinic. In its third semester, my students have worked with clients on four continents on matters related to homelessness, gender-based crimes, farm worker safety, day laborer opportunities, human trafficking in South Asia, sustainable agriculture, domestic violence, Amazonian rainforest conservation, surgical services in West Africa, indigenous people’s economic development, access to education for English language learners, environmental policy for public schools, and access to water, cooking fuel and sanitation in rural African villages. They blow me away. Never in my life have I enjoyed being a lawyer more.  I didn’t dream of a practice like this when I first joined a firm in a small Mississippi town at twenty-four years old. 

My colleagues and our students have represented clients on Skid Row, America’s densest concentration of homelessness; clients with disabilities seeking fair accommodations in education to which they are entitled as civil (and human) rights; clients seeking to expand access to federal courts in forma pauperis

I might be boasting a little bit, but mostly I am incredibly grateful for the rare opportunity to get to do this work. In what other job can we witness students in such beautiful, terrifying, stressful and exhilarating moments of transformation? They rise to the occasion with strength, creativity, zeal and competence, and they change the world. With our students, we get to join with righteous clients and partners to bring more light, love and justice to the world. There are setbacks, failures, defeats, death and hardship, but at least we have a fighting chance and the invitation to join in their dignified lives.  

Soon, it’ll be back to the fight, politics, struggle and hard work to keep and expand this work.  On Thanksgiving, though, I am grateful for this opportunity and calling. I am grateful for colleagues, students and clients. I am grateful for the community of clinical legal educators. I am grateful to be a lawyer and teacher.