A Recap of the 6th Annual Southern Clinical Conference – “Celebrating the Work: Innovations, Traditions, and Disruptions in Clinical Legal Education” (Oct. 13-15, 2016)
At this year’s Southern Clinical Conference, the Charlotte School of Law (CharlotteLaw) welcomed close to forty legal and clinical educators representing eighteen law schools to celebrate the innovations, traditions, and disruptions in our work as clinical educators. Being a city reflective of tradition, innovation, and (yes) disruption, the City of Charlotte proved to be an appropriate site given the theme of this year’s conference. Further, being a law school with mission pillars dedicated to (1) serving the underserved, (2) producing practice-ready attorneys, and (3) ensuring positive student outcomes, CharlotteLaw was the ideal host for the conference.
The following is a recap of this year’s conference highlights:
• On Thursday night, the conference kicked off with a great informal gathering of attendees at the Aloft Hotel in uptown Charlotte.
• On Friday morning, CharlotteLaw’s Dean Jay Conison gave conference attendees a warm welcome to both the Queen City and to our school. He extolled his support for clinical legal education and emphasized CharlotteLaw’s commitment to experiential education generally citing our thirteen live client clinics, expansive externship and cooperative placement programs, and one of the country’s only post graduate law firm incubators.
• For the opening plenary session, Professor Bob Kuehn of Washington University School of Law presented ‘Measuring the Value of Clinical Education.’ As per usual, Bob did not fail to impress us with his amazing empirical research showing the benefits of clinical legal education in relation to student job outcomes. He further shared his ongoing research into whether there is any (positive or negative) effect of clinical legal education upon student bar outcomes.
• Conference attendees were given a chance to learn more about the disruptions (North Carolina House Bill 2 (HB2) and the killing of Keith Scott) affecting the City of Charlotte during a lively lunch panel held at Bentley’s Restaurant (a restaurant on the 27th floor of Charlotte Plaza that showcases a great skyline view of Charlotte). Moderated by Charlotte Law’s Clinical Director Scott Sigman, the panelists for this forum (all involved with said disruptions) included CharlotteLaw Professor Christie Matthews, CharlottLaw Graduate and ACLU Board Member Brandy Haynes, and Charlotte City Council Members John Autry and LaWana Mayfield. For those of you missed this fantastic lunch panel, here’s a link to the video.
• Our Friday evening reception was held at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in uptown Charlotte. Our attendees enjoyed wonderful company, great food, wine/beer, and unimpeded viewing access to the museum’s newest exhibits. In juxtaposition to the events inside our Friday reception, Republican Nominee Donald Trump was giving a speech a block away from us at the Charlotte Convention Center. Reports are that at least a couple of our attendees joined the throng of Trump protestors outside the Convention Center!
• On Saturday, two of our most favorite clinicians, Alex Scherr (UGA) and Carwina Weng (Indiana), presented the conference’s closing plenary – “Too Much of a Good Thing? Integrating Outcomes into In-House and Externship Clinics.” Given the new push towards measuring outcomes in legal education, this highly educational and interactive presentation provided us innovative strategies, challenging us all to become better clinicians and closed our conference on an amazing note.
• All in all, there were twenty presentations (plenary, sessions, works-in-progress, panels) featured at this year’s conference. Each one was engaging and fantastic.
• One last shout out to my fellow conference planning committee members – Anne Hornsby (Alabama), Danny Schaffzin (Memphis), Kendall Kerew (Georgia State), Lisa Martin (Catholic), Robert Lancaster (Louisiana State), Alex Scherr (Georgia), and Crystal Shin (William & Mary). You guys are the best!
• Next year’s Southern Clinical Conference will be held at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Everybody should mark their calendar when the ‘Save-the-Date’ comes out in the near future!