SRLN 2024

This program serves as an urgent cause of/for action and open call to reimagine the American law school. U.S. legal education’s current manifestation, we argue, serves as a unique site of socialization that has and continues to perpetuate ideological, structural, and material harms. Through a historically grounded analysis of the Present, Past-Ongoing, as well as potential Futures of the law school as a distinct project of legal power, this program explores the multiple ways in which traditional legal education can and must be reimagined by the broader U.S. legal profession. Drawing from movements of scholarship-activism in critical legal pedagogy, sociology, and abolitions, this space explores radical reforms to the law school as footholds toward freedom. In situating the law school as a critical zone of struggle for realizing justice and community sovereignty, this program seeks to discuss the ways that lawyers, legal educators, and advocates aligned with the work of liberation might work across disciplines, jurisdictions, and time to jointly advance “non-reformist reforms” to U.S. legal education. As this session explores, it is only through conscious, collective processes of (re)imagination that we can forge a future grounded in shared, collective legal power.

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What are Law School Labs? In this session, you will learn about the growing network of university labs that work on law, policy, data, technology, and design-driven innovaiton.

In particular, we'll highlight:

• The different kinds of Law School (and University) Labs, what kinds of projects they work on, how they operate, and what their priorities & goals are
• Practical strategies for courts, legal aid groups, bar associations, or other justice institutions to partner with university labs to make progress on their innovation projects;
• Example stories of past partnerships, including the details of establishing a relationship, scoping projects, working with researchers and students, and delivering work products.

You should attend this session if you are interested in understanding this new kind of law school group, doing more research about what works in justice innovation, and connecting with students, researchers, and interdisciplinary teams on envisioning and evaluating a better future for access to justice.

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