The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School recently launched Justice Lab clinic, a program centered around legal reform and advocacy for social justice.
The clinic adds to Penn Carey Law’s eight existing Gittis Legal Clinics. Led by Carey Law professor Colleen Shanahan, Justice Lab trains students to reform and shape the legal system with a focus on state and local laws.
“Lawyers do a lot of things in society, and one of the things in the best version of being a lawyer is that we shape the legal system,” Shanahan said. “We’re not just agents of the legal system, we're architects of the system.”
The curriculum consists of in-class seminars, small group meetings with the professor, and local excursions, all of which equip law students with a diverse skill set to work with clients.
“Some things we traditionally teach in legal education, like, how do you understand the law in the books? How do you analyze statutes and cases?” Shanahan said of the curriculum. “Some are things we don't teach traditionally in law schools, like how do you design bureaucracies? How do you communicate with the media? How do you think creatively about technological solutions?”
Justice Lab also trains students to represent organizations rather than individuals. The first semester curriculum includes client interviews and counseling classes which are designed to introduce this shift in practice.
In a video published by Penn Carey Law, third-year law student Amara Young reflected on working hands-on with her client, a nonprofit organization focused on booting and towing reform.
“It’s been a really cool experience because we’re helping craft the legislative advocacy strategy for the client. We’re really getting to draft legislation [and] craft media advocacy plans,” Young said in the video. “It’s been a great experience to help reform an unjust system.”
Shanahan hopes the clinic serves as a platform for change and discourse, both for the local Philadelphia community and for legal advocacy nationwide.
“So often, especially in our civil justice system, there are these individual great experiments in all these different places,” Shanahan added. “I would love for the Justice Lab to build a role where we’re creating really terrific single reforms and also helping replicate them in a way that creates efficiencies in different places.”
Gittis Legal Clinics communications and legal projects coordinator Anthony Marqusee, who works with all nine clinics, anticipates collaboration between Justice Lab students and students of other clinics.
“I look forward to seeing the moment when Justice Lab led projects and reforms are experienced by students of other clinics and their clients as they represent cases in Philadelphia,” Marqusee said.
