Lawyering for All

Overview

This specialized course provides the fundamental training to begin your own social justice projects.

While open to everyone, participants are often from the following groups:

• Prospective and current law school students
• Junior legal professionals
• Leaders / community organizers from underserved communities
• Social advocates or activists

Key outcomes:

• Actionable legal skills to serve a community
• A newfound network of professional support
• The ability to identify and speak to inalienable rights

Workshops

Weekly workshops led by experts in their respective fields will help you build capacity for running real-world social justice projects and initiatives. Topics of workshops are customized for the needs of each cohort and participants are required to attend all workshop sessions.

Topics included:

• Understanding your inalienable rights. Learn the fundamentals of the rights everyone has and what they mean to defend a free, democratic society.
• Thinking and budgeting like a legal professional. Begin to establish the guidelines and parameters to turn your newfound legal skills into a viable project.
• Supporting an underserved community with a new initiative. Identify groups in your own life that are in need of legal support and formulate an effective proposal to help them.

Project work

Each participant is asked to pitch an idea to the rest of the cohort. This is your chance to conceive any idea that helps an underserved community seek legal truth.

Sample ideas:

• providing pro bono consulting to an individual whose right is infringed
• helping a non-profit group develop a campaign strategy to defend human rights
• conceiving a social media account to make legal topics more accessible to the general public

The entire cohort votes on the pitches that most resonate with them. The top-three most-voted pitchers become leaders and each then forms a team. Teams work together through the duration of the course to start a social justice project that brings that winning idea to fruition.

Mentorship

Each project team is paired with a mentor based on the needs of the team members. Experts in their respective areas, mentors serve as project supervisors, meeting with team members regularly to offer feedback. They also provide a final evaluation report at the end of the project.