Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: How Law Schools Can Close the Justice Gap
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Carl Rauscher
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WASHINGTON– Law school leaders discuss how their academic institutions work towards expanding access to justice on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. LSC President Ron Flagg hosts the conversation with guests Thomas Miles, Dean and Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School; William Treanor, Dean and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University Law School; and Miguel Willis, Innovator in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School Future of the Profession Initiative and Executive Director of Access to Justice Tech Fellows.
The legal landscape that law students are entering today is one marked by a vast justice gap. LSC’s recent Justice Gap report found that last year, low-income Americans received no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their civil legal problems.
“One of the ways law schools can help work towards closing the justice gap is by graduating a generation of students who are aware of it and understand it, and have a set of values about providing service to individuals that need it,” says Miles.
Last year, when Attorney General Merrick Garland called upon law schools to help address the national eviction crisis, Treanor co-led the initiative. He saw an overwhelming response—a hundred law schools joined and 2,100 students signed up, serving 10,000 households in need of legal help. Beyond the impact this had on helping families in crisis, Treanor explains that the initiative also sparked students’ interest in legal aid.
“There are so many of the students who I've talked to at Georgetown, and I have heard from other deans, when they did this, it altered their sense of what they could do in their legal careers,” Treanor says. “They could see the difference [they made] and it was transformative for them.”
In thinking about how law schools can prepare students to solve access to justice issues, Willis says that outside the traditional path to becoming an attorney, law schools can give students problem-solving skills to use in other capacities.
“There are increasing number of students that are coming out of law school [who] while they may take a job that leverages their J.D., they may not necessarily practice,” says Willis. “I think a legal education teaches critical analysis, teaches how to examine and think critically about intractable problems—how can we leverage those students as changemakers?”
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.
The next episode of the podcast will explore the disconnect between how courts were designed to function—with lawyers engaging in adversarial litigation—and how they actually function today—often without lawyers.