I need to talk to several lawyers, actually. As many as I can arrange. If you're not a lawyer, you may enjoy lurking, but you probably won't find this of great interest.
That title was shamelessly designed to lure lawyers into this diary. I am not actually in trouble. (Nor, I must note in a lawyerly fashion, did the diary title state that I am. So there.) Rather, I have some questions for the lawyers among us for a project I'm working on (I cannot describe the details, but it's benign) on the impact of legal education.
I want to reach people who have an appreciation for public interest law (hence my posting here) and collect stories of how legal educators changed lives for the better, individually and/or collectively: whether directly working with agents of change or profoundly impacting students towards engagement in social transformation or community service.
(I almost called this diary "Got a Happy Legal Education Story?")
Among the positive possibilities signaled by the Obama Administration is the prospect of more opportunities for lawyers to do some good in the world, due to the presence of a government that may be willing to honor both good ideas and good intentions. But to see how that could be done most effectively, we should want to see examples of what has worked in the past. So I'm looking for stories: your personal stories of successes in legal education, or simply ones that you know about involving other people. (For example: Prof. Lawrence Lessig's work on intellectual property issues, done in conjunction with social activists, would be a great example of what might become possible in the years ahead.)
Due to the specifics of my project, I'm not looking for examples of how lawyers alone foster useful social change, but of how law professors fit into the process: directly working with agents of change or inspiring students to do so -- or to be agents of change themselves.
We do a lot of complaining here -- and rightfully so. I'm hoping that the comments to this diary may remind us of what in the past and present we can celebrate and what we might look forward to celebrating in the future.