AALS Externship Fall 2020 Newsletter

Pandemic Shutdown Woes: Crowdsourcing to the rescue

Meg Reuter

Banned from the office, no access to the courts, no chance to talk to a client in person, no off-site access to the case management system—How does that virtual externship count as “experiential”?

Well over 170 externship faculty, representing 116 schools, met weekly by zoom this Spring to figure out those answers. This was the work of our ever supportive and active AALS Externship group. Our colleagues were thirsty for the information. We had eleven meetings altogether, running from March 13 to June 12. The first meeting had about 25 participants, which quickly grew to 60-70 participants each session. More than half of our colleagues were frequent fliers, coming to three or more of the sessions.

They started with a piece of good fortune and they took off with a moment of clarity.

First, the piece of luck:  On March 13, we had scheduled one of our periodic zoom meetings hosted by the International and Semester Away subcommittee. On March 11, with pandemic emergency declarations in nearly every state, we knew the intended topic needed to be changed. It became: Managing Responses to the Coronavirus:  Teaching Online, Helping Students to be Successful Working Remotely, and Preparing Revised Policies to Support Students.

Very quickly that session evolved into a big “sharing” event – reports on what schools had moved classes online, what host offices have moved online, is everybody well, how do we adjust to the new difficulties, how do we rescue the remainder of the semester, what will summer hold???

Next the moment of clarity: It became apparent that we had a lot to share and question. In the moment, we all decided that the meetings would be weekly, advertised on Lextern, and continue for as long as we needed them. It turns out we needed them a lot. So much so that we are going to resume them in the Fall. We are in a new reality, defined by a pandemic, virtual lawyering, and an opportunity to dig into teaching anti-racism.

But before we jump ahead to the Fall, I do want to describe the amazing work of many people who pulled the spring together. Anahid Gharakhanian and I started the meetings, but many folks stepped up to coordinate and produce deeply useful sessions. More than two dozen of our colleagues stepped up to help slack our thirst for more community and more information.

I have described the vitality and value of these sessions to my dean and anyone who will listen. They were vital because they were grounded in crowdsourcing. First: how do we understand the many dimensions of the “problems” before us—student issues, institutional issues, financial aid, ABA standards, supervisor training, live legal work, desperate needs for new legal services in the community, and more? The contributions of many helped us become more fine-tuned about the issues that we had to address at our own schools. Next: how do we problem-solve? We spent very little time on fretting and much time on sharing ideas and teaching each other. For every problem cited we had a problem-solving session planned.

By the way, nearly every session turned into a tutorial on video-conferencing technologies and functionality—complete with zoom lessons, syllabus sharing, tutorials on asynchronous teaching, and discussion scenarios queued up for our use. Most sessions ended with a recording, shared notes, and shared resources, all posted on Lextern Web. These sessions helped many schools mount CLE programs for their mentor attorneys, to which everyone in our community was invited as well.

That was all before George Floyd’s torture and murder. Before demonstrations nationwide and worldwide. A new imperative fell at our feet. We started with a brilliant session – Rising to the Challenge, The Teaching Moment re: Racial (In)justice – on June 12; the last one in our Spring series and setting the stage for Fall.

To everyone who came—thank you for coming and sharing your insights. To everyone who produced a session, thank you for sharing your smarts.

We have chance to do the same thing this Fall.

We invite you to be contribute to these sessions. You don’t have to have all the answers. In part our success is to share the problems and concerns.

Our “Spring 11” Propels Us Into an Active Fall

Anahid Gharakhanian

Our 11 Friday meetings between March 13 and June 12 crystalized the critical role and broad reach of our AALS Externships community.  The need and benefit to regularly get together were clear.  Our analytical brains and empathetic hearts quickly identified the issues to be tackled as our communities started shutting in.  What also became abundantly clear is that we have a very deep bench – to address urgent issues and find a way forward.  So, we could say that one silver lining of the pandemic for the externship community has been to create – in a very short span – more engagement, education, and support than ever before.  That momentum has propelled the planning for the coming year, with a schedule already set for the Fall.

Based on the spring Friday sessions, conversations through the summer, and the persistent state of affairs, it’s become clear that the AALS Externships group should continue focusing on remote externships during the 2020-21 academic year.  It’s also become abundantly clear that we must focus on anti-racism or racial (in)justice—in our programs, in our teaching.  As we shared during the June 12th session – Rising to the Challenge, The Teaching Moment re: Racial (In)justice – many of us feel that we are not an expert in this area and may not feel well-equipped to address the topic in our teaching.  But we agree that as teachers we have the responsibility to become better informed and equipped.  I’ve found it helpful to approach this area with the mindset to “be brave; be humble; and be dedicated” (quoting a piece by Dereca Blackmon, called The Work Starts with You: 3 Habits True Allies Practice).

Together – this Fall – we’ll be brave, humble, and dedicated to help our students’ learning and professional growth in unsettling times but with a future that they can impact and improve for themselves, their communities, and beyond.  We’ll meet approximately twice each month through the end of the Fall semester.  Thank you to Laurie Barron, Lauren Donald, Nira Geevargis, D’lorah Hughes, Nadiyah Humber, Amanda Rivas, and Sue Schechter, for kicking off our series on August 28^th, with “Falling Together: Lessons Learned from Summer Remote Placements.”  Mark your calendars for the rest of our Friday sessions.  We’ll send reminders via Lextern.  See you September 11^th.

*all sessions are 9 to 10:15 A.M. PT,  12 to 1:15 P.M. ET