Clinical Legal Education and Public Service: A Conversation with Dean Jens Ohlin and Associate Dean Beth Lyon of Cornell Law School

Don: Most of the guests that have appeared on this podcast have been lawyers I've known over the years, all of whom in one way or another have found their own higher callings. The clinical education offered in law schools can play an important part in preparing future lawyers to pursue those callings while also enabling students and faculty to provide critical legal services to clients who would otherwise have no access to them.

My own alma mater, Cornell Law School, exemplifies the highest standards in clinical legal education. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the Dean of the Law School, Jens Ohlin, and the Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Clinical Program Director, Beth Lyon, about the impressive array of clinical opportunities the school offers for its students and how the clinical education students receive contributes to the law school's vision of producing "lawyers in the best sense."

Jens: We have this conception of lawyer as citizen, lawyer as participant in this profession. And we take that so seriously, that there's an obligation to the profession, there's an obligation to society, there's an obligation to the country, there's an obligation to humanity. And I think in some quarters of the world, some cynical quarters, this would seem quaint or old fashioned. And I think one of the things that I really hold onto and care about is that this isn't quaint. It's necessary. And it's how we think of ourselves. And I think it's a much more meaningful conception of what it means to be a lawyer.

Don: I'm Don Frederico, and this is Higher Callings.

I'm with Dean Jens Ohlin, Dean of Cornell Law School, and Beth Lyon, who is the Director of Clinical Programs at Cornell Law School. Hello to both of you. How are you today?

Beth: Hello.

Jens: Hey, I'm great. Thanks for having us.

Don: Oh, really happy to do this, and I really appreciate your willingness to spend time on the podcast today.

As you know, we're going to talk about clinical programs as part of a legal education, and public interest law, in general, all of which I think fits neatly into the theme of the podcast, which is higher callings. Cornell Law School does a great job, as I'm sure do many other law schools, but Cornell Law School does a great job of training students in public interest law.

And I'm not sure that alumni of a certain vintage like myself or the general public really appreciate how much clinical work is done in law schools and how much is going on at Cornell Law School in particular. So I wanted to chat with you both about that.

And let me start by just asking you each, and Dean Ohlin, we'll start with you, just to briefly describe your background.

You've been the dean of the law school for the past two years now, I think. But you've been with the law school longer than that, including in senior administrative positions. But can you talk a little bit about your background?

Jens: Sure. Thanks, Don. I've been dean for about a year and a half at Cornell. And before that was a professor and associate dean. I came to Cornell in 2008, after getting a Ph.D. In philosophy and then law school at Columbia and private practice. And my first tenure track job was at Cornell in 2008. And I taught criminal law and international law, two of my great loves.  And then I started work as an associate dean at the same time and recently took over the deanship a year-and-a-half ago.

Don: And we were talking about this just very briefly before the recording, but your areas of specialty are particularly timely given what's happening in Russia and Ukraine right now. Do I understand it correctly? Your background includes expertise in the ethics of war?

Jens: Yeah, the ethics and the law of war. I tend to marry those two interests together because, with my background in philosophy, I'm interested in not just the positive law and what the law says, but what it ought to say and the ethical principles behind it. But yeah, my major research area I would describe as the laws of war and the intersection of those two teaching areas.

I talked about international law and criminal law, and then you add the two together and you get international criminal law and the prosecution of criminal violation of the laws of war. So that's really occupied my interest and my research for probably a decade and a half.

Don: Beth. I shortened your title to Director of the Clinical Programs. I think you have more responsibility than that. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your job at the law school?

Beth: Sure. And thank you Don so much for this topic. It's really exciting to be here with you both.

So my background is in deportation defense. I graduated from Georgetown Law School and worked for many years for an organization that was then known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, running their asylum representation program and doing government education work around refugee policy.

And then I moved into clinical legal education, first in American University, and then at Villanova University, where I founded a clinic focused on providing free legal services to farm workers. And in 2015, I moved to Cornell to bring that same focus and to develop the same clinic here, in upstate New York.

So currently my title is the Clinical Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Clinical Program Director.

Don: Maybe I should ask both of you just briefly, what inspired your interests in public interest law? Jens, do you want to start with that?

Jens: Yeah, well, it goes back a little bit to what my research and teaching areas are. International law and criminal law are two areas of public law, par excellence. The idea of running a system of criminal justice and whatever side of the aisle you're on in that. Criminal law is public law. It's not pursuing private interests or corporate interests. It's really trying to develop a system that makes society run better.

And so, I think through that sort of intellectual interest and that practice interest, I really became interested in public law. And one of the things that, we'll talk about this a little bit more, but one of the great areas of focus for our clinical programs at Cornell is criminal justice and trying to really improve the machinery of criminal justice and reduce injustice in that area.

Don: And Beth, what about you?

Beth: Well, I was born and raised in Florida. And as a white woman growing up in Florida, it was very easy to see inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality, all around me as I grew up. And so, really from my earliest days, I've been seeing what was around me and trying to figure out ways to help to address it.

So, when I was in high school, I volunteered for Cuban refugees who were fleeing to the United States at that time, translating documents. It was sort of my first taste of work on behalf of immigrants, in particular low-income immigrants. And that really stuck with me all the way through undergraduate, and then realizing that law was really the best way to be able to provide services and support.

Don: So, we're going to be talking about Cornell's clinical programs, but I want to make sure that we're using the right terminology. I know I've seen different phrases. There are discussions and listings on the website. By the way, there's a lot of wonderful information on the Cornell Law website about the clinical programs and the public interest work that's done at the law school.

I've also seen the phrase "experiential learning." I assume clinical programs are a subset of experiential learning or something like that. But can either of you help me to make sure we're using the right terminology as we talk about this topic?

Beth: Sure. So, legal education is a little bit behind other areas of professional training.

We might think of medical school, architects, veterinarians, where the students spend a great deal of time in the credited program actually working with live patients or live clients. And as law moved away from the apprentice system in the 19th century, it went a little too far and wound up cutting most skills training out of the curriculum entirely.

And so, really we moved forward to the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a change of thinking around that. And only just relatively recently, the American Bar Association has decided that, in order to be accredited and in order to graduate from law school and join a bar every law student has to take six credits of experiential learning.

And the goal of experiential learning is to place the students into some kind of professional role for most of the course in order to develop their skills. So experiential learning is sort of an umbrella Idea. And at Cornell Law School, there's just been really a multitude of opportunities that have been created in order to allow students to meet this obligation.

So, we think about simulation courses. So this might be a trial ad course where individuals are working off of a hypothetical set of facts and learning how to do oral argument or direct and cross examination. And so that can satisfy the experiential requirement. But we also have a host of other opportunities that are available for students who want to actually work with what we call "live clients" to work on real cases in order to gain that experiential credit.

So, at Cornell Law School, we have some of the things that are pretty much familiar, I think to everyone. The idea of externships, so students who travel out or work with a lawyer who's based in the community in order to provide services to live clients.

But inside the curriculum, we also have clinical courses, which are in-house clinics. So those are clinics that are run by in-house, full-time faculty, supervising the students and handling cases, and also providing the skills training within the law school.

We have something called "practicum courses," which are kind of a hybrid, a sort of a field clinic where community lawyers work as adjunct faculty. They travel to the law school to provide skills training, and then the students travel out and do their work in the offices of the community lawyers.

We also have a relatively new sort of delivery mechanism for students, of credits and opportunities called "supervised experiential learning." And that's an arrangement where a student can work one-on-one with any full-time faculty member handling a pro bono matter for credit. So that's a really exciting thing that we don't see at a lot of law schools and a lot of students have taken advantage of that.

Don: So, before we get into more detail about the various programs that are offered, I thought it would be good to really understand the philosophy behind this, because, first of all, as I understand it, I think most people, when they think of legal clinics, they think about clinics that have some kind of litigation component to them. But I understand that the programs at Cornell are broader than that. And we will get into that in a little bit.

Many of the programs really seem designed to serve low-income people, or people of tremendous need, not only locally within New York State or Tompkins County, but nationally and internationally.

But, I think what I'd like to understand, and have our listeners understand, and Jens, I'll turn to you first for this, is what's the philosophy behind it? Why do law schools offer clinical programs? What's the value that these programs bring? What are the desired outcomes that they bring? Who are law schools serving when they offer experiential and clinical education to their students?

Jens: Yeah. It's a great question, Don. So I think it's the union of at least two different goals that are coming together in a very strong way.

So one goal is obviously to provide legal services to a community of need that isn't otherwise being fully served, and that might have difficulty getting legal services. We're a land-grant institution. We're an educational nonprofit. We're not a law firm that's trying to make money by providing legal services. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not our particular mission. And so that's one goal in offering clinical legal services.

But the other goal, which is really important to us, is providing an important pedagogical experience for our students. It's about legal training for our students which is not possible for them to receive in a classroom setting. I mean, classrooms are great and it's where you acquire the first building blocks of your legal education, and you work through textbooks and have a professor and debate ideas, and really start your legal education.

But after you do that, there's this more practical side of legal training, which brings together a whole set of different legal issues that aren't neatly tied up in a bow the way they would be in a textbook. And those types of skills are not easily acquired in a classroom. The only way, or the best way, of getting students to really figure out how to be a lawyer is to start being a lawyer in a nascent sense under the supervision of a clinical professor. Students really roll up their sleeves. They deal with clients and they start practicing law. I mean, there's no way around it. It's basically the learning by doing model, which I think is very, very compelling.

So, when I said that there's the union of these two goals, I think that helps us decide where we want to intervene through our clinical legal programs. There are particular clinics that you could imagine that would provide good legal training for our students, but it's really not necessary for us to provide that service to a vulnerable population. So it doesn't really make sense for us to use that as a venue for training our students.

Conversely, you could imagine the opposite. There can be a particular legal service that's really important for a vulnerable population, but it's really not going to provide a really great training ground for our students. In that situation, I'd say we leave it to others. There's a lot of other really great organizations that are providing legal services to clients in need. And if someone else can do it better and it doesn't really provide a pedagogical value to our students, then we're not the right actor in that situation.

So we go around looking for clinic possibilities that fit those two criteria.

Don: When I attended law school, and I attended Cornell, as you know, which was quite a long time ago, I think the only clinical program at that time was the Cornell Legal Aid Clinic, which I believe operated only in Tompkins County, New York. And it was there to provide legal services to people who couldn't afford lawyers.

What I've been surprised to learn recently is how much the clinical offerings at Cornell Law School have grown over the years. And I know if you go on the website, I counted up 15 different clinical programs that Cornell offers, and I think that's not even counting everything that might fall under the bucket of experiential learning or public interest law. So, I wonder, maybe I'll turn to Beth for this, but one thing I observed was that in these programs as I mentioned earlier, they're not only local, but they're national and even international and students are getting amazing experience.

Beth, what percentage of the student body participates in the clinical programs at Cornell?

Beth: Well, it's really grown in the last 20 years, and I just checked the numbers for the class of '22, that has just graduated. Eighty-two percent took at least one clinic. Forty-seven percent took at least one practicum course.

And, just speaking briefly with one of our public service colleagues, we learned that tens of thousands of hours for credit have been offered to the community just in the past year alone by students, and around 550 hours that we're aware of in pure pro bono work by students, not even gaining credit for the experience. So students at Cornell are very passionate about this work and very engaged and involved.

Don: Some of the programs have gained a lot of attention in particular. I know, for example, the death penalty program has received a lot of recognition, but so have some of the others - immigration, asylum. I know there's a new entrepreneurship, well I don't know how new it is, but I know there's an entrepreneurship program that's part of the clinical offerings. Can you just maybe identify some of the clinical offerings and demonstrate the breadth of the experience that students get? And again, how it benefits the students in their education and training to become practicing attorneys, but also how it benefits the communities that they serve and the clients that they serve?

Beth: Well, we really try to have offerings, and Jens mentioned some of the factors that we're looking at, we're trying to have offerings that provide transactional and litigation experience, national, international, and local. We're also hoping that students will experience not just working directly with one individual client, which is a very important part of the experience, but also work with community organizations to help them with their advocacy goals, to provide legal support to them and to work on policy matters, because so many Cornell Law alums are going to go on into careers that give them policy input, wherever they're sitting in the legal industry. So that's always our first point of departure, is making sure that we're providing a wide range of opportunities for students.

And I thought I would just highlight three programs briefly, the three that started up this year, in 21-22, because that seemed like the most fair way to just show you how the program is always evolving. We have alums, we have faculty colleagues who are so excited to bring new ideas and to work with students who are passionate about issues that are really current in our society today.

So for example, this year we launched the Appellate Criminal Defense Clinic, in which students are handling appeals for indigent defendants convicted of felonies here in New York State. And, in their first semester in the spring, there were weather issues, there were COVID-related challenges in accessing the prisons, but students were all able to visit their clients who are incarcerated and provide really high quality representation. They provided appellate briefs, challenging the convictions from innumerous legal angles. And then in the next semester, they'll have the opportunity to draft reply briefs and argue their cases in the Appellate Division of the First Department of New York State.

We also launched the Education Law Practicum. One of our alums has launched a practicum, the goal of which is to help law students to figure out how to use their skills to question the way that public education is delivered currently in the United States and figure out ways to support people who are trying to make it better. So in their first semester, the student lawyers researched a number of issues for their school clients, including: can schools pay students to work while they're in school, low-income students? Are schools permitted to help students who need to access healthcare? So trying to think of ways to make schools a safer and better site for low-income students and families.

And then the third new program that launched this year is our Movement Lawyering Clinic. And in that clinic, the students are just doing a wide variety of things. One of them was to represent four people who participated in a protest in Boston and to obtain dismissals on behalf of all four of these protestors who had been criminally charged. They are also working with indigenous environmental organizations, providing fact investigation work even now in COVID times, and they've been working with incarcerated women who are at heightened COVID risk, to help them to gain compassionate relief.

So, just a handful of new programs that you're hearing about show that students are really engaged in so many different activities.

Jens: Don, can I jump in here and say a couple of words on one of those clinics, and then it'll lead to a broader point?

Don: Please do.

Jens: So, I think that movement lawyering clinic, which is one of the newest, is a really innovative and impactful model for training young lawyers. It can sound, I think the phrase "movement lawyering," I think it's intuitive, but also can be a little bit vague at the same time. It sort of vaguely suggests people who are involved in social movements, but what does that mean for a lawyer to be involved in a social movement? Carl Williams is the clinician who's running that clinic and doing a fantastic job. And we're so excited that he joined Cornell Law School.

The way he thinks about it is, imagine you're a movement which starts at the grassroots level. How does that get started? Usually you have one or two or three or four people who are very passionate about a particular social issue, and they start meeting with each other, and it can be in person, it can be online. And then they kind of scale up and they're doing more impactful work, whether it's protests or whether it's advocacy or trying to support people. At that point, they need a lot of legal services, once they go from being two people in a living room, trying to make a difference, to all of a sudden they're a thousand people meeting somewhere or connected over Facebook.

And then all of a sudden it's, you know, 5,000 people, and they're setting up chapters and they're taking in donations and they're trying to lobby for change, or trying to make a difference. That all requires structure. Not corporate structure in the way that corporations need. And what Carl Williams and the students are doing is helping people build the structures they need to achieve whatever they're trying to accomplish in the world. And as a lawyer, helping other people accomplish their goals is a way of making a difference in the world.

The kind of analogy that Carl sometimes loves to use, which I think is very intuitive, is a union. So if you're a lawyer, one way that you can solve a problem for a worker is by directly working with an employer and solving whatever problem that the worker has. But another way you can help workers is to provide a structure for them to advance their goals. And that's what a union does, right? It provides a structure for workers who advance their interests with management and with employers. And so, you give them capacity to advance their interests. And so, it's kind of capacity building in that way. And I think that's really an innovative and remarkable thing for students to learn how to do.

But then this is the broader point that I wanted to make. When students work in these clinics, they're sometimes inspired to go on and practice law in that particular area. And when that happens, it's fantastic. When students work in the immigration law clinic or the asylum clinic, and they're like, "Wow, this is great providing this type of outcome for this client. I want to go and do this after I graduate."

Don: That's a home run, isn't it?

Jens: That's a home run. Or when John Blume or Sheri Johnson or Sandra Babcock or Keir Weyble work on a death penalty case with a student and the student says, "You know what? I want to devote my life to working on death penalty, capital cases after I graduate from law school," that's fantastic.

But the other thing that happens, more often and which is no less significant, is when the student acquires skills in that clinic, and then those skills translate to another practice area when they graduate. So it's that portability of those skills. It provides legal training, which translates to other practice areas and that's, I think, really common and really, really important.

Don: Sure. And, just following up on that, Jens, I think it's important in two ways. One is the translation of the skills is important. A lot of people think of law schools as places that are preparing people to have lucrative careers in business, in law firms, private practice, or maybe in government service work, which also is very much a public service. But, the skills that you develop in these clinical programs through hands-on work, I think what you're saying, translates into that person who then goes to the big law firm, or goes to the big city, or goes into government practice, and needs to know, eventually, and if it's not a huge firm, maybe early in their careers, needs to know how to ask questions of a witness, how to draw information out of a potential client, how to navigate court systems or administrative systems. So, those skills are really important and, I can't imagine a better way to get it than doing clinical work at a law school.

But the other angle to it is, what is the profession's view of the obligation of an attorney to the common good and to the public good? And, maybe we could talk about that a little bit. I know there's an ABA Model Rule. I know that Model Rule has been either adopted or followed in some way in New York State, in my state of Massachusetts, and other states around the country. But what is the vision of the role of a lawyer and the responsibility of a lawyer to the public that goes beyond just making a good living or getting a nice government job?

Jens: Beth. Do you want to start us off on that?

Beth: Yeah, maybe I'll just share the actual words of the Model Rule of Professional Conduct preamble, because I read it to my students every semester. I just think it's so very important for all of us, with the privilege that we have in this profession. And that language is "A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice."

And I tell the students, "This is our job. We are justice advocates. We have to not only get the outcome that our particular client needs to get by working through a system with our skills and training, but we also need to watch the overall system and think about how it's impacting everybody, including the many, many people who will never have a Cornell law student as a lawyer."

And so, I think that's really, for me, it's really a touchstone, and it also ties into the founding language of Cornell Law School. And maybe, Jens, I'll let you speak about that.

Jens: Yeah. Every lawyer has an obligation to the legal system and to work to the benefit of the overall profession and to, I think how I'd put it is, participate in the collective obligation that the profession has. And each individual can find a different way of participating in that collective obligation.

So, obviously when you have lawyers who devote their careers to a public interest agency or work for the government while they're serving the people of a particular municipality or the federal government, that's their way of satisfying that obligation. But there's a lot of other ways of doing it as well.

A lot of attorneys in private practice devote hours to pro bono practice on the side. And I think some attorneys are more active in that than others. And I think the Model Rule is a really important way of encouraging people to step up in whatever way they can, because the way it's accomplished for one attorney is not the same way it's going to be accomplished for others. And certainly, at the law school, we take this very seriously, that we have an obligation as lawyers.

So there's a professional obligation flowing from our status as lawyers. And then we also have this separate obligation as an educational institution. We're a land-grant institution, and we have this phrase that we're producing "lawyers in the best sense." And I think it's part of our educational goal to work for the betterment of society.

Don: So let me read the whole quote. You just quoted part of it. And I found this on Cornell Law School's website. But it was Andrew Dixon White, who was the first President of Cornell University and one of the founders, if not the founder, of the law school, in the 1880s, I think. Here's what it says on the website. He wrote that he wanted to educate "not swarms of hastily prepared pettifoggers. but a fair number of well-trained, large-minded, morally-based lawyers in the best sense," and that he hoped graduates of the school would become "a blessing to the country, at the bar, on the bench, and in various public bodies."

So, the trend in bar associations, the trend reflected in the Model Rule about pro bono service, as well as other service to the public, really aligns beautifully with the founding vision of Cornell Law School.

Jens: Yeah, that's right.

Beth: May I jump in with a little anecdote?

Don: Please.

Beth: My students and I have kind of a running joke because the letterhead that we use to turn in all of our pleadings actually says "Lawyers in the Best Sense" at the top. And so, I tell the students, "Well, have we lived up to it with this pleading? Do we need to do another revision? How is the judge going to react when they see this? Are we really comporting ourselves in line with that value?" And so, it's very present for us. There aren't too many judges who see a statement like that on a lawyer's letterhead.

Don: No, it's really so impressive.

And just to follow the thought a little more. I don't know what year this occurred, but quite a few years ago, I think during the time I've been practicing law, the American Bar Association adopted Model Rule 6.1. And what it basically does is it says that every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal service to those unable to pay. So, they're defining voluntary pro bono service as service to those unable to pay. And then they have an aspirational guide of rendering at least 50 hours of pro bono publico legal services per year, which should be for persons of limited means or organizations that work to address the needs of persons of limited means. And then they also talk about other forms of legal services that can be provided, or services to legal organizations.

So, after that rule was adopted, and I'm just saying this from my own experience, I think some of the states followed. In Massachusetts, I think the aspiration is 25 hours a year instead of the 50 that the ABA puts out. In New York, I think it's 50 hours a year, but again, these are all aspirational. They're not requirements.

So that all leads me to ask this question: How do the clinical programs prepare Cornell Law graduates to fulfill that responsibility? And what are alumni doing, to your knowledge? I'm sure there's a lot out there that is beneath the radar, but what are Cornell Law's alumni doing to fulfill their responsibilities to pro bono service?

Jens: Beth, do you have some examples of some recent graduates who you think are doing compelling work?

Beth: Yeah. I'll just kick it off and say, first, that this week alone I've placed two cases, a clemency petition and a deportation defense case with our alums in big law in New York City. They remember their clients, they remember the issues that they've learned, they feel close to their faculty. And so, it's really very fulfilling to work, to supervise an alum at a firm on some cases like this. So, that's really very exciting.

And then yes, we have numerous alums who head into public service. I'll just highlight Keisha Hudson, who recently became the chief defender for Philadelphia, which is very exciting. That's a city that's attempting to, as Jens was describing, really rethink the model of criminal justice in that municipality. Nola Booth graduated in '22, and she has received a Skadden fellowship to work in local legal services at law in New York. So, it's just very fulfilling and exciting to see students who step into those roles directly out of law school. They have a lot of options, and many of them are inspired by what the alums and what their clinical professors have done in the past.

Don: Jens, do you want to add anything to that?

Jens: Yeah, just, when I travel and meet with alumni all over the country and all over the world, I'm really amazed by the diversity of legal practices that our alumni have built. And, even the ones who are senior associates or partners at law firms in New York City or Chicago or L.A., most of them are participating or building pro bono practices on the side, which I think is really important.

And then, the other thing is that there's a fluidity to practice areas, which I think is important to remember. So, we tend to sort of divide up people who are working in government versus people who are working at law firms, and talking as if those are two tracks that never intersect, but of course that's an exaggeration. And, particularly in the area that I work in, which is criminal law, you see a lot of movement back and forth, and people who start off working for the District Attorney's office, whether it's in Manhattan or the Bronx, or work for the U.S. Attorney's office. And then they go work for a law firm. And then, 10 years later, they're back working in legal aid or public defense.

So, there's a kind of fluidity back and forth in those career choices. And I think some of what's motivating that I think is a sense of obligation of, okay, I've had 10 years and I've been well compensated and now I'm going to do something a little bit different because maybe I have a little bit more flexibility, I've acquired some financial resources and now it's time for me to give back. And it doesn't all have to happen at once. There's a sort of a long-term vision of a career in how these obligations are satisfied.

Don: And it's fulfilling, I think for the lawyers who are doing that work, whether it's part-time pro bono work in addition to your private legal practice or full-time legal clinics. I think people draw a lot of satisfaction from helping people who really need help and really couldn't afford to find it any other place.

Jens: Yeah. One other quick thing I just wanted to say was, I think this issue of access to attorneys and access to the legal system is so critically important because, we have a system in the United States where you're guaranteed a lawyer at public expense if you're a criminal defendant.

So, if you're charged with a crime and you're facing prison or some other criminal punishment, you're guaranteed by the state a criminal defense attorney to represent your interest if you can't afford to retain a private attorney. But outside of that context, there's no constitutional or public entitlement to an attorney. And, when you think about it, there are so many legal interests that are protected outside of the context of a criminal defendant. And if you don't have a lawyer, to file a lawsuit on your behalf or to make a petition to the government, your rights are not going to be secure. And unfortunately, the law is very complex and it gets more complex every year.

And those things are just too hard to do pro se, just filing them on your own. You really need an attorney. So access to an attorney in all of those other areas where the government doesn't promise that they'll give you an attorney is just so critically important because it's where the rubber meets the road. A lot of these rights and outcomes are only securable with some legal representation, but lawyers are just so expensive. A corporation can go hire a law firm and they have millions of dollars to pay an army of lawyers, but an individual person of modest resources, they just don't have the money to hire an attorney.

So it's such an important issue.

Don: And that's really important especially with rights that are existential, and bar associations have focused on that over the years. And I don't know how they've all managed it. I don't know what New York has done for example, but I know, well, I know a little actually about that.

But I know in Massachusetts, years ago, there was an effort through the Boston Bar Association to focus on the civil right to counsel. And it focused on areas like housing and evictions. And they developed a lawyer-for-the-day program in the Housing Court, so that a lawyer could step in, give advice to somebody who was being evicted, and then step out again after they helped that person without having to commit to a long-term relationship with the client and a long-term commitment to the case. But it was something that encouraged a lot of lawyers to come forward and take on those cases and help those people.

So, you're absolutely right. I mean, civil right to counsel has been a focus. It's something that I think would probably have to be done primarily by statute or court rule rather than through constitutional law.

One of the programs you have, and I mentioned this earlier, is the death penalty program. And somehow, I guess because that just seems to be dealing with such an extreme issue, life or death for the clients that the program serves, people who are on death row and have no representation, many, I assume, of whom have been wrongfully convicted and the issue is trying to exonerate them, or at least to find ways to change the penalty that they face.

And it received a very prestigious award last month, in May. It received the Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project from the Clinical Legal Education Association, which honors the work of the Capital Punishment Clinic, the International Human Rights Clinic, the Center On the Death Penalty Worldwide, and the Death Penalty Project, and a number of your professors are involved in that.

Beth, why don't I turn to you first, because I know you have worked closely with those people who are involved in that program and are very familiar with the award that it received.

Beth: Yeah. I really feel as though Cornell Law School, it's sort of the thing we're best known for is our capital punishment work. And the capital punishment work, beginning in the nineties, was really the first major step that the law school made away from local civil legal services and the legal aid clinic and into more of a national practice, and a kind of a crosscutting issue.

And, so up to this day, we now have, as you mentioned, or as Jens mentioned, four faculty members that are devoted to this. There's a sort of a spinoff NGO in South Carolina, where many of our alums go to work as fellows and continue handling cases and supervising students. It's really just a very unusual level of investment and success in one issue for a law school. And I really feel as though it's just one of the star programs at the law school.

And, here at the school, one of the reasons too that you see so much about these cases is because, as you say, the stakes are so very high. And so, a case that you might decide not to appeal in order to avoid making bad law, you appeal because it's either that or your client is going to be executed.

So, it's very interesting for the students because it's very heavy and appellate work, and we've had numerous kind of heavily publicized outcomes. Just a couple of years ago, Sheri Johnson argued Flowers v. Mississippi in the Supreme Court, and won that case.

Don: Overturning the death penalty for that client?

Beth: Yeah. And the client has been since released, so he really has his life back. And then, just in April, a Texas criminal court of appeals issued a stay of execution for a woman that was being represented by our International Human Rights Clinic. And students really played a key role in that. Over the winter and spring, they knocked on doors of the jurors in the case below, convinced some jurors to speak out, to testify in the Texas legislature, and really achieved an extraordinary outcome for Melissa Lucio, for their client.

And one of the things that was really satisfying about putting together this award application with the Clinical Legal Education Association was how many people stepped forward from capital punishment programs at other law schools to co-sponsor and to write about how unique Cornell is. In particular, how all of this representation work is feeding into very distinguished and persuasive scholarship. And that Cornell is really a leader in this field.

Don: It's really impressive. And as an alum, I can say, it's very gratifying to see that project, but also all the other projects that Cornell is doing where its students and its faculty members are really, some of its faculty members are really serving the public good, and the real needs of people who don't have access to lawyers.

So, why don't we bring this to a close? I think this has been a great discussion. There's a lot more, I'm sure you could talk about, but why don't we close on this? If there is one message that you'd like to convey to listeners about the role of the lawyer in advancing the common good or about how a legal education can inspire and prepare law students to do so after they graduate, what would that message be?

Jens: Well, one thing that I think is very bold and very special about that quote that you read before, about our founding mission and our self-conception, that we're producing lawyers in the best sense, is that we don't simply see lawyers as neutral instruments. I mean, they are instruments in terms of achieving results for clients, but we don't see lawyers as simply being neutral instruments at the behest of the highest bidder. I think that's what the pettifogger is that we're rejecting.

And I think the idea is we have this conception of lawyer as citizen, lawyer as participant in this profession. And we take that so seriously, that there's an obligation to the profession. There's an obligation to society. There's an obligation to the country. There's an obligation to humanity.

And I think in some quarters of the world, some cynical quarters, this would seem quaint or old fashioned. And I think one of the things that I really hold onto and care about is that, this isn't quaint. It's necessary. And it's how we think of ourselves. And I think it's a much more meaningful conception of what it means to be a lawyer.

Don: Very well put. Beth, that's a tough one to follow, but do you want to give it a try?

Beth: Yeah, I think I'll maybe just share an anecdote. I'm sitting right now inside a miniature law office inside the law school, the clinical program, where the students come and work. And, we had to shut down on March 13th of 2020, as the pandemic descended. And we really weren't sure what was going to happen for all of our clients, for all of the causes that we serve. There was so much uncertainty.

And I just, sharing that the law students stepped up, the way they stepped up during that time. It's just very, to me, an indication of hope for our profession. Over that first summer, many of the courts were still requiring that we attend in person, and they put on their masks when no one knew if that was safe, and walked into those settings. They continued to do in-person work with clients when that was necessary.

And then when fall came, again, we weren't really sure whether students would flock to the clinics as they normally do and take all of these courses that required them, this was before the vaccine, to step out into these unsafe spaces, to serve people who are in communities, where there were more risk and higher rates of COVID.

And every single clinic and practicum course filled. I think we got more work done because so many students were determined to serve special issues around COVID. And so, I just feel very proud of Cornell Law School and of those students for the work that they did.

Don: Given the number of students who participate in your programs generally, it's something that you should be very proud of. Those students are showing not only a desire to develop skills, but also to give back even early in their careers with a goal, I think, of probably continuing to do so after they graduate. So that's just a, a wonderful message.

If people want to learn more about the role of the lawyer, beyond just being a hired gun, but being somebody who contributes to society in a positive way, or about the programs offered at Cornell Law School, where can they go?

Jens: I think the website is a great place to start. And, if you are interested in hearing more about the clinical programs, there's a page for that on our website and it can put you into contact with Beth and the others who are working in that area.

And if you're interested in going to law school, if you're not yet a lawyer and you want to think about it as a career, there's an admissions page on our website with links to the various programs that we offer. We have obviously our J.D. program, which leads to being a lawyer. We have our LL.M. program for foreign attorneys who want to get a training in U.S. law. We also have a one-year master's program for non-lawyers who just want some legal training which would be beneficial for their professional development, even if it doesn't lead to them becoming lawyers in the fullest sense of that term.

So, if you go to our website, you can get more information about each of those three programs.

Beth: And I'll just share that we have a hashtag, #cornelllawclinics, on Twitter, and usually the students are too busy doing work to tweet about their work. But one can look up that hashtag and just see a little sampling of some of the things that we do from day to day in the clinic.

Don: That's terrific. I haven't looked at that yet, but I will now. I have looked at the website and there's some great videos on the website, too, including a video I saw of people doing work I think in Africa. You have international reach, you have national reach and international reach. This is not a Tompkins County, New York clinical program. It is a national and international program that's doing very important work either on a macro level or, more to the point, really on a person-by-person level for the clients that you serve.

Well, thank you very much. I really enjoyed this. I think our listeners will enjoy it. It's very informative. Lawyers do and can serve a very important role for their communities beyond what too often is the image of lawyers that we have in the media. So, the law school's doing a great job putting out people who really care about service. And, I guess in that sense, Cornell is contributing to people's higher calling.

So, thank you both very much. I really enjoyed this conversation. Look forward to talking with you again.

Jens: Thanks Don.

Beth: Thank you, Don.

Don: Bye-bye.